English 7
Darvin V. Wilson
February 25, 2016
THE FOUR MAIN STRATAGEMS OF INFLUENCE In The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion, Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson, who is “an author, advertising and political consultant, and professor of Psychology at the University of California,” points out some examples of propaganda that are proven to be very persuasive in people’s mind. Such as, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln, who is a president of the US, stated a speech at Gettysburg after the bloodiest battle of Civil War occurred. This speech helps people to define what it means to be American. This influence mostly can occur because it includes four main stratagems of influence: pre- persuasion, source credibility, message and emotion. The first stratagem is pre- persuasion. This is to take control of persuasive situations and create a desirable climate for author’s message. Pre- persuasion refers to how issue is created and arranged and how the decision is built. It responses to the general things that happen in the world. One of the important things of pre- persuasion is wording. In it, all simple words will be changed by more attractive, powerful words in order to …show more content…
In this stratagem, the communicator will use static to control audience’s emotion. They arouse an emotional response by their argument. They offer a way that makes audience response in the manner they desire. Fear appeal and guilt play an important role in persuading people. Fear can be a powerful motivation because it threatens people to not do something or do something. For example, if your goal is to convince them to stop smoking, you should show them a picture of a black lung of a smoker who has lung cancer. Guilt- a feeling that we have for doing something wrong. Sometime, guilt help people to compensate for the wrongdoing, repair a self- image destroyed by transgression (228). The power of fear and guilt are the most emotional appeals to direct people’s