Assignment

13

SUPPORTING IDEAS

THOUGH THE TWO TERMS are often used interchangeably, a claim is not the same thing as an argument. For a claim to become an argument, you need to provide some kind of support. You cannot offer support by simply magnifying the intensity of a claim. The claim that “pornography is extremely disgusting and horribly immoral” offers no more support (that is, no support at all) for its position than the simpler claim that “pornography is immoral.”

This chapter will show you how to support a claim and thus turn it into an argument. To begin, you must understand how to provide appropriate evidence to support your claim. You must also understand the different ways that people can be persuaded by arguments. According to Aristotle, the three standard elements of persuasion are logos (appeals to logic and reasoning), pathos (appeals to emotion), and ethos (appeals based on the speaker’s character). Understanding these building blocks will make you a stronger reader, as you will be able to identify the methods writers use to make their arguments. And it will make you a better writer, as you will be able to employ them intentionally as you craft your own arguments.

SUPPORTING CLAIMS WITH EVIDENCE

Any time you make a claim, you have a responsibility to support it. Support can come in the form of facts, statistics, authorities, examples, or textual citation. The kind of support that you use depends on the claim that you make: for example, the claim that “affirmative action is not a useful educational policy because it has not increased minority graduation rates” would be best supported by statistical evidence, while the claim that “Mencius and Hsün Tzu held opposing views of human nature” would be best supported by quoting their writings (textual citation). When you think about ways to advance your claim, think about all the possible evidence that you can marshal in support of it.

Facts

Most claims benefit from the support of relevant, well-documented facts. Consider, for example, Charles Darwin’s argument in The Origin of Species. To support his claim that evolution occurs by means of natural selection, Darwin combines several facts, including Charles Lyell’s research showing that the earth is extremely old, Thomas Malthus’s calculations about the growth rates of populations, and a summary of existing techniques to breed certain characteristics in livestock and domestic animals. Though these facts do not “prove” Darwin’s principles, they create a context in which evolution by natural selection is possible and logical.

Sometimes the facts you need to support your claim are straightforward. A claim that “the benefits of organ donation outweigh any potential risks to the recipient” can be supported by facts about organ donation that are readily available in reference books or on the web. (For more on finding and evaluating sources, see Chapter 15, p. 610.) At times, however, other factors can complicate the level of support facts can offer. For example, different definitions of a key term can produce different perceptions of what is factual. The number of people living in poverty in the United States is much lower for those who define “poverty” as “living on the street” than for those who define it as “not owning a house and two cars.” When using facts to support your claim, make sure they relate directly to your claim and are clearly defined.

Statistics

Statistics are facts that consist of numerical data. Statistical data can be harnessed in support of most claims about society, culture, or the collective facts of a given country or region. For these claims in particular, statistical evidence about birthrates, marriages, deaths, inheritances, lawsuits, and other matters of public record—the data of everyday life—can be extremely useful in making a historical argument that goes deeper than one based on political, military, and cultural leaders’ documents, which usually do not reflect most people’s lives. In arguments about contemporary societies, statistics can be found to support and refute arguments about race, gender, crime rates, education, employment, industry, income, political affiliation, public opinion, and dozens of other areas where collective behavior can be tracked and measured. An excellent source for many of these statistics in the United States is the Statistical Abstract of the United States, which is published each year by the Census Bureau and made available, free of charge, at www.census.gov.

Authorities

In areas where facts and statistics are unavailable or inconclusive, evidence can be gathered from those with an acknowledged expertise in the field. Though appealing to authority cannot prove a fact definitively—even experts make mistakes!—it can explain what is possible, what is likely, and what is impossible, all of which are extremely important in supporting claims. In many cultures, certain texts or authorities have such high status that their support will virtually guarantee many people’s acceptance of a claim. The Bible, the Quran, the Buddha’s teachings, and Confucius’s words have all had this kind of authority in the cultures that have been built around them. However, these texts are not generally acceptable as authorities in modern academic arguments.

Examples

Examples drawn from history, fiction, personal experience, or even one’s imagination can often be used to support a claim. Examples drawn from historical or current events are especially persuasive, as they add factual support. Consider Jared Diamond’s argument about environmental stewardship in “Twilight at Easter” (p. 263). By showing how one society destroyed itself by depleting its environment, he adds clarity and urgency to his argument that we should care for ours.

Textual Citation

Writing in response to other texts—such as the ones found in this book—often requires you to write interpretively or to make claims about what texts mean. Interpretive writing requires you to find support for your claim within the source text. For example, if you claim that Christine de Pizan’s The Treasure of the City of Ladies gives a more accurate view of human nature than Machiavelli’s The Prince because it accounts for the human potential to do good, you will need to cite portions of Pizan’s text that refer to this potential. Conventions for documenting textual sources are discussed in depth in Chapter 15 (p. 609).

LOGOS: APPEALS TO LOGIC AND REASON

What Aristotle called logos, or appealing to logic and reasoning, is an essential part of supporting an argument. While evidence provides the basis of an argument’s support, how we apply logic to that evidence—that is, our reasoning—is part of what makes an argument persuasive.

According to classical theories of argument, our minds move in two different directions to reach conclusions. Sometimes, we reach a conclusion by applying a general fact that we know—or belief that we hold—to a specific situation. This is called deductive reasoning. Most people know, for example, that milk is more expensive at convenience stores than at grocery stores. When someone decides to save money by buying milk at a grocery store rather than at a convenience store, that person is reasoning deductively.

Inductive reasoning works in the opposite direction. We reason inductively when we use firsthand observations to form general conclusions. Sometimes, the process of induction is simply referred to as “generalizing.” If, after buying milk at a certain grocery store three times and finding it spoiled each time, someone decided never to buy milk at that store again, that person would be reasoning inductively.

Most of us do not consciously decide to reason deductively or inductively to solve problems. Rather, we constantly employ both forms of reasoning at the same time. We gather facts and observations until we can use them to form general conclusions (inductive reasoning), and we use those general conclusions to make judgments about specific situations (deductive reasoning). When we do not have a good understanding of how deductive and inductive reasoning work, however, we can be more easily persuaded by arguments that are weak or misleading. This section will explain how both kinds of reasoning can support claims.

Deductive Reasoning

The basic unit of deductive reasoning is called a syllogism, which can be thought of as a kind of mathematical formula that works with words rather than numbers. In its most basic form, a syllogism contains two premises and a conclusion drawn from those premises:

· Major premise (dealing with a category): All dogs have four legs.

· Minor premise (dealing with an individual): Rover is a dog.

· Conclusion: Rover has four legs.

The major premise asserts that all members of a category share a certain characteristic. In the example above, everyone who belongs to the category of “dogs” shares the characteristic of “four legs.” However, the characteristic can apply to other categories, too—for example, cats also have four legs. If we were to represent the major premise above graphically, it would look like this:

The three simple statements in the syllogism above do not include evidence that Rover is actually a dog; thus, we cannot be sure that the syllogism is true. We can say, though, that if all dogs have four legs and Rover is a dog, then Rover must have four legs. This is because the syllogism is sound, meaning that the premises lead infallibly to the conclusion. A syllogism can be completely true yet unsound. It can also be sound yet demonstrably untrue. Consider the following two arguments:

· Major premise: Dogs have purple teeth and green fangs.

· Minor premise: Rover is a dog.

· Conclusion: Rover has purple teeth and green fangs. (Sound but untrue: the major premise is false.)

· Major premise: Basketball players are tall.

· Minor premise: LeBron James is tall.

· Conclusion: LeBron James is a basketball player. (True but unsound: simply being tall does not make LeBron James a basketball player; plenty of tall people are not basketball players.)

To see why the example above that uses basketball players and LeBron James is unsound, consider how the major premise would look if represented graphically:

Because the category of “Basketball Players” is contained entirely within the characteristic of “Tall People,” it is logical to assert that all basketball players are tall. It is also logical to assert that someone who is not tall cannot be a basketball player. However, since a large part of the circle representing “Tall People” lies outside the category “Basketball Players,” it is not logical to assert that someone who is tall is also a basketball player. If we substitute a different name for “LeBron James,” it becomes clear why the syllogism is unsound:

· Major premise: Basketball players are tall.

· Minor premise: Ben Stiller is tall.

· Conclusion: Ben Stiller is a basketball player. (Unsound and untrue.)

The following syllogism would also be unsound, because it asserts that if an individual is not in the category named in the major premise (basketball players), he must not have the characteristic in the major premise (tallness):

· Major premise: Basketball players are tall.

· Minor premise: Ben Stiller is not a basketball player.

· Conclusion: Ben Stiller is not tall. (Unsound and untrue.)

To turn the original syllogism into a sound one that asserts that an individual fits the category of the major premise and therefore shares its characteristics, we would need to rewrite it like this:

· Major premise: Basketball players are tall.

· Minor premise: LeBron James is a basketball player.

· Conclusion: LeBron James is tall. (Sound and true.)

A sound syllogism can also assert that an individual who does not share the characteristic in the major premise (in this example, tallness) cannot be part of the category named in the major premise (in this example, basketball players):

· Major premise: Basketball players are tall.

· Minor premise: Peter Pan is not tall.

· Conclusion: Peter Pan is not a basketball player. (Sound and true.)

Understanding the structure of syllogisms can be helpful in understanding real-world claims. Consider the following hypothetical statement:

When America was attacked, those who sympathized with these attacks and wished our attackers well opposed going to war in Iraq. At the very moment that terrorists were hoping that we would not go to war, Senator Jones gave a speech on the Senate floor opposing the war. It is important that Americans understand that, in these crucial moments, Senator Jones’s sympathies lay with the enemy.

Once we eliminate the political hyperbole in this statement, we are left with a fairly straightforward syllogism:

· Major premise: People who support terrorism opposed going to war in Iraq.

· Minor premise: Senator Jones opposed going to war in Iraq.

· Conclusion: Senator Jones supports terrorism.

Whether or not one considers the premises of this argument to be true, the conclusion is unsound: it states that because the minor premise asserts that an individual shares the characteristic in the major premise (opposing going to war), he must therefore belong to the category in the major premise (people who support terrorism).

When you examine an argument, such as the example above or the ones in this book, think critically about its logic and reasoning. If you were to state the argument in a syllogism, would the syllogism be sound? For example, consider this thesis statement offered earlier in the chapter: “Affirmative action is not a useful educational policy because it has not increased minority graduation rates.” Arranged in a syllogism, it would look like this:

· Major premise: Useful educational policies increase graduation rates.

· Minor premise: Affirmative action has not increased minority graduation rates.

· Conclusion: Affirmative action is not a useful educational policy.

Since the minor premise claims that an individual (in this case, a specific instance of educational policy, affirmative action) does not share the characteristic in the major premise, the conclusion that it does not belong to the category in the major premise is sound—and, therefore, the argument is sound (which does not necessarily make it true). Applying this logic to your own arguments can help you ensure that your arguments are sound.

Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning does not produce the kind of mathematical certainty that deductive reasoning does, but it can produce conclusions with a very high likelihood of being true. We engage in induction when we gather together bits of specific information and use our own knowledge and experience to make an observation about what must be true. Inductive reasoning uses observations and prior experiences, rather than syllogisms, to reach conclusions. Consider the following chains of observations:

· Observation: John came to class late this morning.

· Observation: John’s hair was uncombed.

· Prior experience: John is very fussy about his hair.

· Conclusion: John overslept.

The reasoning process here is directly opposite to that used in deductive syllogisms. Rather than beginning with a general principle (people who comb their hair wake up on time), the chain of evidence begins with an observation and then combines it with other observations and experience to arrive at a conclusion.

There are three basic kinds of inductive reasoning: generalization, analogy, and statistical inference.

Generalization

This is the most basic kind of inductive reasoning. You generalize whenever you make a general statement (all salesmen are pushy) based on observations (the last three salesmen who came to my door were pushy). When you use specific observations as the basis of a general conclusion, you are said to be making an inductive leap.

Generally speaking, the amount of support needed to justify an inductive leap is based on two things: the plausibility of the generalization, and the risk factor involved in rejecting a generalization.

Implausible inductive leaps require more evidence than plausible ones do. More evidence is required, for example, to support the notion that a strange light in the sky is an invasion force from the planet Xacron than to support the notion that it is a low-flying plane. Since induction requires us to combine what we observe with experience, and most of us have more experience with low-flying planes than with extraterrestrial invaders, it will take more evidence of an alien invasion force to overcome our prior experience of low-flying planes.

An inductive leap is more easily justified—that is, you can supply less support for it—when rejecting it carries a great risk. Consider the following two arguments:

1. I drank milk last night and got a minor stomachache. I can probably conclude that the milk was a little bit sour, and I should probably not drink that milk again.

2. I ate a mushroom out of my backyard last night, and I became violently ill. I had to be rushed to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. I can probably conclude that the mushroom was poisonous, and I should probably not eat mushrooms from my backyard again.

Technically, the evidence for these two arguments is the same. They both generalize from a single instance, and they both reach conclusions that could be accounted for by other factors. However, most people would take the second argument much more seriously, simply because the consequences for not doing so are much more serious.

There are two common errors in generalization: hasty generalization and exclusion.

Hasty generalization. Inductive fallacies tend to be judgment calls—different people have different opinions about the line between correct and incorrect induction. You commit a hasty generalization, the fallacy most often associated with generalization, when you make an inductive leap that is not based on sufficient information. Another term for this is “jumping to conclusions.” Look at the following three statements and try to determine which generalizations are valid and which are hasty.

1. General Widgets is a sexist company. It has over five thousand employees, and not a single one of them is female.

2. General Widgets is a sexist company. My friend Jane, who has a degree in computer science, applied for a job there, and it went to a man who majored in history.

3. General Widgets is a sexist company. My friend Jane applied there, and she didn’t get the job.

Because different people can be convinced by different levels of evidence, it can be surprisingly difficult to identify a hasty generalization.

Exclusion. A second fallacy that is often associated with generalization, exclusion occurs when you omit an important piece of evidence from the chain of reasoning that is used as the basis for the conclusion. If I generalize that my milk is bad based on a minor stomachache and fail to take into account the seven hamburgers I ate after drinking the milk, I have excluded the hamburgers from the chain of reasoning and am guilty of exclusion, which can lead to an invalid conclusion.

Analogy

To make an argument using an analogy is to draw a conclusion about one thing based on its similarities to another thing. Consider, for example, the following argument against a hypothetical military action in the Philippines.

In the 1960s, America was drawn into a war in an Asian country, with a terrain largely comprising jungles, against enemies that we could not recognize and accompanied by friends that we could not count on. That war began slowly, by sending a few “advisors” to help survey the situation and offer military advice, and it became the greatest military disgrace that our country has ever known. We all know what happened in Vietnam. Do we really want a repeat perfor-mance in the Philippines?

In other words, this argument is saying the following: A war in the Philippines would be disastrous. Our soldiers had a terrible time fighting in the jungles in Vietnam, and the terrain around Manila is even worse. An argument like this is an example of a valid analogy. It takes an observation (we had a hard time fighting in the jungles of Vietnam), makes a generalization (it is hard to fight modern warfare in a jungle terrain), and then applies it to another instance (we would have a hard time fighting in the jungles of the Philippines).

Analogies can be useful in illustrating key points (such as the inability of modern militaries to contain rebellions based in jungle terrains), but they do not prove their points simply by being analogies. The most common error found in arguments that use analogies is the false analogy. In a false analogy the characteristics considered are irrelevant, inaccurate, or insufficient.

If we decide to attack the Philippines, we should probably do it in January. In 1991, we attacked Iraq in January, and look how well that turned out.

Though it goes through the same process, this analogy is based on irrelevant information (the time of year we attacked Iraq).

Statistical inference

We employ this third variety of inductive reasoning whenever we assume that something is true of a population as a whole because it is true of a certain portion of the population. Politicians and corporations spend millions of dollars a year gathering opinions from relatively small groups of people to form bases for statistical inferences, upon which they base most of their major decisions. Inductions based on statistics have proven to be extremely accurate as long as the sample sizes are large enough to avoid large margins of error. Political exit polls, for example, often predict results extremely accurately based on small voter samples, and the Nielsen ratings report the television viewing habits of over a hundred million households based on sample sizes of about a thousand American families. However, using statistical inference carries the risk of using an unrepresentative sample.

Unrepresentative sample. This is a statistical group that does not adequately represent the larger group that it is considered a part of. Any sample of opinions in the United States must take into account the differences in race, age, gender, religion, and geographic location that exist in this country. Thus, a sample of one thousand people chosen to represent all of these factors would tell us a great deal about the opinions of the electorate. A sample of one thousand white, thirty-year-old, Lutheran women from Nebraska would tell us nothing at all about the opinions of the electorate as a whole. Because samples must be representative to be accurate, it is a fallacy to rely on straw polls, informal surveys, and self-selecting questionnaires to gather statistical evidence.

Logical Fallacies

Rhetoricians have identified hundreds of different ways that reasoning can be used incorrectly. Understanding the most common of these fallacies can help you recognize where reasoning—your own and that of other people—goes astray. In this way, you can make your writing more persuasive, and you can avoid being deceived by someone whose arguments are not logically sound.

Ad hominem

The fallacy of ad hominem (Latin for “against the man”) is the assertion that someone’s argument or viewpoint should be discounted because of character flaws that have nothing to do with the issues at hand. This fallacy should not be confused with simple name-calling, which is normally not an ad hominem fallacy as much as it is simply “being a jerk.” Nor should the ad hominem fallacy be confused with a legitimate challenge to authority—if someone asserts a point based on his or her authority, then it is very logical to call that authority into question.

How can people believe the theory of evolution when it is a well-known fact that Darwin was a deadbeat?

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is the argument of a bitter woman who had an environmentalist ax to grind. There is no reason to limit DDT use on her account.

Straw man

The straw-man argument is named for a metaphor. The name invokes the image of a fight between a human opponent and a straw dummy dressed to look like a real opponent. When the straw man is knocked down, the human opponent claims victory. A straw-man argument is a summary of an opponent’s position that is intentionally weak or easy to refute. By defeating an artificial, constructed version of someone else’s argument, a speaker can claim victory, even though he or she has not dealt with the issues at hand.

Those who want to adopt campus-wide codes against sexist, racist, and homophobic speech believe that they can prevent such kinds of speech. As noble an idea as this is, realizing the idea is practically impossible. Prejudice, a basic component of human nature, will not be eliminated with the passage of new rules and laws. Those who would try to limit free speech on campus would curtail a vital part of the American Constitution in the name of a pipe dream.

The problem with antipornography feminists is that they think sex is bad because men are evil. They tell us that any sexual relationship between a man and a woman will demean the woman and enforce the patriarchal hegemony of the man. This idea ignores the fact that a lot of men really do respect and care for women.

Dicto simpliciter

Dicto simpliciter (Latin for “I speak simply”) is the illogical assumption that something that is good in general must therefore be good in a particular instance. Those who commit this fallacy are guilty of uncritically applying a general truism to a particular situation. Another word for dicto simpliciter is “oversimplification.”

Milk is good for you, so everyone should drink milk.

Exercise is good, so the college should require a physical education class every semester.

It is good to date, so you should date me.

Bandwagoning

The fallacy of bandwagoning is the assertion that you should believe something or do something because everybody else does. Bandwagoning works because most people have an innate desire to agree with others—we tend to see a kind of emotional security in doing and thinking as other people do and think. This fallacy is sometimes called ad populum (Latin for “appeal to the people”).

Don’t be the last person on your street to buy a Clippermeister lawnmower—the only lawnmower that tells the neighbors that you care about the neighborhood as much as they do.

The “pro-life” position is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. A recent poll suggested that 85 percent of Americans favor some form of abortion.

False dilemma

The false dilemma, or false dichotomy, is a fallacy that presents two issues as if they are the only possible choices in a given situation. The rejection of one choice in such a situation requires the adoption of the second alternative. False dichotomies should be distinguished from true dichotomies. Sometimes, only two choices exist: everything in the world is either a dog or a nondog, but everything is not either a dog or a cat. In most situations, middle grounds or other options make it irresponsible to force a choice between two alternatives.

If you are not for the war, you are against the troops. I support the war because I support our troops.

I am pro-choice because to be otherwise would be antiwoman.

PATHOS: APPEALS TO EMOTION

Aristotle called his second element of persuasion pathos, or appeals to emotion. Most people are at least as governed by their emotions as they are by reason, and they are even more likely to be motivated to adopt an opinion or course of action when logical appeals are combined with appeals that work on an emotional level. Advertisers and political campaigns have become extremely good at making these kinds of appeals—often to the point that they exclude logical arguments altogether and appeal only to emotions. They know that emotional appeals work. However, emotional appeals do not have to be manipulative; when used effectively and judiciously, they can help you connect with your reader or illustrate the emotional aspects of an issue.

Below are some of the most common kinds of emotional appeals. All of them can be used in manipulative ways, but they can also all be used in conjunction with other kinds of support to produce extremely compelling and effective arguments.

Sympathy

Most people are moved by the misfortunes of others. When we see victims of injustice, economic hardship, crime, war, or disaster, we sympathize and want to help. Appeals to sympathy or pity tend to be most persuasive when they describe the plights of individuals and are paired with facts, statistics, and an analysis of large-scale phenomena. For example, in a piece of writing about poverty in less-developed countries, the story of a single child dying of starvation would provide a more effective emotional appeal than a well-reasoned statistical analysis of childhood death rates in twenty-six nations, but the combination of the two would make the best argument—it would appeal to both emotion and reason.

Fear

When people do not feel safe, or when they feel that their security (physical or economic) is in jeopardy, they become susceptible to appeals to fear. This is why automakers list safety as a major component of new cars and why politicians foreground their commitment to creating jobs and a healthy economy. An appeal to fear creates a sense of fear in the audience and connects its argument to resolving the fear. In the above example of automakers, emphasizing the safety of their cars both puts forth the possibility of being in an auto accident and offers the reassurance that if you buy one of their cars, you will be safe. Politicians who emphasize their commitment to creating new jobs and a healthy economy tap into fears of financial struggles and simultaneously offer the reassurance that if they are elected, they will put those fears to rest.

Anger

When writers appeal to anger, they frame an issue in a way that angers an audience and then use that anger to reinforce their claim. Usually, this means telling the audience something that they did not previously know and that, once known, elicits anger.

Most people are moved to a sense of anger by injustice, unfairness, and cruelty. Exposing unfairness can be an effective way to appeal to this sense of anger. Consider, for example, the following argument:

Shopping at Cheap Stuff is immoral. In order to keep their prices low, they pay subminimum wages with no benefits, and they subject their employees to dangerous working conditions. They have been cited more times than any other corporation for unfair labor practices, and twelve employees during the past year have been killed on the job in unnecessary accidents. The money I save just isn’t worth supporting this corporation.

Belonging

Many successful arguments appeal to people’s desire to be part of something larger than themselves. An obvious example of this kind of appeal is the appeal to patriotism, or the sense of belonging to a nation. People are often willing to risk their lives for what they believe to be their duty to their country. Appeals to belonging also connect claims to other groups: religious organizations, states, cities, schools, labor unions, fraternities, and so on.

Successful appeals to belonging create a sense in the reader of being part of a larger group. This approach can be very similar to the fallacy of bandwagoning (p. 585). The difference is that an effective appeal does not offer itself as proof of a claim; it simply frames the argument in a way that creates a sense of belonging in the reader. Consider the following argument against censorship:

The current efforts to censor language and content in popular music and tele- vision programs are fundamentally un-American. This nation was founded on ideas of freedom of speech and expression that were considered heretical in Europe but which became the fabric of the Constitution of the United States of America. This principle was enshrined in the First Amendment and is the reason that America has remained a strong country for two hundred years. Those who censor our entertainers destroy part of what makes America a great nation.

The writer here is making an argument by appealing to the larger concept of “America” to which (we assume) the audience belongs. The appeal is grounded in the audience’s desire to be part of this larger entity and the values that it espouses.

Pride/Vanity

Appeals to pride and vanity sometimes take the form of simple flattery, but they also include appeals to people’s desire to be attractive, professional, and well thought of by their peers. As you might expect, this kind of appeal is common in advertisements for clothing and cosmetics, as well as for alcohol and cars.

ETHOS: THE WRITER’S APPEAL

According to Aristotle, the most powerful element of persuasion is neither logos (logic) nor pathos (emotion), but ethos, which is also the most difficult of the three terms to define. Although the Greek word ethos is the root of our word “ethical,” “ethos” does not quite mean “persuasion by appeals to ethics.” Rather, it refers to the persuasion through the audience’s perception of the speaker. At the heart of Aristotle’s notion of ethos is the somewhat circular fact that most people are persuaded by arguments that are made by people that they find persuasive.

A writer’s or speaker’s ethos, then, is composed of everything that makes an audience consider him or her persuasive. You project a persuasive ethos when you communicate to your audience that you are the sort of person who should be believed: intelligent, well-qualified, and assertive, but also kind, moderate, and sympathetic to their points of view. The ethos of a speaker may include things like tone of voice, level of comfort in speaking, and physical attractiveness. The ethos of a writer may be harder to see, but it is no less important.

Reading someone’s writing for the first time is like meeting someone new. We come to the text with certain expectations, which can be met, exceeded, or disappointed. In just a few minutes, we form an impression of the writer that, fair or not, colors the rest of our experience with the work and affects how persuaded we are by its argument. Here are a few things to consider as you work to create a good ethos in your writing:

Establish your credibility

In many kinds of writing, you can appropriately introduce yourself to an audience and explain why you are qualified to give the opinions you are about to give. For example, a very persuasive editorial on the problems faced by single mothers might begin with a paragraph such as this:

Every time I hear some politician talk about the “single mother” problem, I cringe. To them, single motherhood is a problem to be solved; to me, it is a life to be lived. Five years ago, my husband died, leaving me with three daughters—twelve, nine, and four—to raise by myself. We were not rich, and my husband did not have life insurance. Since then, I have always had a job, sometimes two, and have at times paid more than half of my take-home pay in child care. And yes, I have also been on welfare—not because I am lazy or because I want the government to subsidize my “promiscuous lifestyle,” but because I had no other way to feed and house my children.

The writer of this piece not only lays the groundwork for an argument about single mothers but also establishes that her own experience has qualified her to give an informed, thoughtful opinion.

Be generous to other points of view

People want to know that you respect them. When you are writing to a general audience—one in which every reader may have a different opinion on a given issue—be careful to avoid dismissing or disrespecting the people you are trying to persuade. Not only are people much more likely to be persuaded by someone who respects them, but writing that exhibits contempt for others often offends even those who share the opinion being expressed. Look at the following two examples and determine which one projects a more persuasive ethos:

1. There is something rotten in this country: fur. Can you imagine anything more inhumane and immoral than killing an animal just to wear its fur as an expensive coat? The rich women and middle-class posers who participate in the fur trade are probably too dumb to realize that they are wearing the remains of a living creature that was killed just to make their coats fit with this year’s fashion trends. If they do know they’re contributing to the deaths of innocent animals, then they’re just cruel, violent, trend-followers.

2. Society has come a long way since the days when people had to wear the skins of mammoths and saber-toothed tigers to keep warm during the cold winters. Now, synthetic materials can keep us much warmer than the skin of any animal. However, each year, forty million animals are killed to produce commercial fur. Many of these animals are still caught in the wild using painful traps. Millions of decent people who would never treat an animal with wanton cruelty unknowingly participate in just such cruelty when they buy coats, gloves, and other items of clothing made with animal fur.

In the first example, the writer displays contempt and anger for those who wear fur. In the second example, however, the writer maintains a calm, respectful tone and offers those who do wear fur the benefit of the doubt.

Do not show off

Whatever your topic, it is important to show the reader that you know what you are talking about. Carefully research key concepts and make sure to point out relevant facts. But at the same time, avoid being overbearing. Beating people over the head with big words and unnecessary facts is rarely persuasive. The line between competence and arrogance is a fine one, but no distinction is more important to the construction of a persuasive ethos.

Make only claims that you can support

The best way to ruin a good case is to try to make it sound like a great case. If you have evidence to support the claim that affirmative action has had a minimal impact on minority graduate rates, then say so. Do not say “affirmative action has not helped a single person get through school” or “affirmative action has been completely useless over the last twenty years with regard to minority graduation rates.” Sometimes, it can even be effective to understate your case a little bit in your introduction and let the evidence speak for itself, as in the following statement:

In the twenty years that affirmative action programs have been in effect at institutions of higher learning, their actual impact has been difficult to ascertain, but they do not appear to have been a decisive factor in minority graduation rates.

Proofread your writing carefully

When a piece of writing includes shifts in verb tense, sentence fragments, and careless errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation, readers make certain assumptions about the writer. They might assume that he or she is ignorant, careless, and uneducated. These assumptions may not be true, but they are nonetheless part of the ethos that the writer projects. Careful proofreading can eliminate basic grammatical errors that could seriously injure your ability to be persuasive.

ANTICIPATING COUNTERARGUMENTS

As you build support for your claims, try to anticipate the arguments that might be made against them. This will help you eliminate weaknesses in your argument that might prevent people from being persuaded by your claims. It will also demonstrate to your readers that you are aware of and have considered other positions.

To identify a counterargument, imagine that you were given an assignment to rebut your own argument. What weaknesses do you see that could become the basis for a rebuttal essay? If you know somebody else who can read what you have written with an objective eye and rebut it, ask that person to do so. Conducting research can also help you identify the kinds of arguments that have been made or are currently being made against the position that you are taking.

Once you have identified a counterargument, acknowledge it in your essay and respond to it directly. For example, if you are writing an essay about the importance of liberal education, one counterargument might be that colleges should teach useful job skills instead of a broad range of subjects. You could incorporate this into your essay by saying something like this:

Some people may object to the argument that colleges and universities should focus on liberal education on the grounds that they would better serve students by providing them with the job skills they will need after college. However, there are plenty of ways that someone can learn how to weld or enter data into a spreadsheet—internships, part-time jobs, seminars, classes at a trade or vocational school. There is no other way to get the kind of liberal education that a university provides.

The best way to thwart a counterargument is to qualify your own claims—that is, to eliminate absolute claims from your essay, such as “every student can benefit from courses in philosophy” or “nobody learns everything that they need to know for a job in their undergraduate education.” When you make claims such as these, they can be refuted with a single counterexample—for example, “the philosophy course I took never benefited me at all” or “as an undergraduate my sister learned everything she needed to know for her job.” It is better to avoid such absolutes and say instead that “most students can benefit from courses in philosophy” or “as undergraduates the overwhelming majority of people do not learn everything they need to know for their jobs.”

Finally, do not be afraid to cut out any claim that you cannot support. If you have several strong claims and one or two that are weaker or more difficult to support, cut the weakest claims so that they do not give people reasons to reject your entire argument.

COGNITIVE BIASES AND HEURISTICS

Thinking is hard. It takes more energy and attention than almost anything else that humans do. Also, it takes a long time to do it right, and this can cause big problems. Often, our need to respond quickly to information is greater than our need to respond with 100 percent accuracy. To minimize the time and energy needed to assess new situations and make decisions about them, our brains have developed thinking shortcuts that cognitive scientists call “heuristics.” A heuristic is a sort of mental template that allows us to make quick assumptions about most of the variables involved in a decision so we can focus our attention on the things that matter most.

To see how heuristics work, imagine that you are walking into a large grocery store that you have never been in before. Most of the things you see in the store will fade into the background because they are almost exactly like things in other grocery stores that you have been in. The aisles, the cash registers, the produce section, the refrigerators for dairy products, the freezers for the frozen goods—these are all so familiar to you that you don’t need to spend time analyzing them. You already have a “grocery store” template in your mind, and once you determine that something in the store corresponds to this template, then you don’t really need to pay much attention to it.

This allows you to focus your attention on things that don’t match the template. You may notice that the store has a seafood section with a live lobster tank, or that its floors are filthy and haven’t been swept in days, or that there is someone in the dessert aisle giving away free donuts. These are departures from the normal grocery store template in your mind, and they might affect your decision about whether to shop in this store—but you can only pay attention to them when everything that is part of the template fades into the background.

Heuristics allow us to make decisions that are usually good enough without wasting time and energy on a level of accuracy that most situations do not require. But there is a downside: relying on heuristics can lead to biases that impair our judgment and cause us to focus on the wrong things. Heuristics are filters that allow us to ignore some pieces of information so we can pay attention to others. But sometimes they filter out the things we need to pay attention to the most. Here are some of the most common errors that our reliance on heuristic filtering can produce.

Pattern-Recognition Biases

A great deal of human thinking involves fitting the information that we encounter into patterns. A pattern might be spatial (noticing that there is a stoplight on every sixth street in a major metropolitan area), temporal (discovering that every certain number of days there is a full moon), sequential (noticing that you get very sick after eating a certain kind of mushroom), or a pattern may employ another organizing principle that allows one to group information together and make predictions about future occurrences or events. Understanding patterns is the key to the human ability to predict and control the variables that we interact with in our environment.

We are good at finding patterns. We are so good at it, in fact, that we often see patterns that aren’t there. We don’t like randomness, so we create patterns out of random information to give us the illusion of control. Once people establish a pattern out of a set of occurrences, they expect that pattern to repeat itself. A person who buys a lottery ticket on two separate Mondays and wins a jackpot both times may come to see Monday as their “lucky day.” They will then start to notice other good things that happen on Mondays until the pattern is firmly fixed in their mind and refuse to conduct important business on any other day.

The most important pattern to human reasoning is the pattern of cause and effect. To survive and thrive in the world, we have to be able to link certain actions to certain consequences: if I press down on the gas pedal, the car will go faster; if I plant a seed in the ground, something good to eat will grow there; if I drink hemlock, I will die. Information like this is extremely valuable, and we really can’t function very well without it. Nearly all of the other patterns presented here are ultimately trying to connect causes to effects.

The most common pattern-recognition biases are those that conflate correlation with causality. When we see two things occurring together, or in close sequence, we have an almost overpowering urge to conclude that one thing causes the other. We commit the fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc (after the fact, therefore because of the fact) when we assume that something that happens after something else must have been caused by the thing that preceded it.

The post-hoc fallacy is a staple of our political discourse. It leads politicians take credit for everything good that happens while they are in office, while their opponents insist that they must be blamed for everything bad. When we encounter a mass of data about inflation, interest rates, international trade, unemployment, deficits, and the national debt, most of us look for some way to simplify it into a formula like “X was elected and then Y happened, so X must be responsible for Y.” We try, in other words, to fit all the confusing and contradictory information before us into a simple narrative that helps us decide who to vote for. This is how all heuristics work: they enable us to make decisions without expending too much energy, but they create significant blind spots in decisions we make.

Confirmation Bias

We rarely approach decisions with complete neutrality. We already believe things, and the things that we believe affect the way that we process other kinds of information. Put simply: we are much more likely to notice, search for, approve of, and believe data that supports a position that we already hold than information that challenges our beliefs. And when we encounter neutral information about a topic that we feel strongly about, we try as hard as we can to fit that information into a narrative that confirms our beliefs. People do change their minds about things occasionally, but it takes much more information to convince us to abandon a belief than it takes to convince us that we were right all along. Human beings are profoundly biased toward our own point of view.

Some degree of confirmation bias should not surprise us. Of course I am going to take my own side in a debate. I spent a lot of time and energy forming my opinions, and I based them on good reasons and solid research. So why shouldn’t I hold onto them until I see concrete proof that I am wrong?

What contemporary researchers have found, however, is that most of us do not spend a lot of time and energy forming our opinions. And we usually don’t base them on good reasons and solid research. We tend to form opinions quickly and viscerally. We do invest time and energy in them, though. But we do so by coming up with good reasons and solid research to defend beliefs and opinions that we already hold. We are capable of enormous intellectual exertions in defense of our beliefs, but those exertions play a much smaller role in our actual opinion formation than most of us think that they do.

The term “confirmation bias,” then, describes the most common way that people use information. When we read, study, or research facts about an issue that we consider important, we are almost always trying to confirm an opinion we already have. This means that we will find arguments and evidence convincing to the extent that they support what we already think. But the evidence that we find to confirm our beliefs will rarely convince somebody to reject the opposite belief and embrace ours. This does not mean that they are stupid, stubborn, or unable to understand the facts. It simply means that we are both operating under a cognitive bias that makes it much easier to confirm an opinion than to reject one.

Availability Heuristic

If somebody asked you to name an important European capital, there is a very good chance that you would say either Paris or London—not because these are more important than Lisbon or Oslo, but because they are more available. We hear about them more. They are in more books and movies and on the news more frequently than other cities. They seem more important simply because they are more available. This is the essence of what cognitive scientists call the “availability heuristic.”

The availability heuristic simply means that we attach more importance to information that we can find, or recall, more easily. In most situations, this assumption works well enough. The information most available to us tends to be the information that most affects us, so paying attention to it makes sense. But, in some situations, the availability of information can lead us astray. It can cause us to confuse the things that matter most with the things that matter now and to focus on highly visible things to the exclusion of less visible, but much more important, issues.

Cognitive scientists have identified three things that make some information appear more available, and therefore more important, than other information: recency, memorability, and accessibility.

· Recency means that we are more influenced by things that have happened recently than by things that happened years—or centuries—ago. One of the most important predictors of whether an incumbent president will be reelected, for example, is the price of gas during the month before the election. Gas prices are more volatile than the prices of other consumer goods, so people are more sensitive to fluctuations. And when they see fluctuations in October of an election year, the availability heuristic evaluates four years of economic data through the lens of the price at the pump.

· Memorability means that we are more influenced by things that are attached to memorable images or narratives than things that are presented simply as data. One child who dies tragically by falling down a well can influence public policy more than thousands of children whose lives are shortened by drinking polluted water. This is because the story of a single child is far more memorable than thousands of statistics about water pollution and life expectancy.

· Accessibility means that we are influenced by information that is easy to find. Two hundred years ago, this meant that people were most concerned with what was happening in their own towns and villages, since that was the information that they had the most access to. Fifty years ago, information was easy to find to the extent that it was reported on one of the three major television networks, the daily newspaper, or a major news magazine. Today, accessibility tends to be determined by search engines, social media feeds, and internet filters. But however information gets to us, we tend to assume that information that we have an easy time finding is more important than information that we can only find through great effort.

The availability heuristic has become more and more important as the amount of information in the world has grown exponentially. Most of us now have access to hundreds of billions of pages of information through our computers and handheld devices. But such access is only theoretical, as nobody has the time or the attention to read through hundreds of billions of pages of information. Without relying on some version of the availability heuristic, we would not be able to function at all in the information-dense world we inhabit. But we must also understand that availability is not always the same as importance and that, from time to time, some of the information that we need most will be difficult to find.