October Blog Post

For my October blog post I am going to be talking about the models for persuasion. The three models of persuasion are pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos is an appeal to emotions and a tool used to evoke emotion in people. One example of pathos would be saying “donate to this charity, it is for the puppies” because you know that the person you are talking to likes puppies. The second model of persuasion is logos. Logos is an appeal to logic and is all about if you trust who is speaking and what they are saying. One example of logos would be using facts and evidence to support yourself and show that you are a credible source and deserve to be listened to. The third and final model of persuasion is ethos. Ethos is based off of ethics and credibility. One example of ethos would be to say “dentists like this toothpaste the best and recommend it” because when people see your ad and see that the credible source of the “dentist” likes your product that is for teeth, it will appeal to them and draw their interest towards your product because they believe it is the best.

Each of these models of persuasion is effective in its own way and should be used at different times according to the situation at hand. It is important to know your audience and know their interests so that you can relate to them more and appeal to them and make them want to listen to you. For example, if you know that someone relies on their emotions and is a romantic, then it is probably best to go with pathos and appeal to their emotions and make them want to listen to you through emotion. On the other hand, if someone does not care about emotional appeal and only wants credible information with facts to support it, then logos would be the best one to use because you would have supporting information to go along with your statements. The main thing is to just know your audience and know what they are interested in and not interested in so that you can relate and appeal to them more and make them want to listen to you.

I felt that the three models of persuasion was important to talk about because they are very effective forms of communication that help us to get people to listen to what we are saying. Also, it helps us to practice getting to know our audience because in order for these models to be effective, we must pick the correct one to use based off of the audience we are speaking to.