Improve Your Communication Skills Present with Confidence; Write with Style; Learn Skills of Persuasion ( PDFDrive )
77 The Skills of Persuasion Passion ( pathos ) In the end, human beings are probably influenced to act more by
their emotions than by anything else. Appealing to their feelings
–
pathos
– is thus a vital element in any attempt to persuade.
We tend to think of appealing to emotion as manipulative.
Part of our suspicion arises from the fact that this appeal must
always be indirect or underhand. We can lay out our argument or
our credentials openly, but we cannot
announce
to our audience
that we are about to appeal to their emotions; they will
immediately be put on their guard. Neither can we inspire an
emotion by talking about it; we must present something external
that will arouse emotion. A charitable appeal, for example, might
seek to arouse people to donate by showing pictures of children
dying in hospital, or animals in distress. Feeling the emotion – or
displaying it – may be helpful, but a dispassionate presentation
or description will often be more emotionally arousing than an
emotional one.
Pathos
thus has the reputation of being dishonest or
unethical. And we know that speakers can inspire audiences to
wildly irrational and dangerous behaviour by playing on their
emotions. But the abuse of
pathos
doesn’t mean we should avoid
it. Persuading without emotion is unlikely to be effective, partly
because it will seem inhuman (Mr Spock on
Star Trek
continually
had this problem when trying to persuade his colleagues to act
rationally).
The aim of
pathos
must be to arouse the emotional response
that is appropriate to the case you are arguing. Emotion need not
be overwhelming. If we allow the subject matter or the occasion
to elicit emotion in the audience, we shall probably exercise
pathos
well.
All three of these qualities – character, reasoning and passion
– must be present if you want to persuade someone. The
process
of working out how to persuade them consists of five key
elements:
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