Ian Z.

Pancho

Rachel Feldman

Writing 2

21 March 2020

Psychology Plays With Marketing

I never read a full academic research article prior to this class. There were many reasons

for this, one of the main ones being that I did not know how to access them. Academic articles

were a new concept to me prior to my writing class because there was not a way for me to easily

find peer-reviewed articles without any help. However, when my writing class taught me how to

use the UCSB Library Database, I was exposed to multiple discourse communities and peer-

reviewed pieces. Eventually, while working on a project builder for one of my writing projects, I

found an article that blended my majors, Psychological and Brain Sciences and Communication,

in a perfect manner. The article, entitled “It’s all in the mindset: Effects of varying psychological

distance in persuasive messages'' written by Professor Gergana Nenkov from Boston College,

discusses how persuasive messages incorporate varying psychological distance orientation, and

how they touch consumers who hold either a pre- or post-decisional mindset. Nenkov’s article

offered me insight into the fields of psychology and communication while simultaneously acting

as a vessel for my intellectual curiosity and career-orientated goals toward marketing.

It was a dense text, full of jargon, with organization that flowed like a textbook. While

reading it, I was reminded of Mike Bunn’s “How to Read Like a Writer” because he provided me

with advice on how to analyze academic writing. Specifically, Bunn mentioned, “you may want

to have a set of questions written or typed out in front of you that you can refer to while reading”

(Bunn 79). This spoke to me because it helped me form questions like “How is Nenkov
presenting her findings?” and “What is she trying to achieve from this?” thus leading me to

critically think while reading. This way of thinking is what caused me to form an idea of what

kind of genre I wanted to translate the article into. Specifically, I wanted to translate it into a

genre that incorporated aspects of psychology and marketing. After careful reflection and

brainstorming, I concluded that an infographic would be the most appropriate genre for my

article because of its effectiveness in presenting information in a brief manner and appealing to

the eye. Following from this realization, my infographic’s purpose is to concisely relay Nenkov’s

findings in order to make them presentable in a meeting. I found examples of infographics online

to give me a jumpstart on how to create my piece. These examples, such as infographics

describing the psychology of color or how to engage in effective content marketing, exposed me

to the infographic genre. From this, I developed an understanding on how to follow the

conventions of the genre, like organizing research into separate sections that are decorated with

calming colors and simple graphics, in order to present Nenkov’s findings. I utilized these

conventions in an attempt to appeal to an intended audience of company marketing teams while

also holding onto the original concepts of Nekov’s article.

To construct my infographic, I first needed to deconstruct Nenkov’s research. Nenkov’s

article included long, complex sentences that exhibited her findings in a fleshed-out style.

However, I was limited by the boundaries of an 8.5 by 11-inch paper. Thus, deciding which

aspects of her article to include proved challenging, as most of it seemed worthy of space. This

translation taught me to include the key points of Nenkov’s research, especially her main claim;

namely, this was that psychologically distanced messages are best associated with predecisional

mindsets, and psychologically close messages are better paired with postdecisional mindsets. In

order to provide a better understanding of the research, definitions of jargon were included.
However, I couldn’t include a definition or reference to every term used in the paper. For

example, I was forced to leave out the concept of high- and low-level identities from my

infographic. In order to counteract this omission while translating, I took this aspect into

consideration but ultimately disregarded including a definition of the terms due to its vagueness

in regards to the article’s claim: “[high- versus low-level identities] drive [consumer] preference

for messages framed using psychologically distant versus close orientation, respectively”

(Nenkov 624). This vagueness was not elaborated upon by the author, and even I could not grasp

its concept. Therefore, I found a way to weave this information into what I did end up defining,

which was the author’s main claim and the effects of certain persuasive messages on different

mindsets. Another aspect that I wanted to reflect in my infographic was that the main ideas of the

article were incorporated by organization into different sections that flow from top to bottom and

left to right. This choice demonstrates how different genres, such as infographics and academic

articles, relay information to discourse communities, in this case psychologists who study

marketing. In order to complete a successful genre translation from the academic article to my

infographic, my infographic holds on to the key ideas serving as the backbone for Nenkov’s

article. My genre presented the preservation of these key ideas in a visually appealing and

comfortable layout to follow the conventions of the genre and connect to an audience that would

consider it for real-world applications.

Ultimately, I performed my best attempt to create a business-worthy infographic. As seen

with my choice of colors, fonts, shapes, and organization of content, I reflect the infographic

genre and present Nenkov’s research with a marketing influence. Every aspect of the piece,

ranging from summaries to the graphics, represents the marketing influence it holds. For

instance, I used calm pastel colors that complement the information while being visually
appealing. Additionally, I utilized a casual tone for my language in order to simplify the complex

research. Phrases such as “Experiment: Orange Juice Ads Influence Me?” created an

understandable and laxed textual piece (Pancho). This language reduced the erudite 14-page

article into a single-page infographic. Simple graphics meant to ease the eye from the summaries

accompanied the simplicity of the sentences. These conventions were buoyed by author and

literary theorist Jorge Luis Borges’ concept of “mutual enrichment” in regards to the translation

process, since they both provide summaries and project Nenkov’s original claim. Indeed, Borges

claims that genre translation mutually enriches a “source text and target culture” (Feldman). This

idea motivated my creation of a colorful infographic. I made sure my techniques were effective

in aligning with Nenkov’s research while also benefiting my purpose of effective presentation. In

creating this genre translation and navigating between the academic genre of the article and that

of the infographic, I inherently fostered a relationship that could be rendered as useful for more

audiences — not just in the psychological discourse community but those in marketing and

business.

My project was ultimately built on the basis of the infographic’s conventions playing an

effective role in the translation of an academic genre that would still hold the same ideas, but

make them accessible for a more varied, diverse audience. The infographic can easily be utilized

for persuasion in a business meeting while it simultaneously discusses the psychology of

persuasion in marketing messages. I believe this phenomenon displays the power that

translations hold as exemplars of boundary crossing between the disciplines and discourse

communities. From the perspective of my translation project, I hope to reveal that an idea

presented in one genre can be transformed into another that maintains the source text’s key

concepts and communicates them with the same effectiveness. Creating this piece further
deepened my genuine interest in learning about the relationship between psychology and

marketing as well. It was a pleasant experience that helped me relate both to the topic while also

teaching me how to analyze the genre conventions academic writers privilege in order to

generate a persuasive message. Prior to this class, I never gave much thought about academic

articles — or how they can be deconstructed, and even completely transformed into another

piece for that matter — however, after completing this project, I am able to recognize this kind

of transmission of textuality all around me. Therefore, it is my sincere hope that I can instill a

slight curiosity for this fluidity of genre in others through the techniques that my infographic

employs.
 Works Cited

Bunn, Mike. 2011. “How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing 2: 79.

Feldman, Rachel. “Intro to Unit III.” Writing 2, Ellison Hall, Santa Barbara, CA,

February 27, 2020.

Nenkov, Gergana. "It's All in the Mindset: Effects of Varying Psychological Distance in

Persuasive Messages." Marketing Letters 23, no. 3 (2012): 624.

Pancho, Ian. “Psychology Plays With Marketing.” Accessed Mar 09 2020.