Madison is working on a presentation about ADHD. She was recently diagnosed with it, and learned that women with ADHD are frequently misdiagnosed. She knows that she wants to inform her class about some of the symptoms and some strategies to try if they think they might have ADHD themselves. However, as she starts trying to write the speech, she starts to be concerned: why would any audience listen to her about this topic? She is 19. She has only known about her own ADHD for a couple of months. Although her therapist has provided her some strategies that she is finding helpful in studying for her classes, and she has been trying to read more about strategies to navigate being a college student with ADHD, she is still learning about the topic herself. She is certainly no expert.

She decides to talk to her professor to get some advice about how to handle this problem. After Madison articulates all of the reasons she is not credible, her professor says “Oh, it sounds like you have a lot of ways to establish your ethos.”

“What do you mean?” Madison asks.

“Well, it’s obvious that you care deeply about this topic, and it is important to you that the class learns these strategies. Why is that?” asks her professor.

“Because college has gotten so much easier since I learned these things. I was struggling in all my classes, and now that I know how to work, I’m doing so much better. I bet there are people in the class that are in a similar situation.”

“Ok” says her professor, “so you and your listeners might have something important in common, and you care about them enough that you really want to share the strategies that are working for you in navigating it. You’ve been getting advice from your therapist and researching the topic, and the things you have found have already made a big difference for you. Think about it this way: Imagine if, one year ago, someone had told you that they shared your struggles, learned why, and have been getting strategies from a mental health professional, as well as reading tips from experts online, and what they have learned has changed their life. Wouldn’t you want to hear what they had to say?”

“Oh,” said Madison, “I hadn’t thought about it that way. I would have definitely wanted to hear what they had to say.”

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The concepts of ethos, logos, and pathos are amongst the most foundational elements in learning how to speak or write persuasively. This is for good reason; each of them is an important strategy for effectively persuading an audience. Over 2000 years ago, in The Rhetoric, the philosopher Aristotle (n.d.) noted that the most effective persuaders combine ethos, logos, and pathos in ways that make them even more powerful. Almost any effective message combines them in ways that are mutually reinforcing. There is a good chance you learned about them before starting this class. But they are often more complex than people realize, and developing a deeper understanding of them can help you be more persuasive and better evaluate others’ attempts to persuade you. Each of the next few chapters focuses on one of these types of persuasive appeals, beginning with ethos.

Ethos refers to the credibility of the speaker. Are we inclined to believe the things they say? Why?  Aristotle argues that establishing credibility requires convincing an audience to believe in the intelligence, character, and goodwill of the speaker. In other words, Ethos is the credibility of the speaker based on the audience’s perception of their intelligence, character, and goodwill.

Intelligence

According to Aristotle, the first thing a speaker should establish is that they know what they are talking about. Establishing intelligence/wisdom to Aristotle is about more than just the speaker being a generally smart person. In this context, intelligence means having knowledge of a particular topic and the practical judgement to know how to act on that topic. Establishing intelligence requires convincing the audience that the speaker understands the specific topic under discussion and knows what we should do as a result of that knowledge. If a listener does not believe that the speaker is knowledgeable about the topic of their presentation, it is unlikely they will pay much attention to the speaker or their presentation. Much of the rest of this chapters covers the various ways you might convince an audience that you are knowledgeable enough to make reliable judgements about your topic.

Character

You may have noticed that the word ethos looks very similar to the word ethics. This is because, when Aristotle was writing, ethos was the Greek word for moral character. In Aristotle’s time, as in our own, we are more likely to listen to and be persuaded by people that we believe are of high moral character. As such, it is important for a speaker to establish that they are trustworthy, and—by extension—that the things they are saying are true.

It is important to remember that ethos is both built within a speech and constructed across time. In other words, you should always make sure to establish your ethos within a speech. This is why you should always have a credibility statement in your introduction, cite sources, etc. But ethos is also based on our past knowledge of a speaker. If a speaker has a history of being honest and accurate in what they say, audiences become more likely to trust what they say. But the inverse is true as well. You have heard a parent say the old maxim “trust takes years to build but only seconds to break.” There is truth to this. If an audience learns that a speaker is willing to lie to them, or even to say things that they are not sure are true, audiences will be much less likely to trust what that speaker says in the future. Avoiding this is fairly simple: Do not lie to your audience. Do not mislead your audience. Do not plagiarize. Do not say things unless you know they are true. Honesty is a good policy, both morally and rhetorically.

Goodwill

Knowing that a speaker is intelligent and of high character goes a long way toward getting an audience to trust a speaker. However, Aristotle recognized that audiences are looking for something else as well. Aristotle called this last aspect of credibility goodwill. Establishing Goodwill means the audience believes the speaker respects them and wants what is best for them. Goodwill, for Aristotle, is similar to friendship. Consider how you think about your very closest friends. Hopefully you respect, appreciate, and even admire them in some way. You are happy for them when good things happen in their lives. If you are discussing a topic that you know far more about than your friend does, you may choose to avoid jargon or not go in too much depth, but you would still talk to them like they are an intelligent person who can learn what you know. This is a simple way that you demonstrate a respect for their intellect. No one likes to be spoken to condescendingly. If an audience believes that you respect or admire them, and that you would be happy to see good things happen to them (even if those things did not benefit you directly), they are more likely to listen to what you have to say.

Overall, Aristotle believes people are persuaded when they believe the speaker knows what they are talking about, has good character, and has the best-interest of the audience at heart. If a listener believes all three are true, it becomes easy to trust the speaker. An effective speaker will establish these things WITHIN the speech itself. It would be unwise, according to Aristotle, for a speaker to assume that they have already established any of the three in past speeches or based on their reputation and can ignore it in their next speech. Every speech is an opportunity to remind your audience why they should listen to you.

There are many ways to establish credibility. Credibility can be established by demonstrating how one is different from or similar to members of the audience. This requires you analyzing what your audience knows (for more on audience analysis, see Chapter 3).

Expertise is established by demonstrating a high level of formal knowledge, training, or experience in a topic. Expertise often works by establishing that the speaker has more knowledge about the particular topic than the rest of the audience. It may be established through formal education. For example, if a scientist with a Ph.D. in biochemistry explains how a medication works in the human body, most audiences are likely to accept that the scientist knows far more about the topic than they do and believe what they say about the topic. On the other hand, if a person sitting next to you in class told you how a medication works, you might be more skeptical. They could be right, but you are less likely to believe them because they do not have the same level of expertise on the topic. If you learned that your classmate is a biochemistry major, you would probably be more likely to trust them on this topic. This points to education as a major way to build credibility. If a speaker has a substantial amount of formal education on a topic, audiences are more likely to believe their claims.

Education is not the only way to establish expertise. If someone has spent a substantial amount of time engaging in a particular activity, audiences may recognize that experience as providing the person with expertise. If you bring your car in for a repair, it is unlikely your mechanic has a Ph.D. However, if they are professionals who presumably have extensive experience working on cars, you likely recognize them as having expertise in doing auto repairs. If they say you need new brake pads, you probably trust them and pay for them to put on new brake pads. At this point, some readers may find themselves thinking something like, “no, I would check to see if I need new brake pads.” There are likely two possible reasons for this reaction. The first is that you know enough about cars to do your own diagnosis. If this is the case, the issue here is that you do not perceive the mechanic to know that much more than you about if a car needs brake pads. In other words, you do not perceive enough difference between your knowledge and the mechanic’s knowledge to defer to their expertise. A second reason may be that you believe the mechanic is telling you to pay for an unnecessary repair in order to make more money. If that is the case, you may believe that they have far more expertise than you, but you do not trust their honesty. In other words, you are not convinced of their character and goodwill.

One final thing to remember about expertise is that it is tied to a particular topic or set of topics. When a person has an advanced degree or years of experience in a topic, we can usually assume they know a lot about that particular topic. This may be a sign that they are a generally intelligent person, but it does not necessarily make them an expert in other topic areas. If someone with an M.D. is offering investment advice, their degree does not guarantee they are knowledgeable. Both the biochemist and the mechanic may be experts in their respective areas, but that does not qualify them to give you advice on how to learn a new language or whether you should break up with your significant other.

Identification

Where expertise establishes credibility by separating you from your audience, identification is established by showing how you and your audience are the same in some important way. This is usually established by pointing to similar experiences or a shared worldview. The rhetoric scholar Kenneth Burke (1969) argued identification has become a central part of contemporary persuasion. Creating identification may allow you to gain credibility in a way that looks very different from attempts to establish expertise. For example, a professor might establish their expertise by saying, “while many of you are learning about the various aspects of credibility for the first time, I have been studying this topic for 20 years, so you can trust that I am very knowledgeable on the topic.” On the other hand, you might establish credibility through identification by saying to in a class speech “Like you, I only learned about how to establish credibility as a part of this class. However, I have a job in sales, and since I’ve started paying closer attention to how I establish my own credibility, it has made me way better at my job. I’m going to share a few strategies that have really worked for me; hopefully they will work for you, too.” Both of these are effective ways of establishing credibility. Which you should pick depends on your relationship to the topic and your audience: Why is your audience listening to YOU on this topic? Do you have formal expertise on the topic? Is it likely that your knowledge and experience is similar to your audience’s?

On some occasions, audiences may actually appreciate both types of credibility. Consider the commercials or infomercials you may have seen for health or fitness products. They frequently feature speakers with some sort of expert credibility such as doctors or personal trainers. They also tend to feature people with no technical expertise who simply used and benefitted from the product. A staple in fitness commercials is before and after photographs. These display people who the target audience is supposed to perceive as “everyday” people that used the product and benefitted from it. Though rarely stated explicitly, the appeal is simple: these are people like you, if the product worked for them, it will probably work for you.

Social prestige

Another type of credibility that works somewhat differently is what we might call social prestige. Social prestige is the credibility of someone we admire or want to imitate. This is the kind of ethos appeal at work when you see a celebrity endorsing a product that has little relation to what they are famous for. For example, YouTube creator Mr. Beast promotes a line of snack bars. There is no reason to believe he has expertise around snack bars, and the bars have no particular relation to the videos he creates aside from the fact that he promotes them. But his audience likes or admires him, and some decide to buy the bars. Musical artist Beyoncé signed a multimillion-dollar endorsement deal with Pepsi, while Taylor Swift did the same to promote Coca-Cola. This is not lay credibility, as we can safely assume these singers’ lives and experiences are substantially different from our own. But it is not also not expert credibility; presumably neither of them has any special expertise in soda-tasting. Rather, fans might like or admire the singers and wish our life was more like theirs. Sadly, most readers of this book probably cannot win a Grammy. But you can buy a Pepsi, which at least gives you something in common with Beyoncé.

Citing sources

One important way that you establish ethos is by citing your sources. Students are often taught that the reason they should cite sources is to avoid plagiarism. This is true, but it is not the only reason to do so. Citing sources increases your credibility as a speaker. Imagine one of your classmates is delivering a speech on a new kind of brain surgery. Even if you perceive them to be intelligent, it is probably safe to assume they have not gone to medical school or ever performed this (or any other) kind of brain surgery. So how confident are you that they are incredibly knowledgeable about their topic? Probably not very. What could they do within the speech to establish their knowledge on this topic?

When a speaker supports their arguments with multiple sources from reputable outlets, you are more likely to believe they are knowledgeable about the topic. This helps establish their intelligence. When the claims they make align with those sources, you are more likely to believe they are telling the truth. This helps establish their character. Citations are also an invitation to double-check for yourself. When the speaker cites their sources so that you can find them if you wish, they are providing you with information and implying that you are intelligent enough to understand the information yourself. This helps establish a sense of goodwill.

Delivery

Another way that you can establish credibility within your speech is through your delivery (see Chapter 5). Have you ever seen someone give a speech in which they lacked confidence or seemed unprepared? How confident were you that they knew what they were talking about? Audiences are more likely to trust speakers when they seem confident and well-prepared. You would probably be wise to NOT judge ethos in this way; there are plenty of people who are experts in a topic but bad public speakers. Unfortunately, there are also people who can confidently deliver a lie.  Nevertheless, audiences often use delivery to help evaluate the credibility of a speaker. As such, delivering your speech well is one way to increase your credibility.

As discussed throughout this chapter, ethos can be established in a variety of ways. We regularly make judgements of others’ credibility when deciding if we should listen to what they say. In a world awash in persuasive appeals, learning to effectively make judgements about the credibility of others can help us make better choices. Chapters 8 and 9 of this book provide in-depth guidance on how to evaluate the credibility of written sources of information. When trying to determine the credibility of a speaker, many of the same tools can be used. You can start by asking basic questions: Is this person a legitimate expert in this topic? Do they have an advanced degree or extensive experience in area? If not, this does not mean they are wrong—plenty of people without advanced degrees or extensive experience in an area may still have correct and valuable information. But, in such situations, it becomes even more important that they are using reliable information to support their claims. This is also true of experts speaking outside of their specific areas of expertise. Someone with a Ph.D. in Political Science may have training that helps them read and understand the statistics and other technical information in psychology journals. But you should then expect that person to be consistently citing that information to support their claims.

If you believe a person has the knowledge to speak credibly on a topic, you should still ask yourself what you know about their character and goodwill. Do you have past experience with them? Do they have a track record of being honest? Do they have biases that might skew their arguments in problematic ways? For example, do they have a financial interest in getting you to believe them or act in a certain way? If so, have they at least been transparent and disclosed this bias? Here again, even if there are questions about a speaker’s credibility, it is possible they are providing you with accurate information. Many people make profitable businesses selling products that are legitimately beneficial. But when those questions arise, they may be indications you should do your own research rather than simply trusting the speaker.

You should also be particularly careful when evaluating persuasive attempts built around identification. It may be useful to know if people similar to you liked a particular product. A friend’s recommendation may persuade you to see a movie because you know the two of you enjoy similar things. For political appeals, however, you may wish to consider things more closely. Persuasion through identification is not necessarily a bad thing. However, Burke (1969) believed that identification has become the most important element of how we engage in political decision making. In fact, he believed it was impossible to not make sense of the world through identification. However, he also recognized that this could have dangerous consequences. Burke analyzed Nazi propaganda and observed how identification could be used to get people in a group to view outsiders as evil, and even subhuman, in ways that led to violence. It can also contribute to a sort of intellectual laziness. Rather than doing the hard work of carefully considering our positions on different political issues, it is far easier to outsource this intellectual work to the groups we are members of. Political decisions can easily become focused less on what is right or ethical, and become focused on what is good for my group or bad for the people in a different group. Can you think of examples of these dangers in the current moment?

This chapter discussed the role of ethos in persuasion. Ethos is the credibility of a speaker created by convincing an audience of their intelligence, character, and good will toward that audience. Each of these can be established through a variety of different strategies. Audiences may find a speaker credible because they have a very different level of knowledge from the audience, or because they similar experiences or worldviews. Audiences also are more likely to trust speakers who they believe are of high character and who want what is best for them. Credibility can also be established through drawing on other experts through the citing of sources and delivering your presentation well. As a speaker, it is incredibly important that you establish your credibility with your audience. As a listener, it is important that you make accurate judgments of the credibility of those trying to inform or persuade you.