The Elements of Persuasion
There are several principles, or types, of persuasion. Various types of persuasion have the ability to convince people in different ways. If you have someone who is grounded in fact and only accepts what they can see and hear, then you will have to use the appeal-to-reason method, while someone who has a bit more faith will respond to the appeal-to-emotion method.
This lesson will go over all of these methods to help you better understand the various types of persuasion that you can write, and how each will work on different types of people.
The first type of persuasion is the appeal to reason. The appeal-to-reason method uses a logical argument, with everything about the persuasion centered in logic and in the scientific method. This method will work best with the types of people who need proof of something and don't accept arguments that are based more on faith than on fact. If you are trying to convince a group of scientists to follow your belief that the earth revolves around the moon, then you need to have a lot of proof to back it up, otherwise you will not persuade them to your argument. Simply saying that it looks like it revolves around the Moon is an argument that is too centered in faith, and that won't work for the appeal-to-reason method.
The second type of persuasion is the appeal to emotion. The appeal-to-emotion is not based on proof, but on the emotions that a person feels. Often this can be a more effective approach for the population as a whole, because people can often be governed by their emotions more than by their minds. There are several examples throughout history that show this to be true. With the appeal-to-emotion method, you will be using a person's faith and imagination to appeal to them, and to get them over to your own argument. You may also use seduction, tradition, or even pity to get them to agree with you. Sales people use this method quite well. They will appeal to your imagination by giving you a presentation of a test drive of a vehicle so that you can see yourself in the vehicle. Then, they will sometimes use pity to tell you how they may need this sale as it has been a slow month. Some even use seduction to appeal to you. Advertising and propaganda are two other methods of using this form of persuasion. Appealing to emotions also uses tradition as a means to get someone to your side. By saying, "This is the way we have always done it, so we should continue to do it this way," is often very effective, even if there are many other methods available that are more effective than what you are trying to get people to agree to.