The structure is simple: instead of giving a reason, produce a threat. Loss of health, status, money, children, country. The decision then gets made under emotional pressure rather than on the merits.
"If you don't act now, you'll lose everything."
What is worth noticing is that fear appeals are not always illegitimate. Some things are genuinely dangerous and saying so is accurate reporting. The question is whether the fear is proportionate to the evidence, and whether an argument accompanies it or replaces it.
The habit that helps: after reading, name the emotion you are feeling before deciding anything. If it is fear, read again cold and check the proportions — how much of the text was evidence, how much was consequence?
In a set of articles I went through, persuasive sentences averaged around 5% of the text but clustered heavily in openings and closings — the positions that determine how the whole piece feels.
Does anyone know of research on where in a text persuasive language tends to sit? I found the clustering more interesting than the frequency.
0 Comments
No comments yet.