Emotions Run High

When You want to change someone's mood, tell a story.  The more vivid you make a story, the more it seems like a real experience, and the more your audience will think it could happen again. Storytelling works for every kind of emotion, including humor. 

An argument can't be rhetorically pathetic unless its sympathetic. Emotions come from experience and expectation - what your audience believes has happened, or will take place in the future. 

Playing to pathos also involves self control. First take a look at this You Tube Clip : Would you want to believe this and think this was a good argument? Probably not, and that is because the emotions are all over the floor as Heinrichs puts it. He wants us to, "When we argue emotionally, speak simply," and I think this is something that we should all take to heart - we are not going to win an argument by whining or complaining, but by rationally laying out our feelings and try to understand the other person. 

Henrichs then goes on to talk about how pathetic manipulation will not always be the best tactic and that use of the passive voice is a much better tactic. This is something that I should pay close attention to, as it is used most often in scientific arguments - something that I will have to focus on in my life. The passive voice works by calming the audience down and making them think logically. 

But... you say "What happens when the emotion has turned to anger? Well you can employ a tactic that is called "setting a backfire" - which works to exaggerate the emotions that the audience is feeling, meaning that you sneek up on them and make them see exactly how they are acting, but you imitating them. 

Finally at the close of the reading Henrichs once again challenges us to control our argument and build our own logical building - we need to be comfortable with our logic and not afraid of letting others see our logic - we must appeal to the emotions, but stick to our own emotions and feelings too! We have the power to calmly win an argument, we just need to rationally think about it.