 In this video, we're gonna continue our conversation about the persuasive process, specifically by talking about content premises. This is the second of our third videos on the persuasive process. So if you missed the first one, on the Tools of Motivation, you might wanna go back and check that out. But just to get us started, I wanna lay a little foundation here because all of these persuasive processes really go back to what we call Anthemomatic Persuasion. Anthemomatic Persuasion. So I just wanna review really quickly if you missed that first video or if it's been a bit since you've watched it, what is Anthemomatic Persuasion? Well, first of all, it was really developed by our pal Aristotle, all the way back with Aristotle, who kinda looked at syllogism, which said there's a major premise and then a minor premise and a conclusion. And he looked at that and said, for persuasion, that may not be the best method. Let's try something a little different here. Let's not use syllogism. Let's just assume that the audience will make a connection here and leave that major premise unstated. Let's not state it. Let's let the audience come to that conclusion. The audience will supply that major premise. It's our job as a persuader then to identify the common ground that comes along with that major premise that we're both just on the same page with. I don't have to say it. You know what I'm talking about, right? And so that's our major premise and that's what Aristotle was saying. We don't have to say the major premise. We'll leave that unstated. We're all on the same page. Let's just jump right in with some other things. And so the persuader then, though, has to be very specific in identifying that common ground to make sure that we're on the same page as the audience and we know where we're starting from. This really encourages the co-creation of meaning between the audience and the persuader and gives you that kind of step up. Already we're on the same page. Already we're working together. Our minds are working as one. So it kind of makes that connection for us, right? Encourage that co-creation of meaning between the persuader and the audience. So for our purposes, again, we're breaking this down into three different areas. There are three different ways that we go about using this enthemomatic persuasion. The one we talked about in the first video was process. We use kind of the psychological aspects, the psychological factors of persuasion in connecting with the audience. That was our process premise. This video is gonna focus on the content premise, which has more to do with the logical or rational patterns of persuasion. Then the other video that will be the third in this series is going to be on cultural premises, right? The cultural premises that are rooted in the values, the beliefs and the behaviors passed down by that culture or society. So in this video, though, we're gonna focus on the content premises. So just to cover a few principles of this content premises, first of all, it does, again, as we've mentioned, operate in the enthemomatic persuasion realm of enthemomatic persuasion. Here, this is this content premises. These content premises are part of that enthemomatic persuasion. They also rely on logical and or analytical abilities of the audience, the ability of the audience to understand and to make those logical connections and to be persuaded by those logical connections and use their analytical abilities to do so. Sometimes the content premises are called arguments or propositions or offers or whatever, but it all really comes back to those logical elements of persuasion. So just to clarify a little bit more and connect to the last video, in the Tools of Motivation, we talked about the psychological process. We talked a lot about how that related to the peripheral route, for example, in the elaboration likelihood model. We mentioned that it was the low involvement process, processing, usually reserved for, I don't wanna say necessarily less important, but we're talking here about, what kind of candy bar should I get? Not what house should I buy? Now in the content premises, we're getting into the high involvement processing that deals with things like, where should I buy this house or not? What should I look for in a car that I buy? These are major or, you know, who should I marry? Who should I date? These types of things are in the high involvement processing arena in the evaluation likelihood model. And those are the types of things we're gonna be getting into with these content premises, as opposed to the low involvement processing that we talked about in the psychological premises, the Tools of Motivation that we talked about in the first video. So when we talk about content premises, we need to talk about proof. We need to talk about proof, because that's what the audience is looking for for these logical elements. They want proof. They want to know for sure what it is you're saying. They want evidence of that, right? So we need to understand, first of all, that the effectiveness of proof varies from, due to a variety of factors. The effectiveness of proof will not be stable from one situation or one person or the other. So we need to consider how this proof, the effectiveness of this proof will vary from situation to situation. So just to take an example, one popular topic here lately has been the legalization of marijuana. Some states have done it, some states haven't, so it's been a hot topic for several years now. We need to understand that if we're trying to persuade about the legalization of marijuana, whether or not it should be, let's just say for the sake of argument that we're arguing that it should be legalized, right? That it should be legalized in whatever state where we're at. We need to understand that the situation we're in will impact how people perceive that logic and whether it makes sense or not, right? If we're making this argument at a fraternity house, then that might be different than making this argument at a Sunday school classroom, right? Those are gonna be two different situations. Or even at the rotary, which is made up of business leaders and social leaders from the community that have a different perspective on these things. So the situation is going to impact how the audience perceives that and how that persuasion is perceived and how effective it is, right? We also have to consider the persons involved, right? Who are the persons involved? Again, we can look at demographics, we can look at age, we can look at sex, we can look at, you know, employment, socioeconomic factors in determining, you know, how this particular person or this audience might perceive our argument and the effectiveness of that proof. Some audiences are gonna be more likely to take evidence from particular people or situations and believe that more strongly than other audiences might. So we need to consider the persons and understand that the effectiveness of that proof will vary from person to person. And then finally, topic to topic. Obviously people care about different things. Some people are gonna feel strongly on one side of this argument or the other. It may feel strongly that marijuana should be legalized or it may feel strongly that it should not be legalized and then you're gonna have a whole bunch of people in the middle who just don't care or don't know or don't have an opinion on this particular topic. So we need to understand that the effectiveness of proof is gonna vary from topic to topic as well. So effectiveness of proof is going to vary. We also need to understand that there are different components of proof, right? Two primary components. When we look at logos, we look at logical appeals, we look at proof, we look at, you know, these rational appeals for persuasion, there are really two things that are involved. The first is evidence. Can you prove it? Can you prove it? Do you have the evidence to back it up? So that's one aspect of it. The other then is reasoning. So we look at evidence and reasoning. Reasoning then has to do with can we make that connection between the evidence and what it is we're talking about and between the evidence and what it is the audience wants to hear or what they want to know or what they already know about, right? So we need to consider the evidence that we have, the proof that we have and then the reasoning, can we make that connection between those things and between that audience and so forth? So when we look at logical persuasion, when we look at logos, we're concerned with evidence and reasoning. So we're gonna talk about each of those things in greater depth here. First, let's take a look at the evidence by examining the different types of evidence that we can have, different types of evidence. The first category that we have is what we call dramatic evidence. By dramatic, we don't mean like cinematic and the drama of life and things like that, not the drama of reality TV. We're talking about drama in the sense of, for example, telling the story. I mean, we are storytelling creatures by nature. We are compelled by stories. We are persuaded by stories and so forth. So dramatic evidence has to do with telling that story or somehow conveying that story to the audience. So we take a look at things like narratives, right? Again, we are narrative creatures. We love stories. We love to be involved. So narratives are these longer form stories that we have where we tell evidence, we provide evidence through the use of storytelling. We tell elaborate and involved stories that engage the audience and help them understand what it is we're talking about and why we're trying to persuade them of that and so forth, the benefits of all that. So it all comes to fruition through these longer form stories that we can tell. That's what we mean by narratives, right? We also have anecdotes, which are kind of the same thing except they're shorter. Anecdotes are just little stories, little jokes, little three or four sentences, and they're very powerful. They're very compelling. You know that you can tell when somebody knows how to tell a story, right? You can tell when somebody knows how to tell an anecdote. One famous example of this in both arenas, really narratives and anecdotes, would be President Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a great storyteller and part of that comes from his personality, but part of it comes from the fact that he was a professional actor. He knew how to deliver these things. That's why he was called the great communicator, right? But he had all these three notebooks and note cards and things that he kept around that people are still discovering in his presidential library, these little stashes of stories and things that he would drop into speeches and drop in when he was communicating with people because he knew that people were narrative creatures. He had all these kinds of little stories and jokes that he would slip in there because they're very powerful, they're very convincing and that's what people are compelled by those things there, okay? So we can provide dramatic evidence through the use of narratives and through the use of evidence. We can also do so through the use of testimony, right? So when we have an expert in some arena or we have somebody that would be expert testimony or when we have somebody who's experienced something firsthand, we call that peer testimony, but either way, that's dramatic evidence. That's somebody who has some special knowledge or expertise of that particular topic and that particular arena who is telling us about that thing and that is compelling to us. That is dramatic evidence that we like to hear from people who know about it either because they've studied it and have an expertise in that area or because they've lived it and have some personal experience in that area and they can share their story then too. We can also convey and engage in dramatic evidence through the use of participation, right? We can have people engage in that activity themselves and to really understand it and understand what it means. So maybe you've been involved with a number of college fairs and high school fairs and things like that where the police are there and they bring what they affectionately call the drunk goggles, right? They put these on and it simulates what it is like if you're trying to drive or walk after you've had X amount of drinks, right? So you put these on and it's a fun way for people to kind of, they put them on scooters or they put them on, just have them walk a course and they film it or they have their friends watch it and talk about how difficult that is, right? They give them that firsthand experience of what that would be like and it's all fun. And then they say, though, these simulations, they say, yeah, that was great. And then along the process, you killed three people in a drunk driving accident, right? And that really drives that home, that experience home when you realize, well, this is not just for fun. It's not just, you know, something that's completely lighthearted. We get people to participate in these things and to live these experience, that's a really compelling way to engage evidence and to engage in persuasion with those people, right? Then finally, we just have rational evidence, okay? So no longer into the storytelling and things like that. Now we're really strictly using logos, things like statistics, things like, you know, we're asking people to use their logical processes. We're laying out this evidence and asking them to really consider and think about those things. So those are different types of evidence. We have the dramatic evidence that has more to do with engaging a person's in narrative, inherent narrative interest and desires and telling stories and being a part of stories. And then you have rational evidence, which is really just engaging the analytical, logical part of their brain. We also have different types of reasoning. Okay, there's two sides of the same coin here. Evidence and reasoning, both important. Evidence to demonstrate proof and to provide that proof. Reason to make the connections between that evidence and the audience and that evidence and the topic that you're talking about to make sure that there's a secure connection there. So when we talk about reasoning, we have a variety of different types of reasoning. I want us cause to effect, cause to effect so that the one thing causes the effect of another. So on classic examples, we know that we don't have to go too far to explain to people that smoking causes lung damage and causes cancer and so forth, right? We know this scientifically. So we start with the action, smoking cigarettes or smoking, whatever, and we can then proceed to the effect because this person smokes cigarettes, they are more likely to have lung damage and to have health issues in that arena, right? So that's cause to effect. We can also flip it around and go the other direction. We can start with the effect and go to cause in the recent impeachment trial, the second impeachment trial for President Trump regarding the Capitol riots and the Capitol insurrection, the prosecution from the House representatives started with the effects. They showed this really compelling video which really walked through the days of the effects of the people in a rioting and storming the castle and attacking police and so forth, searching out for public figures and presumptively to do them harm so they started with the effect. They said, this is what happened. This was the result. And then they went backwards and said, okay, now why did this happen? And they went through months of, you know, President Trump said this and President Trump implied this and met with this person. And then on that day at the ellipses, he gave the speech and said these things and he said fight so many times and this is why it happened. So they started with the effect and then provided the cause for that. Okay, that's another type of reasoning. So we can go cause to effect. We can also go effect to cause. Other times we can reason from symptoms. We can take a look at things and say, okay, this person is president. So right now we have, you know, just in general, just talking in general, you know, at the moment the economy's horrible and so the economy's horrible and we're at war with this nation and people are living below the poverty level and health is an issue and so forth. All you can give this laundry list of things that are wrong with the country and say these symptoms are all representative of this person's leadership and that's why this person should no longer be president. This person should no longer be senator. There's no, you know, whatever it should no longer be mayor or whatever level you're talking about. So we list of all the symptoms and we reason from that criteria to application. This is a type of persuasion where we say, okay, what is it that people need? What is it that presumptively people need and are looking for? So for example, if you're, this would be an example of if you're looking to buy a car then this, this advertisement is laying out this is what you need. You know, these are the criteria you should be using to apply what you're looking for in a car buying experience. You should be looking for complete transparency. You should be looking for lifetime warranty. You should be looking for technology driven process. Presumably this is all things that are provided by this dealer then, right? So they're laying out the criteria that are necessary in the application of that situation. So we have that kind of reasoning. Another type of reasoning is reasoning from comparison. We compare things all the time, right? We compare, you know, when I get an example as a politician says, I have a plan to fix social security. Here's my plan. Here's my opponents plan to fix social security. Let's compare the two. Or my plan on the budget is this and theirs is that, right? Let's compare those two. So we reason from comparison. We compare two things that are presumably related, ideally related and we work from there. Then we also two very common types of reasoning that we have our first reasoning from deduction, which is what our guy Aristotle did a lot. And he started, you know, if we think of it like a funnel where we're starting at the top with the big idea, right? The big broad idea. And then we're narrowing it down. We're narrowing it down to a particular hypothesis and narrowing it down to specific conclusions as a result of that, right? We're working our way down that funnel. We pour the big ideas in at the top where it's widest. And then at the end, we come out with these very narrow ideas. And that's what Aristotle did very well. He was, he used deductive reasoning on many occasions on many of life's large issues. The other type of reasoning that we can have then the kind of the flip side of this is inductive reasoning. And this is what we see when you see Sherlock Holmes, for example, Sherlock Holmes is a famous example of somebody uses inductive reasoning. Sherlock Holmes looks at all these little things, right? That he sees along, picks up little clues along the way and from that then expands outwards. So he's starting kind of the upside down funnel, right? He's starting from something very narrow, these very specific clues that, you know, at times seem disconnected, seemed like they're not connected at all. And then from that, he's able to put together a pattern or something and at the bottom then come out with this broader conclusion, right? That's inductive reasoning, inductive reasoning. So those are two different, you know, kind of famous types of reasoning, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, but all different types of reasoning that we can use. Okay, there's no shortage of inductive or types of reasoning that we can use. There's also different types of reasoning evidence. So again, different ways that we make these connections between reason and evidence. Things like statistics, we use testimony, we use comparisons and analogies. All of these are ways that we support our reasoning and connect it to the evidence and demonstrate the relationship between the two. Those are all important things. Again, because we need to, we can't just have either reasoning or evidence and we can't just have reasoning that exists separately from the evidence or vice versa, right? We need to have reasoning and evidence that are connected and that we can demonstrate that relationship between the two of them. There are times when our reasoning gets out of hand though, it does not make sense. People use illogical reasoning and we call these fallacies. Okay, so there are a variety of common logical fallacies, fallacies again being illogical reasoning. And so we want to avoid these things and we also, as persuaders, we need to avoid these things and we also, as an audience, then need to know how to recognize them so that we can discard those arguments from other people too and call them out on those types of things. So one is called, and the first few here in Latin, that's just how they come out, but post hoc ergo proctor hoc, which means after, therefore, because of. So because something happened after something else, that means that there's a relationship between the two, which is not, again, this is illogical. It's not true, right? So you see an example here. Everybody who's been to the moon has eaten chicken. That means anybody who eats chicken goes to the moon. And we know that's not true. Just because you eat chicken does not mean you go to the moon, right? So that's a post hoc ergo proctor hoc. Just because something happened afterward does not mean there was a relationship between the two. So again, going back to the capital insurrection, that's the argument that President Trump would make, that his supporters would make, that just because the ride happened after his speech or after some things he said does not necessarily demonstrate a relationship between the two. No, I'm not saying that's the case. I'm just saying that's the argument they would make, that just because it happened afterward does not mean you can attribute what happened to him. That's a post hoc ergo proctor hoc argument, and it's illogical. Ad hominem means to attack the person. Ad hominem means attacking the person instead of attacking their argument. You don't like something somebody says. You say, well, that can't be true because you're an idiot. What's the connection there? There's no connection between what they said not being true and then being an idiot necessarily, right? There's no specific, you need to offer specific evidence in response to what they said, if you're going to try and negate their argument, right? You can't just attack that person. You know, well, I can't believe what you said about, you know, this politician said about defense spending because they have a terrible haircut. Okay, what's the connection between the two? That's an ad hominem attack. That's attacking the person instead of attacking their argument. Ad populem is what we call a bandwagon argument, a bandwagon effect, and this is also illogical. It says that just because something is popular does not mean it's true. And we know that to be the case, right? There are lots of people and lots of things that are popular but aren't necessarily good, if you know what I'm saying, right? Aren't necessarily good at what they do. So if we don't necessarily want to jump on the bandwagon just to say, oh, well, other people think that this person or this thing is good, so I have to think that too. A lot of people say, this person's very popular. They sell a lot of records, so they must be good, not necessarily. The undistributed middle, undistributed middle means that we tend to pull people to one extreme or the other in a sense and we see this a lot in politics. For example, in the 2020 election, we saw a lot of President Biden or then candidate Biden is a Democrat and so is Bernie Sanders and they've talked and they're kind of friendly, so that means that Biden must be a socialist as well. Bernie Sanders is a socialist, well known, likes these socialist ideas and so because he is friendly with Biden, that must mean that Biden is a socialist as well. He can't be in the middle there, he can't be undistributed, gotta be somewhere in the connection between the two. And then finally, the straw man argument where you sort of make up a weak argument for the other side and then explain why it's a weak argument, even if it's not their argument specifically. Again, not to belabor this point, but in the impeachment trial related to the insurrection, the impeachment trial of President Trump, his lawyers continually made the argument and stressed that there was a lack of due process involved in the situation, right? And they kept playing that on the prosecution that the prosecution hadn't investigated enough, hadn't done this, had not considered and followed due process and while that may have been accurate, the fact is in an impeachment trial, it's not a criminal trial, so due process does not apply in that situation and yet they kept throwing that because they didn't have much else to rely on, I don't think, they kept throwing that on the prosecution and saying that this was an illegitimate case because of a lack of due process, even though, again, due process, not required to be a part of an impeachment trial. Since the straw man argument, they laid this argument on them, they laid this policy on them, that the other side had not demonstrated an interest in or not laid out themselves, but they had laid it out there for them because it was something that they could attack, simply so and it gave them an arena to attack. So these are things we need to watch out for to be cautious of in using as a persuader. We don't wanna fall into this trap of using logical fallacies as a persuader. We also wanna be on the lookout for these types of things as we receive persuasion from other people. So again, in this video, we've talked more about the logical process of persuasion, how we can use logos and these content premises as methods of persuasion again, we've talked about in another video, we've talked about psychological processes and then the third video in this series, we'll talk about cultural premises and how culture impacts persuasion and can be used in persuasion, but in this video, we talked about logic and reasoning, right? And so logos, again, broken down into evidence and reasoning, we need to be able to provide that proof and understand what proof is and then accurately and correctly apply the use of evidence and reasoning in these situations in order to provide an effective persuasive argument. If you have questions about this or anything else related to persuasion, I'd be happy to chat with you about that. Just feel free to shoot me an email. I'm always happy to respond to those. In the meantime, get out there, be a responsible persuader, use those logical appeals as content premises accurately and be on the lookout for those illogical fallacies yourself or the logical fallacies, illogical, rational use of rational fallacies yourself and happy persuading.