Rhetoric And Decision-Making

When trying to persuade others, it’s important to think about the natural instinct of a person and their decision making process. I believe humans use rhetoric to purposefully communicate with each other. The way that one goes about this persuasion varies, however, whether it’s through the heart, the mind, the intellect, or the purpose of one’s life, it must come across to the recipient in a way that will appeal to their human nature. Recently, I was introduced to the art of rhetoric. I was shown many of the examples and definitions from great historians such as Aristotle, George Campbell, and Kenneth Burke. While reading Rhetorical approaches to college writing, the essay written by Jacob Babb introduced me to the art of rhetoric. In his essay, he gave the definitions and views of the three historians. All of the definitions were in agreement that “the primary motives of rhetoric is to ‘induce action’ or to persuade” (pg. 4), however, George Campbell’s definition

I believe, to successfully persuade someone, you must take into account how you want them to answer or decide. This is difficult when our decision making process is highly flawed. You cannot accurately predict the outcome. By nature, humans are influential creatures. We have a natural “desire to fit in or to conform to the social norms of society.”(Dvorsky) This is also called the bandwagon effect. It’s when people assimilate or agree with a belief or idea simply because they see others going along with it. Another cognitive bias is status quo bias. This bias is the root of human error simply because we don’t like change. The purpose of status quo bias is to make decisions based on which decision will bring about the least amount of change. (Dvorsky) Taking these cognitive biases into account with Campbell’s definition of rhetoric, one should be able to successfully communicate using rhetoric whether it is on paper or in person, or