1. Motivating your Audience Before you think about emotional response from your audience, BE SURE you are providing them with accurate, appropriate and adequate information!

2. What emotions motivate? While all emotions are motivating, some are more powerful than others: In most situations, FEAR is the most powerfully motivating emotion. If you can help your audience believe that they or someone they love will be harmed if your thesis is not agreed with, you have a good chance of bringing about the change you are seeking.

3. Example: If your thesis is that all motorcycle riders should be required to wear helmets, you might include support material like the following: stats about the number of riders without helmets who are killed or disabled in accidents every year the number of motorcycles purchased every year the financial and personal burdens placed on the loved ones of these dead or injured motorcycle riders

4. Fear is not the only motivating emotion: compassion, anger (including righteous indignation), pride, excitement…all can motivate audience members to think, feel and behave differently.

5. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Maslow’s hierarchy rests on the assertion that people always behave in ways that meet their needs or someone else’s needs. An important premise of the hierarchy is that lower, more basic needs must be met before higher needs can be given attention.

6. Maslow and emotions Why is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs included in a discussion about emotion? Unmet need can create very strong emotions: anger, fear, sadness, determination… The following ad slogans all rely on the hierarchy of needs…

7. Self-Actualization “Be all you can be.” Self and other Esteem “You’ll like the way you look—I guarantee it.” Love and Belonging “The pause that brings friends together” (Coke-1935) Safety “Are YOU in good hands?” Physiological “Give blood—give LIFE”

8. Need---Emotion---Change! When you can demonstrate that implementation of your thesis will meet an audience member’s need, or the need of someone he loves, you increase your chance of changing his thoughts, feelings, and/or behavior.