The final chapter of this volume provides several points of further theoretical elaborations, which, important for our overall argument, would have unduly cluttered the various chapters. It starts by considering how challenges to common sense arise from various types of dissent or deviance including children, homecomers, newcomers, strangers, foreigners, robots or aliens. It proceeds to discuss why and how object-relations and 'inter-objectivity' thought, noted by various scholars, have not received sufficient attention in psychological scholarship and certainly not in relation to influence by artefacts. The chapter lays out the theoretical foundations for such a broadening of scope. The chapter then proceeds to discuss the historically curious dominance of dual-process models over single-process alternatives. The excursions conclude by revisiting the debates concerning the authority of science in Milgram's obedience studies in light of a broader understanding of autonomy, tyranny, argumentation, legality and violence.

Chapter 7 deals with the most pressing and most prominent social influence in our time, persuasion. The modality of persuasion is oft considered as the epitome of social influence processes with a long past of rhetoric analysis, and a short history of experimental demonstration of effects arising from speaker, message or audience characteristics. The chapter starts by reviewing the moderator variables of persuasion initiated by the Yale Programme. This is followed by considering mainstream dual-process theories that investigated fast or slow, hot or cold cognitive processes resulting in successful persuasion. Following this mainstream overture, the chapter reviews studies of forced and non-forced compliance that precipitate conviction by cognitive dissonance. The chapter ends with reviewing lay epistemic theory and the unimodal of persuasion, making the case for argumentation processes that form attitudes and the appraisal of behavioural inclinations beyond the exercise of mere message tactics of a box of tricks. This leads us to consider the necessary insights into the common ground and the moral community of speaker and audience as a precondition of successful persuasion.