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Audience members weigh the costs and benefits whenever they are deciding whether to take action in response to a persuasive appeal.22 They are most likely to support your proposal when you show how they will benefit from doing so and when they feel that the costs involved are minimal—or at least worth the benefits.

To increase your persuasive power, help your listeners visualize themselves experiencing the benefit they’ll gain if they take the action you’re advocating. Here is how one speaker showed audience members how they could benefit by volunteering to spend time with young children:

Imagine yourself volunteering to help young kids in our community. You do not even need to go downtown to help. Students can volunteer to read to children at the day-care center in our library at story hour each day. The next time you are using the library in the afternoon, walk past the center, and see what a good time the kids and your classmates are having. Share a story from your culture or a book you loved as a child. If you enjoy volunteering, you can even sign up for a community service course and earn academic credit.

In addition to demonstrating how your listeners will benefit from taking the actions you’re advocating, you may want to show them that the costs of these actions are low. This can be particularly important when your listeners are seriously considering taking action. If this is the case, they probably already recognize the benefits of doing so, and showing them that taking action has limited disadvantages could be the final step in gaining their support.23