Self-persuasion is used to explain one aspect of social influence. This theory postulates that the receiver takes an active role in persuading himself or herself to change his or her attitude. Unlike the direct technique of Persuasion, Self-persuasion is indirect and entails placing people in situations where they are motivated to persuade themselves to change. More specifically what characterizes a self-persuasion situation is that no direct attempt is made to convince anyone of anything. Thus, with self-persuasion, people are convinced that the motivation for change has come from within, so the persuasion factors of another person's influence is irrelevant. Therefore, Self-persuasion is almost always a more powerful form of persuasion (deeper, longer lasting) than the more traditional persuasion techniques. Self-Persuasion, also has an important influence in Social judgment theory, Elaboration Likelihood Model, Cognitive Dissonance and Narrative paradigm.

Self-persuasion came about based on the more traditional or direct strategies of persuasion, which have been around for at least 2,300 years and studied by eminent social psychologists from Aristotle to Carl Hovland, they focused their attention on these three principal factors: the nature of the message, the characteristics of the communicator, and the characteristics of the audience. It wasn't until later that the theory of self-persuasion was developed by Dr. Carl Hovland, of Psychology, who had conducted studies during his time at Yale University during the 1940s and '50s. His argument in creating the concept of self-persuasion was that the factors within us determine our decision-making; for example, one's personality, self-esteem, education, or interest.

How can motivation and self-persuasion be connected? Webster defines motivation as the act or process of giving someone a reason for doing something: the act or process of motivating someone. Motivation involving self-persuasion pertains to the ability to motivate oneself for a higher reason or reward. Convincing a person to believe in your belief can be a challenge, however, trying to convince yourself is altogether another effort and challenge. Persuasion allows the mind the ability to be persuaded for reasons that exist for beneficial factors. Consider this: if you conquer your fears, would you consider this a giant feat or success? Through self-persuasion along with motivation, many people can tackle their fears, which in turn allows them to move to the next level or simply a higher level within society.

Self-persuasion permits a person's mind the ability to be influenced or persuaded if they choose to. The mind through persuasion can also deny or resist if it so chooses, regardless of self-persuasion. Self-persuasion is directly related to the processes of a person's mind and the influence of motivation the mind perceives. People would rather listen to themselves than to other people normally, except for those people who are indecisive. When people are trying to convince themselves or be persuaded into changing their minds, it can sometimes involve motivation or the act of motivation. People will listen to themselves and will automatically generate arguments that have personal relevance for them.

It might sound crazy to some people, but people are being encouraged to persuade themselves all the time. Many of these times are through motivation intensity. As people know, motivation can be a driving ambition that can easily sway people based on reward, self-persuasion through motivation can achieve great results.

Encouraging a person to change their mind through motivation can be attributed to levels of acceptance through a variety of levels of motivation. A good example would be if a parent informs their child to do well in school and if levels of success are achieved, then rewards will follow. This is an example of self-persuasion; the child is utilizing self-persuasion to achieve the goal of pleasing the mom and dad as well as receiving a reward. The child is convinced to improve their grades while being motivated by money. Think of it like this: when a child goes to the dentist, it is usually persuaded by a parent that the dentist is not bad and if they do well while at the dentist, they will receive a reward. This is self-persuasion brought on by rewards. When we want to change our behavior, say, to healthier eating, we might try to convince ourselves we don't like the forbidden foods as much as we do, knowing that forbidden food attracts weight gain and health issues, therefore self-persuasion decreases the need for the forbidden food.

The experiment below discusses the effects that role-playing can have on self-persuasion.

Subjects first expressed their positions on whether college education should be general (liberal arts) or specialized (career preparatory), then were led to accept that they would write essays supporting one or the other of these positions. Next, they judged the validity of a standard set of statements representing both views and again expressed their opinions on the same issue. Validity judgments indicated that subjects tended strongly to accept arguments supporting their positions and reject opposing ones when expecting to defend their positions, but accepted nearly equal numbers of arguments on both sides when expecting to advocate the opposing position. Final opinion judgments were influenced by the assigned position's direction even though the role-playing task was not performed. It was concluded that the effectiveness of role-playing in inducing opinion change may be due in large to its success in getting subjects to evaluate.