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The Trinity of Persuasion was introduced by Aristotle in his book Rhetoric. This persuasion technique was used in the ancient times and still being used today. This technique is very classic in a sense but for sure this will be very effective in anyone that you want to persuade in the present time and the time that will come. As some marketing guru said, " selling is selling is selling is selling". I would say that, " persuasion is persuasion is persuasion is persuasion". Why is that? Because even that technology change in a second as I write this blog. Human nature will never change. Human nature is the same in the time that our ancestors hunt for food until this time that we have computers is on our palms and when the time comes that your are receiving and replying text messages from the chip in your brain. Got it? I know you do. Ok let us go on.
You can use this persuasion technique in your:
- Marriage
- Date (boyfriend and girlfriend relationship)
- Selling
- Career
- Parenting
- Negotiations
- Business
- Leadership
- many more...
Now let us go to the Trinity of Persuasion in-depth. These are Ethos, Pathos and Logos. As the word trinity implies, your argument or persuasion technique is very strong because of the triangle that is involve in it. Triangle is a very sturdy in its form and you can see this in this persuasion technique.
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| The Trinity of Persuasion a sturdy triangle (this picture comes from the screen shot of my Youtube Channel Persuasion Psycho) Visit my You Tube Channel here is the link: https://tinyurl.com/y6vuw94g |
Now let me discuss Ethos, Pathos, and Logos:
1. ETHOS
Ethos is an appeal to authority or credibility of the persuader. Now this is the first step when you apply the trinity of persuasion. You must establish your authority and credibility sometimes it is coined as believability. This is the first attack that you must be concentrate your full efforts in the persuasion business.
Imagine two salesmen of an air conditioning company, one is a marketing graduate and the other is a mechanical engineer that have an air conditioning background before getting into the sales arena. Do you see the point of having the high credibility or authority of the mechanical engineer as a salesman of an air conditioning unit. In a glance this is no brainer. The marketing graduate will have a hard time to match the credibility of the mechanical engineer in selling air conditioning units. We are just talking about credibility here.
Here is another example to give you some pumping of blood to your brain. In terms of your cardiovascular results, when you had your check up, which is more believable to read the results? A General Practitioner Doctor or A Cardiologist? Who would you listen to when it comes to your heart? I guess you guess it right? Do you? I know I know you selected the cardiologist to be the one that has the credibility.
Ok! Ok! But the question now is how do you increase you credibility or authority if you want to persuade someone? Below are the tips:
- Education, Trainings and Experiences - Having additional trainings and seminars attended increases our credibility. Also our education gives us a big credibility. Master of Business Administration (MBA) courses gives credibility to the holder a steroids of credibility not to mention in which school did he took the MBA.
- Titles - Titles like Doctor, Attorney, Engineer, Professor , etc gives the bearer a strong credibility. It gives a sense or the reality of expertise. An expert is a person that we look up to when things can go wrong. We experience many unpleasant things in life and we want to avoid it. This is the reason we seek experts to avoid the pain of having a mistake.
- Being an Author - a book or anything that you publish gives you credibility. You can make a pamphlet, a report, a survey, or even a blog like this. (Am I now credible?) Being a author of any subject gives you the credibility and authority in that given subject. The psychology behind it is that what is already written will be embedded in you being. Because you will be committed in what you wrote. You will defend it when it was attack. This psychology gives the author a boost in his credibility in representing a subject.
- Conduct Seminars or Lectures - there is a guru that said once in Youtube that " who holds the marker in a seminar gives himself the credibility". In short what he was saying is that who ever that is on the platform and teaches have tremendous credibility. The reason for this is that in our childhood we once experience to be taught and the experience gives us the respect to our teacher or professor that was giving us a lecture. Even you give it for free you will greatly benefit from it. Actually I highly recommend to give seminars or lectures for free, and see how your credibility soar to the rooftop of your house.
- Be in the TV or in social media - being in the "BOX" or whatever you call it (TV, computer, cellphone etc.). Being seen inside the box gives you great credibility of what you represent. The psychology behind this is that we are all fond of celebrities. Being inside the box gives you celebrity status. Even if you just being interview. It also validates your expertise.
- Have Studies, Experiments, Surveys and Data at hand- there is a saying " the data cannot tell a lie". Well, this holds true. Imagine in your presentation in selling air conditioning units, you said " according to the Department of Energy, 75% of the consumption of electricity in a building came from air conditioning equipment". Do you see what I mean? You are not getting your statement out of thin air. When you use data in your statements your word have a big weight that cannot be ignored.
- Associate with authorities - this thing have a tricky part in it. I will just give an example just to get some pumping of blood in your hypothalamus. Hehehe... just busting your balls. Anyway, you could use this by using a similar color of clothes with an authority. For example you are selling security systems you could wear similar color of clothes of the uniform of a policeman in your local area. This gives you an association that you are part of the policemen that protects the community. Another is to wear white clothes similar to a doctor when you sell vitamin supplements. Imagine the credibility that you get. This is a shortcut to the brain if we want to be persuasive.
- Awards - why do you think celebrities even that they are celebrities crave for an award. They crave for an Oscar award, Emmy award, Grammy award, MTV award, and many more, because they know that when they receive an award they will have more credibility. It adds to them. Awards gives you validation of your capable of doing. Notice this even losers in a contest will have a certain increase in their credibility even they loss a competition. For example a singer in a local bar goes for a national contest even that this talent loss he or she can be assured of a higher pay later on. Much better if this contest is televised and can be seen by many people. The effect of the box (the TV) that I mentioned in no. 5 will have an effect to the singer.
Now those are some of the ways you could boost your credibility, authority and credibility. Ok now let us go to the next side of our triangle...
2. PATHOS
Pathos appeals to the emotions of your audience. This can be achieve by telling some metaphors, stories, passion in the delivery, or in personal anecdotes. This is the second step to achieve in this persuasion technique. You must hit the hot button of your audience. You must hit the Achilles' heel. And the Achilles' heel in us humans is our emotion. If you trigger the emotion you are in your way to move your audience to make some action.To persuade someone you must have the understanding of the human psyche. Humans always make their decisions emotionally. We always act emotional.
But how about logic? I will discuss that when we start discussing Logos which is logic. For the meantime let us concentrate on Pathos. Now what are the common emotions that must be hit?
Here they are:
- Fear
- Greed
- Vanity
- Lust
- Pride
- Envy
- Laziness
Now let us get the heart of the matter of these emotions.
FEAR
As humans we have many fear that we are thinking all day. And the way we are surviving everyday is the avoidance of these fears. There is fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of being duped, fear of missing an opportunity, fear of physical harm, fear of death, fear of being ridiculed and many others. We will do our best not to experience these fears of us. This is a strong motivator, for example humans will more be moved to the fear of loss than the desire of gain. Here is an example:
Which will have your attention?
- A meeting at the clubhouse in your community to have 100 dollars at 2 am in the morning or...
- A home burglary at 2 am in the morning
Fear is a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger , evil , pain, etc.
GREED
"Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good". Heh heh heh.... this is what Gordon Gekko said in the movie Wall Street starred by Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas and Daryl Hannah.
We all have our own self interest at heart. We have certain greed in our glands and we can not help it. Whether to amass a fortune or gaining anything material. Some said that greed is experienced by those who have less but one author said that "if I will gather ten (10) billionaires in a room and asked who wants to earn another billion dollars? Surprisingly you will see hands raising."
Greed maybe considered a secondary emotion. For example a person that has insecurities will have a greed to earn more to cover up his insecurities.
VANITY
We all want to look good in the eyes of other people actually even to our own families. Vanity is most common to the obvious narcissist. But all of us have a degree of vanity in ourselves. We cannot deny it. It is part of human nature that we want to have some sort of validation of our families, friends, and in the society that we are in.
Vanity does not always come with the feeling to be looking good physically like having good looks, having the latest trends of clothes, having a nice house or having the latest Tesla car. Vanity also works in having great skill that others do not have, like able to speak a foreign language, having a special skill like cooking and many other things that are special to people.
Vanity does not always come with the feeling to be looking good physically like having good looks, having the latest trends of clothes, having a nice house or having the latest Tesla car. Vanity also works in having great skill that others do not have, like able to speak a foreign language, having a special skill like cooking and many other things that are special to people.
LUST
Lust is a psychological force that produce intense desire, according to Wikipedia. There are many form of lust, lust for sex, lust for power, lust for food, lust for love, and many others. This is in our nature. I am not relating lust to be bad, well in a sense it is bad. I am just presenting this that is a trigger to see, if you want to persuade. Let me give an example.
Suppose that you are selling chocolates. Chocolates are not good for health, I am talking about the commercial chocolates (with sugar, milk ,etc.). Well if you take excessively. But who doesn't take excessive chocolates when it is available? Got the point? Because it is sweet and can developed diabetes in some individuals.But you will present it as a mouth watering product. I think you got the point in how you will utilize lust for chocolates to sell it. Sure? You got it? Yes ? I know you do.
That is also how you do it to persuade a person having this trigger of lust.
PRIDE
Pride alone have many definitions, even Wikipedia describe many definitions. But we will stick what Aristotle defines Pride. Pride is being proud of great things that you are worthy of. Great here depends on the person. Let me give an example. A father who could send his children to school have a pride when his children finished secondary education. This is pride to the father, for him it is great pride. For others it is nothing. Get it? Some have pride for their country. They only buy products that are made by their country. So, if you have a community of Japanese in your area, Japanese are known to buy mostly made in Japan products even if they stay in other countries. It is wise to have to import Japanese made products that are consumable to sell them and profit from it.
The next time in having a conversation, find something that the other person is being proud of. Or shall I say have pride.
ENVY
Aristotle defined envy as pain at the sight of another’s good fortune. This is a bad when viewed in the bad light. But envy can be used in a positive note. Like propelling yourself to achieve success by seeing the success of others. Nevertheless, good or bad, you can use envy to persuade others to your liking. Remember the saying "keeping up with the Joneses". For example you are a swimming pool contractor, and you see that there are other families that made their swimming pools and others were your clients. You could say that you are the only family in the neighborhood that have no swimming pool if this is a fact. Trust me even that they do not want a swimming pool. They are inclined to go your way.
Another example is when you are selling an exclusive school to the parents and if the neighborhood mostly their children goes to an exclusive school they are again inclined to go your way. Actially the envy is in them and they had thought about it and they are just waiting for a trigger. Then here you comes with the right timing pulling the trigger for them.
LAZINESS
Well this makes me do not want to write anymore...I am lazy. Who can sell me a Private Label Rights article or who can ghost write for me for this blog. Got the point already? Of course you do.
So you can tap the natural tendencies of any human to be lazy. Laziness in a sense to improve the way of life. This is how new technologies or new systems are being sold. Laziness to visit someone, laziness to wash your clothes, laziness to make your food and many more laziness. Well business thrive because we are lazy. Is that right? Hehehe...come on guys. We all want some shortcuts to everything that we do. We are always fascinated on how others are doing difficult stuff in an easy way. That is why life hacks in YouTube videos get millions of views.
I do not want to elaborate more in this emotional trigger. Let us go to....
3. LOGOS
Logos is logic. This is how to decide by logical arguments. In persuading someone using Logos you must have data and the data must be favorable to what you represent. For example, you are a salesman of a home filtration system. What data can you present to have a favorable decision inclined to you? You can present data of random samples of the quality of water in your area. You can present present crime rate in your area, because if you have your own filtration system you will not entertain delivery of water to your house. A safety concern, a fear of loss. You can use Logos by presenting pictures, pictures of how bad is the sanitation of water filtration stations in the area can be presented. Logos can be presented through literature, for example a new research that it is much more cheaper to filter your own water. In short Logos are evidences to arrive in a logical conclusion
So this is how logical arguments can be presented. Also Logos is the closing for you to seal the trinity of persuasion. This will be the justifying factor to make a decision, Ethos is Ok, You hit Pathos, Logos will bring the home run. Ok let me explain this in a ....
So this is how logical arguments can be presented. Also Logos is the closing for you to seal the trinity of persuasion. This will be the justifying factor to make a decision, Ethos is Ok, You hit Pathos, Logos will bring the home run. Ok let me explain this in a ....
SUMMARY
In this summary, I will present how the trinity of persuasion works hand in hand to have a very strong and rigid persuasive argument like a triangle that is rigid. Here are some examples:
- Suppose you are an employee and you want to present to your boss that in the last five years you contributed to the company's growth and you deserve a raise.
Ethos: You get all the data that the company have growth in the past five years and how you had been a part of it.You are credible because you have a data and not saying something from air.
Pathos: You will present to your boss that if you had given a raise you will be motivated and can assume more responsibilities to produce more in the next couple of years. Your boss will be triggered by the pride of giving more to his family by the result that you can give.
Logos: You will present projection data that shows with your involvement and more responsibility you could produce more for the company and it it is actually a bargain to raise your salary. This will be the deciding factor and the justification.
2. This is a somewhat exaggerated example, but just for the purpose of presenting the trinity working and to be embedded this to your skull. Suppose that your child wants a Jordan shoes and you said you cannot afford it because you are saving money for a house. Now see how this can be presented by your kid using the trinity.
Your child replied in a conversation, " Father if I can play like Michael Jordan, I can enter the NBA and earn big money, I could buy you a house". This is exaggerated stuff but see how this works.
Ethos: Michael Jordan, there is no other than MJ that is more credible in terms of basketball in my opinion. Many championship rings, An actor, commercial model, now a Billionaire.
Pathos: Providing your child a shoes that he like is being a good father, even more when you are saving money to buy a house for your family.
Logos: Entering the NBA means money in the bank and this could lead you having a house, logical, no brainer.
So, these are just two (2) examples you can work the third example in the example that I presented in the home water filtration system. Try it! Apply it. See how the trinity works.
Cheers!!
Yours Truly,
Persuasion Psycho
P.S. If you want to know more about persuasion request the FREE REPORT: "21 Powerful Ways To Persuade People To Do What You Want". Click Here.

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