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The Persuasive Use of Emotions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2019

Jamie Dow
Jamie Dow*
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
*
j.dow@leeds.ac.uk
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Abstract

The rhetorical power of emotions came to philosophers’ attention early on in the Western tradition: emotions can exert a powerful effect on what an audience comes to believe or decides to do. It is has been surprisingly neglected since, despite abundant philosophical literature on the emotions. This paper focuses on the mechanisms and propriety of emotional persuasion. Our central focus is an apparent tension between two claims. (‘PROPRIETY’) Persuasion should succeed by getting people convinced on grounds that contribute to justifying their inclination to favour what the speaker proposes; and (‘ANTI-AUSTERITY’) It is not required that persuasion's methods be dispassionate. They seem in tension, and yet dropping either seems unattractive. In particular, dropping ‘ANTI-AUSTERITY’ could commit us to a position that tends to elevate further in public deliberation the contributions of already privileged voices, and to marginalise the less privileged. This paper highlights what we would need to believe, in order to hold these two claims together. In order for emotions to contribute to (epistemic) justification, I argue, they must be capable themselves of being epistemically justified, and of transmitting that epistemic justification to the beliefs to which they help give rise. This in turn requires that emotions have representational contents, involve the subject's accepting those contents as true, be candidates for epistemic justification, and be such that their contents can properly feature as premises in inferences that justify the subject in believing their conclusions. Such are the striking philosophical implications of some everyday observations about the persuasive use of emotions.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 85: Passions and the Emotions , July 2019 , pp. 211 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2019 

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References

1 I use ‘emotions’ throughout, and take for granted that any differences between the pathê under discussion in the relevant passages of Aristotle and what we are talking about today when we speak of ‘emotions’ are fairly insubstantial (for a defence of this assumption, cf. David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006). ch.1) and will not matter for the purposes of the argument.

2 Outside philosophy, the persuasive use of emotions features prominently in the discussion of advertising, selling, and leadership, and there is a significant literature in psychology on the use of emotion among the ‘peripheral’ (as opposed to ‘direct’) routes to persuasion. Cf. Daniel J. O'Keefe, Persuasion: Theory and Research, 2nd Edition (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc, 2002). 138–67; based on the tradition following Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo, ‘The Effects of Involvement on Responses to Argument Quantity and Quality: Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46.1 (1984), 69–81 <https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.46.1.69>.

3 There is, of course, a significant secondary literature on Aristotle's Rhetoric, some of which addresses the persuasive use of emotions. Cf. e.g. Aristotle's Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays, (ed.) Furley, David J. and Nehamas, Alexander (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric, (ed.) Rorty, Amelie O. (University of California Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Rapp, Christof, Aristoteles: Rhetorik, Werke in Deutscher Übersetzung (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002), ivGoogle Scholar; Dow, Jamie, Passions and Persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric, Oxford Aristotle Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Much of this literature is focused upon the issue of whether Aristotle has a consistent view of the place of emotion-arousal in rhetoric. Very little of it attends to exactly how the use of emotion-arousal in persuasion is supposed to work, and less still the propriety of the mechanisms by which it might work.

4 Normative requirements on persuasion are arguably under-theorised. So, while it is hard to point to explicit endorsement of ‘PROPRIETY’, its common-sense appeal makes it hard to discard, as does the fact (as I take it to be) that its violation is what accounts for many or all cases of wrongful manipulation. Cf. Gorin, Moti, ‘Do Manipulators Always Threaten Rationality?’, American Philosophical Quarterly 51.1 (2014), 51–61Google Scholar.

5 Cf. Young, Iris Marion, Inclusion and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 39–40Google Scholar.

6 I take epistemic justification, in the central case of beliefs, to be the merit that a belief has through being formed on the kind of basis that increases the likelihood of its being true (or perhaps of its counting as knowledge). Cf. Matthias Steup, ‘Epistemology’, 2005 <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#WIJ> [accessed 2 February 2018]. §2.1 for an overview.

7 E.g. Plato, Apology 34b-c; Lysias 1; Demosthenes 56, or Philippic III.

8 E.g. in the Jewish tradition: Jonah 3.4; Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 32.6–8; Jesus in Luke 12.4–5, 23.27–31; Abraham Lincoln in Abraham Lincoln, ‘The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln’, 1863 <http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm> [accessed 2 July 2018].; Emmeline Pankhurst's ‘Freedom or Death’ speech, Emmeline Pankhurst, ‘The Suffragettes: Emmeline Pankhurst – Freedom or Death Speech’, 1913 <http://www.britpolitics.co.uk/emmeline-pankhurst-suffragette-freedom-or-death-speech> [accessed 2 July 2018]; Jawaharlal Nehru's ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Modern History Sourcebook: Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964): Speech On the Granting of Indian Independence, August 14, 1947’, 1947 <https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1947nehru1.html> [accessed 2 July 2018]; Martin Luther King's ‘I have a dream’ speech, Martin Luther King, ‘“I Have a Dream,” Address Delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom | The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute’, 1963 <https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/i-have-dream-address-delivered-march-washington-jobs-and-freedom> [accessed 2 July 2018]; Barack Obama's 2008 victory speech, Barack Obama, ‘The Full Text of Barack Obama's Victory Speech’, The Independent, 2008 <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-full-text-of-barack-obamas-victory-speech-993008.html> [accessed 2 July 2018].; Julia Gillard's so-called ‘Misogyny’ speech, Julia Gillard, ‘Transcript of Julia Gillard's Speech. (9/10/2012)’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 2012 <http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/transcript-of-julia-gillards-speech-20121009-27c36.html> [accessed 2 July 2018]; Ashley Judd's use of Nina Donovan's ‘I am a Nasty Woman’ poem, Nina Mariah Donovan, ‘Here Is The Full Text Of Ashley Judd's Powerful Speech At The Women's March’, Scary Mommy, 2017 <http://www.scarymommy.com/ashley-judd-speech-womens-march/> [accessed 2 July 2018].

9 Text reproduced in Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal: An African American Anthology, (ed.) Marable, Manning and Mullings, Leith (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 67–8Google Scholar.

10 This claim is defended at length in Dow, Passions and Persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric, ch.2.

11 Cf. also Rhetoric 2.11, 1388b29-30; 3.1, 1403b6-13; and the passages cited below.

12 Thanks to Robbie Williams for this phrase.

13 He makes clear that the analysis he provides of the nature and objects of anger, hostility, fear, shame, pity, indignation and the like, is intended to be used by the orator in the composition of their speech so as to arouse these emotions to achieve their persuasive goals, cf. Rhetoric 2, 1380a1-5, 1380b31-4, 1382a16-19, 1383a8-12, 1385a14-15, 1385a29-b6, 1387a3-5, 1387b17-21, 1388a24-30. This view is compatible with the suggestion that the bulk of the material in Aristotle's analysis of emotion types in Rhetoric 2.2-11 was originally developed for other purposes, and used later by Aristotle in putting together the books of the Rhetoric that come down to us: cf. Kennedy, George A., On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, introduction; Fortenbaugh, W.W., Aristotle on Emotion, 2nd Ed. (London: Duckworth, 2002), London, 106Google Scholar.

14 The interpretative points mentioned in this paragraph are discussed in Dow, Passions and Persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric, ch.8.

15 One might also consider 2.9, 1387a3-5, and 2.9, 1387b18-21, on blocking pity.

16 Cf. Aristotle Topics 1.1, 100a25-7; Prior Analytics 1.1, 24b18-20, ‘something distinct from those suppositions necessarily comes about by those things’ being the case’.

17 Cf. Carroll, Lewis, ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’, Mind, 104.416 (1895), 691–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 The related issue of the various kinds of ways in which the emotions can be assessed for rationality is summarised in Elster, Jon, Alchemies of the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 284–7Google Scholar, and discussed at length through ch.4.

19 Cf. Solomon, Robert C., The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993)Google Scholar; Nussbaum, Martha C., Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Goldie, Peter, ‘Emotion, Reason, and Virtue’, in Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality, (ed.) Evans, D. and Cruse, Pierre (Oxford University Press, 2004), 249–267CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Representative proponents include Greenspan, Patricia, Emotions and Reasons (New York: Routledge, 1988)Google Scholar; Carroll, Noel, The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart (London: Routledge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gaut, Berys, Art, Emotion and Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Cf. e.g. Gaut, Art, Emotion and Ethics, 211.

22 Cf. Gendler, Tamar S., ‘Alief and Belief’, Journal of Philosophy 105.10 (2008), 634–663. 641CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gendler, Tamar S., ‘Alief in Action (and Reaction)’, Mind & Language, 23.5 (2008), 552–585, 557CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gendler does not defend this claim in detail in either of the two landmark articles in which alief is introduced, though it is implied by the description of the psychological mechanisms by which aliefs occur. She does allow that aliefs can be useful, detrimental, laudable, contemptible, norm-concordant, norm-discordant, teleofunctionally-concordant, and teleofunctionally-discordant (570–72).

23 Cf. e.g. Döring, Sabine, ‘Explaining Action by Emotion’, The Philosophical Quarterly, LIII.211 (2003), 214–230, esp. 229–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prinz, Jesse, Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of Emotion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 224–40, esp. 236–40Google Scholar; and the extensive discussion of this position in Brady, Michael S., Emotional Insight: The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

24 Cf. e.g. Helm, Bennett W., Emotional Reason: Deliberation, Motivation and the Nature of Value (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), ch.2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note that many views that adopt the label ‘perceptual’ do no hold that emotions are literally perceptual states, and so would (as far as our discussion goes) need to be considered alongside other views, e.g. of emotions as judgement-like, or as sui generis states, or as composites or syndromes where there might be a variety of different types of representational states involved. Cf. Brady, Michael S., Emotional Insight: The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 52–69Google Scholar.

25 Cf. Brady, Emotional Insight, esp. 109–117.

26 Cf. Brady, Emotional Insight, 113-4.

27 Space does not permit an exploration of the possible alternatives. One possibility that might initially seem plausible is that emotions can vary in the clarity with which their objects are grasped or represented, such that clearly-focused indignation would have greater evidential value than vague indignation (analogously to the greater value of clear-eyed vision over foggy vision). But this will not withstand scrutiny. The epistemic value of emotions does not in fact vary by how clearly they represent their objects – irrational and misguided jealousy may represent the imagined infidelity with which it is obsessed very clearly indeed, and conversely the justified compassion of a Huckleberry Finn might involve a rather unclear representation of its objects.

28 This is assuming also that one grants the intuitions about the legitimacy of the use of emotion arousal in cases such as those cited, and the supposition taken up from Aristotle that emotions contribute to persuasion by contributing premises to inferences.

29 Sabine Döring, ‘Explaining Action by Emotion’, 223.

30 Brady, Emotional Insight, esp. ch 4.

31 Note that this suggestion goes beyond the ‘coffee-and-cigarettes’ type of role in persuasion, i.e. the role of enhancing the subject's general attentiveness, that was considered and rejected earlier.