When you want to persuade your audience, you can appeal to them in three ways.
You can persuade them that you are of good character—that you share their values, have practical wisdom in the subject at hand, and that you have their interests in mind, not just your own.
The second way to persuade your audience is by appealing to logic. You begin your argument with something the audience already believes and lead them to the conclusion you’d like them to make.
And finally, you can appeal to their pathos, or emotion.
When you appeal to the emotions of your audience you can cause a change in its mood, you can make it more receptive to your logic, or you can make it feel an emotional commitment to the choice or decision you’d like it to make.
Done properly, pathos affects an audience’s judgment. Our brains are wired such that emotions can overpower rational thought.
In Thank You for Arguing, Jay Heinrichs explains: “Emotion comes from experience and expectation – what your audience believes has happened, or will take place in the future. The more vividly you give the audience the sensations of an experience, the greater the emotion you can arouse.”ť
How to change the mood of your audience? Tell a story—a story that makes them feel they have had the experience or one that makes them feel what they can expect in the future. Heinrichs says that Aristotle believed “one of the most effective mood changers is a detailed narrative.”ť
“The more vivid you make the story, the more it seems like a real experience, and the more your audience will think it could happen again. You give them a vicarious experience, and an expectation that it could happen to them.”
In addition to storytelling, pathos depends on your self-control. You’ll be more persuasive if you hold your emotions back than if you wear them on your sleeve, revealing every feeling. Understate your arguments, speak simply using simple language and shorter words.
And finally let the emotion build. Appeal to your character and your logic while early in the argument. Bring your emotional appeals later.
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[...] Appealing to emotion can cause a change in mood, make the buyer more receptive to your logic, and persuade buyers to feel an emotional commitment to the choice or decision you’d like them to make. [...]