Contemporary Persuasive Appeals: Needs and Motivations

Current research confirms the persuasive power of ethos, pathos, and logos in persuasive appeals.12 For example, advertisers consciously create ads aimed at evoking an emotional response (pathos) in consumers that convince us that their company or product is reliable or credible (ethos) and which offer factual reasons (logos) for why we should buy something.13 At the same time, investigators have discovered other ways of appealing to audience members and reinforcing or changing attitudes. These approaches suggest that for persuasion to succeed, the message must effectively target (1) audience members’ needs, (2) their motivations for feeling and acting as they do, and (3) their likely approach to mentally processing the persuasive message.

Persuading Listeners by Focusing on Motivation

Winning over audience members to your point of view requires paying attention to what motivates listeners. A motive is a predisposition to behave in certain ways.14 Motives arise from needs and desires that we seek to satisfy (see below). If as a speaker you can demonstrate how an attitude or a behavior might keep listeners from feeling satisfied and competent, or that by taking an action you propose they will be rewarded in some way, you are likely to encourage receptivity to change. For example, to motivate people to lose weight and keep it off, you must make them believe that they will be healthier and seem more attractive if they do so. Persuaders who achieve this are skilled at motivating their listeners to help themselves.15

Persuading Listeners by Appealing to Their Needs

The multibillion-dollar advertising industry focuses on one goal: appealing to consumers’ needs. Likewise, appealing to audience needs is one of the strategies most commonly used to motivate people, whether in advertising or in public speaking. Thus, one way to persuade listeners is to point to some need they want fulfilled and then give them a way to fulfill it.

According to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, each person has a set of basic needs ranging from the essential, life-sustaining ones to the less critical, self-improvement ones. This set includes five categories arranged hierarchically (see Figure 24.1). An individual’s needs at the lower, essential levels must be fulfilled before the higher levels become important and motivating. Using Maslow’s hierarchy to persuade your listeners to wear seat belts, for example, you would appeal to their need for safety. Critics of this approach suggest that we may be driven as much by wants as by needs.16 Nevertheless, recent studies17 demonstrate that persuasive attempts that help to boost or increase threatened social needs, including belonging, self-esteem, control, and meaningful existence, are more likely to succeed than those that ignore these needs. Table 24.2 describes the five basic needs that Maslow identifies and suggests actions that you as a speaker can take to appeal to them.

Persuading Listeners by Focusing on What’s Most Relevant to Them

Audience members will mentally process your persuasive message by one of two routes, depending on the degree of their involvement in the message.18 According to the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (ELM), when they are motivated and able to think critically about a message, they engage in central processing. That is, these listeners seriously consider what your message means to them and are the ones most likely to act on it. When listeners lack the motivation (or the ability) to judge the argument based on its merits, they engage in peripheral processing of information—they pay little attention and respond to the message as being irrelevant, too complex to follow, or just plain unimportant. Even though such listeners may “buy into” your message, they do so not on the strength of the arguments but on the basis of such superficial factors as reputation, entertainment value, or personal style. Listeners who use peripheral processing are unlikely to experience any meaningful changes in attitudes or behavior. Central processing produces the more long-lasting changes in audience perspective.

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Figure 24.1 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

TABLE 24.2 Using Needs to Motivate Listeners

Need Speech Action
Physiological needs (to have access to basic sustenance, including food, water, and air) • Plan for and accommodate the audience’s physiological needs—are they likely to be hot, cold, hungry, or thirsty?
Safety needs (to feel protected and secure) • Appeal to safety benefits—how wearing seat belts or voting for a bill to stop pollution will remove a threat or protect the audience from harm.
Social needs (to find acceptance; to have lasting, meaningful relationships) • Appeal to social benefits—if you want teenagers to quit smoking, stress that if they quit they will appear more physically fit and attractive to their peers.
Self-esteem needs (to feel good about ourselves; to feel self-worth) • Appeal to emotional benefits—stress that the proposed change will make listeners feel better about themselves.
Self-actualization needs (to achieve goals; to reach our highest potential) • Appeal to your listeners’ need to fulfill their potential—stress how adopting your position will help them “be all that they can be.”

You can encourage listeners to engage in central rather than peripheral processing (and thus increase the odds that your persuasive appeal will produce lasting changes in their attitudes and behavior) with these steps:

• Make certain your message is relevant to listeners. Link your argument to their practical concerns and emphasize direct consequences to them. “Hybrid cars may not be the best-looking or fastest cars on the market, but as gas prices continue to soar, they will save you a great deal of money.”
• Make certain that you present your message at an appropriate level of understanding. For a general audience: “The technology behind hybrid cars is relatively simple.”
For an expert audience: “To save even more gas, you can turn an EV into a PHEV with a generator and additional batteries.”
• Establish your credibility with listeners, ensuring that they see you as trustworthy and competent; demonstrate common bonds (i.e., foster identification). “It took me a while to convince myself to buy a hybrid, but once I did, I found I saved nearly $2,000 this year.”

Persuading Listeners by Appealing to the Reasons for Their Behavior

The audience is not merely a collection of empty vessels waiting to be filled with whatever wisdom and knowledge you have to offer. Members of an audience are rational, thinking, choice-making individuals. Their day-to-day behavior is directed mainly by their own volition, or will. According to expectancy value theory, developed by Icek Ajzen and Martin Fishbein,19 each of us consciously evaluates the potential costs and benefits (or “value”) associated with taking a particular action. As we weigh these costs and benefits, we consider our attitudes about the behavior in question (e.g., “Is this a good or a bad behavior?”) as well as what other people who are important to us might think about the behavior (e.g., “My friend would approve of my taking this action”). On the basis of these self-assessments, we develop expectations about what will happen if we do or do not take a certain action (e.g., “My friend will think more highly of me if I do this”). These expected outcomes become our rationale for acting in a certain way. Thus when you want to persuade listeners to change their behavior, you should try to identify these expectations and use them to appeal to your audience.20 For instance, recent research has confirmed that when trying to motivate people to participate in physical activity, the most effective messages that actually move people to action are those that accurately address the outcomes people want from exercise, such as losing weight, lowering blood pressure and blood sugar, and so forth.21

The principles of expectancy value theory can help you plan a persuasive speech in which the specific purpose is to target behavior. A thorough audience analysis (in the form of a questionnaire) is critical to this approach, however (see the section on surveys in Chapter 6). Putting the theory into practice as you conduct your audience analysis, you will need to include questions that uncover (1) your listeners’ attitudes about the behavior you are proposing that they change, as well as (2) their feelings about the consequences associated with that behavior. Knowing these attitudes, you have a good foundation for presenting your listeners with evidence that will support their attitudes and strengthen your argument. Third (3), try to determine what audience members believe other significant people in their lives think about the behavior in question, and the audience members’ willingness to comply with those beliefs. You now have a basis for appealing to your audience’s concerns. Figure 24.2 illustrates the steps to take when seeking to persuade an audience to adopt a course of action, based on the principles of expectancy values theory.

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FIGURE 24.2 Using Expectancy Value Theory to Change Behavior

Persuading Listeners through Speaker Credibility

Beyond the qualities of speaker knowledge, moral character, and goodwill toward the audience that ancient scholars such as Aristotle described in terms of ethos, modern behavioral science has identified other speaker-based factors that affect the outcomes of persuasive messages. These include expertise, trustworthiness, and speaker similarity. Taken as a set, these factors today are referred to as speaker credibility.

The audience’s perceptions of a speaker’s expertise and trustworthiness are critical contributors to persuasiveness.22 If there is one speaker attribute that is more important than others, it is probably trustworthiness. It’s a matter of the “goodwill” that Aristotle taught—audiences want more than information and arguments; they want what’s relevant to them from someone who cares. Indeed, audience members who perceive the speaker to be high in credibility will regard the communication as more truthful than a message delivered by someone who is seen to have low credibility.

Speaker expertise contributes to the persuasive outcomes of a speech under two conditions. First, when audience members are relatively unmotivated or unable to fully grasp a message, their responses to the speech will probably be in the speaker’s favor if the speaker is perceived as an expert on the subject. Second, when audience members themselves are well informed about the message and perceive the speaker as someone who has expertise, he or she will be more apt to persuade them. Note that “expert” doesn’t mean you’re a world authority on the topic or issue of your speech. What it does mean is that you have enough knowledge and experience on the subject to be able to help the audience to better understand and accept it.

An additional element in the speaker-audience relationship that influences the outcome of a persuasive message is speaker similarity—listeners’ perceptions of how similar the speaker is to themselves, especially in terms of attitudes and moral character. Generally, audience members are more likely to respond favorably to the persuasive appeals of a speaker whom they perceive to be a lot like them. However, in certain situations we actually attach more credibility to people who are actually dissimilar to us. For example, we are more likely to be persuaded by a dissimilar speaker, especially one viewed as an “expert,” when the topic or issue emphasizes facts and analysis. This is why lawyers seek the expert testimony of psychiatrists and specialists to provide insight into the personality of a suspect, the features of a crime scene, and the like. On the other hand, an audience is more likely to be persuaded by a similar speaker when the subject is personal or relational. For example, we prefer to watch The Dr. Phil Show instead of 60 Minutes when the subject is fathers and daughters, or bosses and secretaries. We tend to perceive Dr. Phil as being more similar to us in relational concerns than we do Leslie Stahl. But if the issue involves new details in a political scandal or a foreign agreement, we would probably turn to news commentators as our preferred source. These facts point to an important lesson for the persuasive speaker: For speeches that involve a lot of facts and analysis, play on whatever amount of expertise you can summon. For speeches that concern matters of a more personal nature, however, it’s best to emphasize your commonality with the audience.

TIPS FOR INCREASING SPEAKER CREDIBILITY

  1. ______ 1. For speeches that involve a lot of facts and analysis, emphasize your expertise on the topic.
  2. ______ 2. Enlighten your audience with new and relevant information.
  3. ______ 3. Demonstrate your trustworthiness by presenting your topic honestly and in a way that shows concern for your listeners.
  4. ______ 4. For speeches of a more personal nature, emphasize your commonality with the audience.
  5. ______ 5. Be well groomed.