Persuasion

Classical Rhetoric

In Rhetoric, Aristotle proposes that persuasion rests on three pillars: ethos (credibility), pathos (emotional appeal), and logos (reason). These modes aren’t independent; effective communication balances them. Ethos anchors trust, pathos animates motivation, and logos provides structure and coherence.¹

Applications

• In writing, presentations, or UX copy, lead with ethos: surface transparency, credentials, and shared values.
• Employ pathos through narrative and empathy—appeals to emotion strengthen recall and identification.
• Close with logos: present data, causal logic, or evidence that validates the emotional claim.
• Ethical persuasion demands alignment: emotions and facts must reinforce, not distort, one another.

Design cue

Interfaces and products also persuade. Visual clarity and brand integrity substitute for ethos; emotional tone in onboarding flows evokes pathos; clear navigation and consistent logic embody logos.

Limitations

Aristotle offers a taxonomy, not an empirical model—use it to diagnose balance rather than predict success.

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

Petty & Cacioppo (1986) frame persuasion as a continuum of cognitive effort.

• Central route: careful consideration of arguments—effective when the audience is motivated and able to think.
• Peripheral route: reliance on heuristics (credibility, attractiveness, repetition) when attention or ability is low.²

Attitudes shaped through the central route are more durable and predictive of future behavior. Peripheral cues, however, are invaluable for low-engagement contexts.

Design cue

• Evaluate the stakes and mental bandwidth of your audience. When motivation is high, foreground reasoning, transparency, and counter-arguments.
• When low, simplify: fluent design, social proof, authority cues.
• Consider “graduated depth”: peripheral entry points that open into central detail once curiosity activates.

Limitations

Human reasoning rarely splits cleanly into routes; emotional and cognitive processing co-occur. Treat the ELM as a lens for adaptive message design, not a dichotomy.

Narrative Transportation

Green & Brock (2000) show that being immersed in a story reduces counter-arguing and heightens belief acceptance. The more vividly a person imagines a narrative world, the more its lessons feel self-experienced.³

Design cue

• Tell stories with identifiable protagonists whose dilemmas echo your audience’s own.
• Ensure causal coherence—motives, conflicts, and outcomes must feel inevitable, not contrived.
• Use imagery and pacing to elicit transportation: focused attention, emotional engagement, and temporal absorption.

Ethics

Transportation amplifies empathy but also vulnerability. In persuasive systems, use it to deepen understanding—not to bypass consent or informed judgment.

Inoculation Theory

McGuire (1961) analogized resistance to persuasion with immunization: exposing people to a weakened counterargument plus a refutation builds cognitive “antibodies.”⁴ The sequence: (1) warn of a forthcoming attack, (2) present mild opposing claims, (3) rebut them. The result is strengthened commitment and critical vigilance.

Applications

• Integrate brief “pre-bunking” in misinformation or security education—show common fallacies, then correct them.
• Encourage users to generate their own counter-arguments; active defense increases resilience.
• Periodically “booster” messages to maintain protection over time.

Limitations

If the threat is too weak, people ignore it; if too strong, they disengage. The art is proportionality—enough tension to trigger reflection without panic.

Footnotes

1. Aristotle. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. Internet Classics Archive: https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html ↩

2. Petty, R. E. & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4612-4964-1 ↩

3. Green, M. C. & Brock, T. C. (2000). “The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701-721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701 ↩

4. McGuire, W. J. (1961). “The Effectiveness of Supportive and Refutational Defenses in Immunizing and Restoring Beliefs Against Persuasion.” Sociometry, 24(2), 184-197. https://doi.org/10.2307/2786067 ↩