Today in mass media the main purpose is to persuade the audience. Some of the persuasion is good for society and the other not. To persuade is a concept that can be defined as attempting to change people's attitudes and behaviors through written or spoken word. However the outcome of how effective the persuasion is cannot be so easily determined. Behaviorism is the idea that scientists should only study observable behavior. For much of the first half of the century, social science spent a good amount of time only studying behaviorism. Social science has become more diverse and has reached to new heights of approaches.
One type of persuasion theory is the learning theory which assumes that persuasion is largely a function of knowledge acquisition. One of the examples that David Perry uses is an ad that a car maker uses showing a young woman in a bikini beside a sports car. The advertisers think that men will pair the two together and eventually believe that a sports car will bring young women in bikinis. I think this is not necessarily true at all. The consumer will of course like the advertisement, but he would not expect the car to come with the young woman in the bikini. Possibly in time the consumer will think the two go together if the advertisement is ingrained in his head time after time. Classical conditioning is known in this theory which involves an unconditioned stimulus, an unconditioned response, and a conditioned stimulus. Classical conditioning can occur in the car/bikini situation if the man does in fact associate the young women with the car. .
Operant or instrumental conditioning is another form of learning theory. This type of theory stresses the use of punishment and rewards as a learning mechanism. This theory is definitely true when it comes to baseball. When the best hitter in major league baseball steps up to the plate and hits a homerun the pitcher is punished.