The art of persuasion

What does it take to persuade people to act?

I think it comes down to three elements: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos.



1. Logos – Reason

People need to understand why they should act, the logic behind it, the benefits. Here’s the key: those benefits must be communicated from their point of view, not yours. This means the speaker must understand the audience’s assumptions, beliefs, and priorities and speak from there, not from their own agenda.


2. Ethos – Credibility

Who are you, and why should they listen to you?
 Credibility comes from two sources:

a) Who you are? Your background, authority, or shared values.

b) How you deliver? The tone, presence, and consistency of your message.

Even if your reasoning is strong, if you lack credibility, your message won’t land.


3. Pathos – Emotion

You can have logic and credibility, but without emotion, people don’t move. Your audience needs to feel something, for example, anger, pride, empathy, hope, even urgency. Emotion creates connection, and connection creates action.

When logos, ethos, and pathos are all present, your message doesn’t just inform it will inspires action.

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Buy less and buy better

Rhetoric is the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. Aristotle said great communication comes down to three things:
·      Ethos – Ethics, values, the credibility of the person speaking, for example, “Am I worth listening to?”
·      Logos – Evidence, facts, the logic, or apparent logic of what they are saying, for example, “Am I right?”
·      Pathos – The emotions of the audience, for example, “Do I care?”

Aristotle also said that you could not win an argument with just one of these things, to win an argument, you will need each of the three to be always present. And as soon as you think about communication from the receiver’s perspective, you can see that he was correct.

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Rhetoric and the art of persuasion

Image c/o TED ED

When we have conflicting views over truth, we often enter into a game of persuasion where we try to convince the other that the belief we hold is, in fact, the true one. Rhetoric creates a partnership for a system of persuasion based on knowledge instead of upon manipulation and omission. Over 2,000 years ago the Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that there were three basic ways to persuade an audience of your position: ethos, logos, and pathos. To craft a good persuasive argument, we must consider these three things.

1.         The character of the speaker (ethos)
2.         The condition of the listener (logos)
3.         The strength and plausibility of the argument itself (pathos)

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