As you prepare your speeches, seek to learn about the audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and values—their feelings and opinions—toward the topic, toward you as the speaker, and toward the speech occasion. This “perspective taking” will help you learn more about your audience and see things from their point of view.

Taking the measure of the audience is critical because people tend to evaluate information in terms of their own—rather than the speaker’s—point of view. You may want your school administrators to support a new online degree program, but unless you know their current perspective on such a program, you won’t know how to appeal to them effectively.

Attitudes, beliefs, and values, while intertwined, reflect distinct mental states that reveal a great deal about us. Attitudes are our general evaluations of people, ideas, objects, or events.²

Attitudes are based on beliefs—the ways in which people perceive reality.³ Beliefs are our feelings about what is true. The less faith listeners have in the existence of something— UFOs, for instance—the less open they are to hearing about it.

Both attitudes and beliefs are shaped by values—our most enduring judgments about what’s good and bad in life, as shaped by our culture and our unique experiences within it. Values run deeper than attitudes or beliefs and are more resistant to change. Values usually align with attitudes and beliefs.

As a rule, people are more interested in and pay greater attention to topics toward which they have positive attitudes and that are in keeping with their values and beliefs. The less we know about something, the more indifferent we tend to be. It is easier (though not simple) to spark interest in an indifferent audience than it is to turn negative attitudes around.

Appeal to Listeners’ Attitudes, Beliefs, and Values

Evoking some combination of the audience’s attitudes, beliefs, and values in the speeches you deliver will make them more personally relevant and motivating. For example, the Biodiversity Project, a group that helps speakers raise public awareness about the environment, counsels clients to appeal directly to the values their audience members hold about the environment (discovered in surveys), offering the following as an example:⁴

You care about your family’s health (value #1) and you feel a responsibility to protect your loved ones’ quality of life (value #2). The local wetland provides a sanctuary to many plants and animals. It helps clean our air and water and provides a space of beauty and serenity (value #3). All of this is about to be destroyed by irresponsible development.⁵

Gauge Listeners’ Feelings toward the Topic

Try to learn what your listeners know about the topic. What is their level of interest? Do they hold positive, negative, or neutral attitudes toward it? Once you have this information, adjust the speech accordingly:

If the topic is new to listeners,

If listeners know relatively little about the topic,

If listeners are negatively disposed toward the topic,

If listeners hold positive attitudes toward the topic,

If listeners are a captive audience,

Gauge Listeners’ Feelings toward You as the Speaker

How audience members feel about you will also have significant bearing on their responsiveness to the message. A speaker who is well liked can gain an initial hearing even when listeners are unsure what to expect from the message itself.

To create positive audience attitudes toward you, first display the characteristics of speaker credibility (ethos) described in Chapter 4. Listeners have a natural desire to identify with the speaker and to feel that he or she shares their perceptions,⁸ so establish a feeling of commonality, or identification, with them. Use eye contact and body movements to include the audience in your message. Relate a relevant personal story, emphasize a shared role, focus on areas of agreement, or otherwise stress mutual bonds. Even your physical presentation can foster a common bond. Audiences are more apt to identify with speakers who dress in ways they find appropriate.

Gauge Listeners’ Feelings toward the Occasion

Depending on the circumstances calling for the speech, people will bring different sets of expectations and emotions to it. For example, members of a captive audience, who are required to hear the speaker, may be less positively disposed to the occasion than members of a voluntary audience who attend of their own free will. Whether planning a wedding toast or a business presentation, failure to anticipate and adjust for the audience’s expectations risks alienating them.