an argument using logos

Logos Definition

What is logos? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Logos , along with ethos and pathos , is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Logos is an argument that appeals to an audience's sense of logic or reason. For example, when a speaker cites scientific data, methodically walks through the line of reasoning behind their argument, or precisely recounts historical events relevant to their argument, he or she is using logos.

Some additional key details about logos:

• Aristotle defined logos as the "proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself." In other words, logos rests in the actual written content of an argument.
• The three "modes of persuasion"— pathos , logos , and ethos —were originally defined by Aristotle.
• In contrast to logos's appeal to reason, ethos is an appeal to the audience based on the speaker's authority, while pathos is an appeal to the audience 's emotions.
• Data, facts, statistics, test results, and surveys can all strengthen the logos of a presentation.

How to Pronounce Logos

Here's how to pronounce logos: loh -gos

Logos and Different Types of Proof

While it's easy to spot a speaker using logos when he or she presents statistics or research results, numerical data is only one form that logos can take. Logos is any statement, sentence, or argument that attempts to persuade using facts, and these facts need not be the result of long research. "The facts" of an argument can also be drawn from the speaker's own life or from the world at large, and presenting these examples to support one's view is also a form of logos. Take this example from Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech in support of women's rights:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman?

Truth points to her own strength, as well as to the fact that she can perform physically tiring tasks just as well as a man, as proof of equality between the sexes: she's still appealing to the audience's reason, but instead of presenting abstract truths about reality or numerical evidence, she's presenting the facts of her own experience as evidence. In this case, the logic of the argument is anecdotal (meaning it's derived from a handful of personal experiences) rather than purely theoretical, but it goes to show that logos doesn't have to be dry and clinical just because it's concerned with proving something logically.

Logos: Proof vs. Apparent Proof

Not all speakers who use logos can be blindly trusted. As Aristotle specifies in his definition of the term, logos can be "proof, or apparent proof." A speaker may present facts, figures, and research data simply to show that he or she has "done their homework," in an effort to attain the degree of credibility that is often automatically attributed to scientific studies and evidence-driven arguments. Or a speaker might present facts in a way that is wholly or partially misrepresentative, using those facts (and, by extension, logos ) to make a claim that feels credible while actually arguing something that is untrue. Yet another factor that can cause a speech or text to have the appearance of providing proof is the use of overlong words and technical language—but just because someone sounds smart doesn't mean their argument stands to reason.

Even if the facts have been manipulated, any argument that relies on or even just claims to rely on "facts" to appeal to a listener's reason is still an example of logos. Put another way: logos is not about using facts correctly or accurately , it's about using facts in any way to influence an audience.

Logos Examples

Examples of logos in literature.

While Aristotle defined the term logos with public speaking in mind, there are many examples of logos in literature. Generally, logos appears in literature when characters argue or attempt to convince one another that something is true. The degree to which characters use logos -driven arguments can also provide important insight into their personalities and motives.

Logos in Shakespeare's Othello

In Othello , Iago plots to bring about the downfall of his captain, Othello. Iago engineers a series of events that makes it look like Othello’s wife, Desdemona, is cheating on him. Suspicion of his wife’s infidelity tortures Othello, who only recently eloped with Desdemona against her father’s wishes. In this passage from Act 3, Scene 3, Iago manipulates Othello by means of logos . Iago "warns" Othello not to succumb to paranoia even as he fans the flames of that paranoia:

Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on….. Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger, But, oh, what damnèd minutes tells he o’er Who dotes, yet doubts— suspects, yet soundly loves… She did deceive her father, marrying you… She loved them most…. I humbly do beseech you of your pardon For too much loving you….

Iago here lectures Othello on the abstract dangers of jealousy, but then goes on to use reason and deduction to suggest that, because Desdemona deceived her beloved father by marrying Othello, she'd probably be willing to deceive Othello, too.

Logos in Don DeLillo's White Noise

In this passage from Part 2 of Don Delillo’s novel White Noise, Jack Gladney and his son Heinrich gaze through binoculars at an Airborne Toxic Event—or cloud of poison gas—that has just hit their town. Jack , in denial, tries to reassure his son that the cloud won’t blow in their direction and that there’s no cause for alarm. Heinrich disagrees:

"What do you think?" he said. "It's still hanging there. Looks rooted to the spot." "So you're saying you don't think it'll come this way." "I can tell by your voice that you know something I don't know." "Do you think it'll come this way or not?" "You want me to say it won't come this way in a million years. Then you'll attack with your little fistful of data. Come on, tell me what they said on the radio while I was out there." "It doesn't cause nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, like they said before." "What does it cause?" "Heart palpitations and a sense of deja vu." "Deja vu?" "It affects the false part of the human memory or whatever. That's not all. They're not calling it the black billowing cloud anymore." "What are they calling it?" He looked at me carefully. "The airborne toxic event." ... "These things are not important. The important thing is location. It's there, we're here." "A large air mass is moving down from Canada," he said evenly. "I already knew that." "That doesn't mean it's not important." "Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Depends."

Jack tries to reassure himself and his family that the situation isn’t serious. Heinrich tries to counter his father’s irrational, fear-driven response to the catastrophe with his "fistful of data": information he's learned in school from a science video on toxic waste, as well as reports about the disaster that he heard on the radio. He presents the facts so that his father can’t ignore them, thereby strengthening the logos of his argument that the situation is serious and the cloud will come their way. In this particular example, the lack of logos in Jack's argument reveals a lot about his character—even though Jack is a tenured college professor, strong emotions and fear for his own mortality often drive his behavior and speech.

Logos in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

In this example from To Kill a Mockingbird , lawyer Atticus Finch uses logos to argue on behalf of a black defendant, Tom Robinson, who stands accused of raping a white woman.

"The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place. It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this courtroom is."

The logos in this case lies in Atticus' emphasis on the facts of the case, or rather, the fact that there are no facts in the case against Tom. He temporarily ignores questions of racial justice and emotional trauma so that the jury can look clearly at the body of evidence available to them. In short, he appeals to the jury's reason .

Logos in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , the narrator takes a cross-country motorcycle trip with his son Chris, and their two friends John and Sylvia. When Chris tells the group in Chapter 3 that his friend Tom White Bear believes in ghosts, the narrator tries to explain that scientific principles only exist in our heads, and therefore are actually modern man's equivalent of ghosts:

"Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know." "What?" "Oh, the laws of physics and of logic...the number system...the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real." "They seem real to me," John says. "I don't get it," says Chris. So I go on. "For example, it seems completely natural to presume that gravitation and the law of gravitation existed before Isaac Newton. It would sound nutty to think that until the seventeenth century there was no gravity." "Of course" "So when did this law start? Has it always existed?...What I'm driving at is the notion that before the beginning of the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation of anything, the law of gravity existed." "Sure." "Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in anyone's mind because there wasn't anyone, not in space because there was no space either, not anywhere—this law of gravity still existed?" Now John seems not so sure. "If the law of gravity existed," I say, "I honestly don't know what a thing has to do to be non existent. It seems to me that law of gravity has passed every test of nonexistence there is...And yet it is still 'common sense' to believe that it existed." "I guess I'd have to think about it." "Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself going round and round and round and round until you finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense. And what that means... is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It's a ghost!"

The narrator uses logos in his discourse on scientific concepts by presenting his audience with an example—gravity—and asking them to consider their own experience of gravity as empirical evidence in support of his argument. He urges his friends to come to a "rational, intelligent conclusion" about the concept of gravity, instead of relying on conventional wisdom and unexamined assumptions.

Logos in Political Speeches

Politicians frequently use logos, often by citing statistics or examples, to persuade their listeners of the success or failure of policies, politicians, and ideologies.

Logos in Barack Obama's 2015 State of the Union Address

In this example, Obama cites historical precedent and economic data from past years to strengthen his argument that recent progress has been substantial and that the nation's economy is in good health:

But tonight, we turn the page. Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999. Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before. More of our people are insured than ever before. And we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30 years.

Logos in Ronald Reagan's 1987 "Tear Down this Wall" Speech

In this speech, Reagan intends for his comparison between the poverty of East Berlin—controlled by the Communists—and the prosperity of Democratic West Berlin to serve as hard evidence supporting the economic superiority of Western capitalism. The way he uses specific details about the physical landscape of West Berlin as proof of Western capitalist economic superiority is a form of logos:

Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany--busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city's culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there's abundance--food, clothing, automobiles--the wonderful goods of the Ku'damm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth...In the 1950s, Khrushchev [leader of the communist Soviet Union] predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind—too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

Why Do Writers Use Logos?

It's important to note that the three modes of persuasion often mutually reinforce one another. They don't have to be used in isolation from one other, and the same sentence may even include examples of all three. While logos is different from both ethos (an appeal to the audience based on the speaker's authority) and pathos (an appeal to the audience's emotions), the use of logos can serve as a strong complement to the use of ethos and/or pathos —and vice versa.

For instance, if a politician lists the number of casualties in a war, or rattles off statistics relating to a national issue, these facts may well appeal to the audience's emotions as well as their intellect, thereby strengthening pathos as well as logos as elements in the speech. Consider this passage from Michelle Obama's 2015 speech at The Partnership for a Healthier America Summit, in which she updates listeners on the success of her Let's Move! project for improving children's nutrition:

I mean, just think about what our work together means for a child born today. Maybe that child will be one of the 1.6 million kids attending healthier daycare centers where fruits and vegetables have replaced cookies and juice. And when that child starts school, maybe she’ll be one of the over 30 million kids eating the healthier school lunches that we fought for. Maybe she’ll be one of the 2 million kids with a Let’s Move! salad bar in her school, or one of the nearly 9 million kids in Let’s Move! Active Schools who are getting 60 minutes of physical activity a day, or one of the 5 million kids soon attending healthier after-school programs.

While Obama includes statistics to persuade her audience that Let's Move! has been a success ( logos) , she's also using those facts and figures to stir up enthusiasm for her cause ( pathos).

Other Helpful Logos Resources

• The Wikipedia Page on Logos: A detailed explanation and history of the term.
• The Dictionary Definition of Logos: A definition encompassing the different meanings of the word logos.
• Logos on Youtube: A video from TED-Ed about the three modes of persuasion.

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What Are Logos, Pathos & Ethos?

A straight-forward explainer (with examples)

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Reviewer: Eunice Rautenbach (DTech) | June 2023

If you spend any amount of time exploring the wonderful world of philosophy, you’re bound to run into the dynamic trio of rhetorical appeals: logos , ethos and pathos . But, what exactly do they mean and how can you use them in your writing or speaking? In this post, we’ll unpack the rhetorical love triangle in simple terms, using loads of practical examples along the way.

Overview: The Rhetorical Triangle

• What are logos , pathos and ethos ?
• Logos unpacked (+ examples)
• Pathos unpacked (+ examples)
• Ethos unpacked (+ examples)
• The rhetorical triangle

What are logos, ethos and pathos?

Simply put, logos, ethos and pathos are three powerful tools that you can use to persuade an audience of your argument . At the most basic level, logos appeals to logic and reason, while pathos appeals to emotions and ethos emphasises credibility or authority.

Naturally, a combination of all three rhetorical appeals packs the biggest punch, but it’s important to consider a few different factors to determine the best mix for any given context. Let’s look at each rhetorical appeal in a little more detail to understand how best to use them to your advantage.

Logos appeals to the logical, reason-driven side of our minds. Using logos in an argument typically means presenting a strong body of evidence and   facts to support your position. This evidence should then be accompanied by sound logic and well-articulated reasoning .

Let’s look at some examples of logos in action:

• A friend trying to persuade you to eat healthier might present scientific studies that show the benefits of a balanced diet and explain how certain nutrients contribute to overall health and longevity.
• A scientist giving a presentation on climate change might use data from reputable studies, along with well-presented graphs and statistical analyses to demonstrate the rising global temperatures and their impact on the environment.
• An advertisement for a new smartphone might highlight its technological features, such as a faster processor, longer battery life, and a high-resolution camera. This could also be accompanied by technical specifications and comparisons with competitors’ models.

In short, logos is all about using evidence , logic and reason to build a strong argument that will win over an audience on the basis of its objective merit . This contrasts quite sharply against pathos, which we’ll look at next.

Contrasted to logos, pathos appeals to the softer side of us mushy humans. Specifically, it focuses on evoking feelings and emotions in the audience. When utilising pathos in an argument, the aim is to cultivate some feeling of connection in the audience toward either yourself or the point that you’re trying to make.

In practical terms, pathos often uses storytelling , vivid language and personal anecdotes to tap into the audience’s emotions. Unlike logos, the focus here is not on facts and figures, but rather on psychological affect . Simply put, pathos utilises our shared humanness to foster agreement.

Let’s look at some examples of pathos in action:

• An advertisement for a charity might incorporate images of starving children and highlight their desperate living conditions to evoke sympathy, compassion and, ultimately, donations.
• A politician on the campaign trail might appeal to feelings of hope, unity, and patriotism to rally supporters and motivate them to vote for his or her party.
• A fundraising event may include a heartfelt personal story shared by a cancer survivor, with the aim of evoking empathy and encouraging donations to support cancer research.

As you can see, pathos is all about appealing to the human side of us – playing on our emotions to create buy-in and agreement.

Last but not least, we’ve got ethos. Ethos is all about emphasising the credibility and authority of the person making the argument, or leveraging off of someone else’s credibility to support your own argument.

The ethos card can be played by highlighting expertise, achievements, qualifications and accreditations , or even personal and professional associations and connections. Ultimately, the aim here is to foster some level of trust within the audience by demonstrating your competence, as this will make them more likely to take your word as fact.

Let’s look at some examples of ethos in action:

• A fitness equipment brand might hire a well-known athlete to endorse their product.
• A toothpaste brand might make claims highlighting that a large percentage of dentists recommend their product.
• A financial advisor might present their qualifications, certifications and professional memberships when meeting with a prospective client.

As you can see, using ethos in an argument is largely about emphasising the credibility of the person rather than the logical soundness of the argument itself (which would reflect a logos-based approach). This is particularly helpful when there isn’t a large body of evidence to support the argument.

Ethos can also overlap somewhat with pathos in that positive emotions and feelings toward a specific person can oftentimes be extended to someone else’s argument. For example, a brand that has nothing to do with sports could still benefit from the endorsement of a well-loved athlete, just because people feel positive feelings about the athlete – not because of that athlete’s expertise  in the product they’re endorsing.

How to use logos, pathos and ethos

Logos, pathos and ethos combine to form the rhetorical triangle , also known as the Aristotelian triangle. As you’d expect, the three sides (or corners) of the triangle reflect the three appeals, but there’s also another layer of meaning. Specifically, the three sides symbolise the relationship between the speaker , the audience and the message .

Without getting too philosophical, the key takeaway here is that logos, pathos and ethos are all tools that you can use to present a persuasive argument . However, how much you use each tool needs to be informed by careful consideration of who your audience is and what message you’re trying to convey to them.

For example, if you’re writing a research paper for a largely scientific audience, you’ll likely lean more heavily on the logos . Conversely, if you’re presenting a speech in which you argue for greater social justice, you may lean more heavily on the pathos to win over the hearts and minds of your audience.

Simply put, by understanding the relationship between yourself (as the person making the argument), your audience , and your message , you can strategically employ the three rhetorical appeals to persuade, engage, and connect with your audience more effectively in any context. Use these tools wisely and you’ll quickly notice what a difference they can make to your ability to communicate and more importantly, to persuade .

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What is Logos? Definition, Examples of Logos in Literature

Home » The Writer’s Dictionary » What is Logos? Definition, Examples of Logos in Literature

Logos definition: Logos is a rhetorical device that includes any content in an argument that is meant to appeal to logic.

What is Logos?

What does logos mean in literature? Logos is a rhetorical device that includes any content in an argument that is meant to appeal to logic.

Logos is one of the three Aristotelian appeals. A writer utilizes the three appeals in order to convince his audience of his argument. The other two appeals are ethos (ethics) and pathos (emotion).

Appeals to logos are those that involve or influence the logical reasons an audience should believe an argument.

Examples of logos in an argument for tax reform might include:

• The United States has the highest corporate income tax in the world.
• Our own small businesses cannot compete with such a relatively high tax burden.
• Therefore, the government should lower corporate income tax rates.

The first statement is a fact; the second and third statements create a syllogism. Both are appeals to logos.

Modern Examples of Logos

Whether it’s Mom explaining why you need to do your homework before bedtime, a newspaper columnist commenting on the day’s events, or an engineer explaining a need for new equipment, logical appeals are evident in everyday speech and argument.

However, be mindful that simply stating facts is not an appeal to logos. Writers use appeals to logos when they have an argument they are trying to prove . Yet, just about anything could be an argument.

Look at the above examples—each speaker is trying to convince someone of something. This is where logos might come into play.

The Function of Logos

It is very difficult to believe or support an argument if it does not make logical sense. This is why a writer should include appeals to logos in his argument. The purpose of writing is to convince someone of something. Logos is a tool that helps writers do this.

Not all arguments will have the same “amount” of logical appeals. Some arguments might call for more emotional appeals. It is the writer’s responsibility to evaluate his audience to determine the best appeals for his argument.

Examples of Logos in Literature

Let me start with the economy, and a basic fact: The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world. We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs, the strongest two years of job growth since the ‘90s, an unemployment rate cut in half. Our auto industry just had its best year ever. That’s just part of a manufacturing surge that’s created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years. And we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.

With these words, Obama is utilizing facts, numbers, and statistics to logically prove to his audience that American’s economy is on the rise. Here, Obama is appealing to logos to convince his audience that, as President, he has positively made change to affect America’s growth and development.

This is an example of logos.

Summary: Logos Definition Literature

Define logos in literature: the definition of logos in literature is a rhetorical device that appeals to logic and reason.

In summary, logos is:

• an appeal to logic
• one of the three Aristotelian appeals
• usually evident as facts, numbers, or statistics
• used to convince an audience of an argument

Understand The Difference Between Ethos, Pathos, And Logos To Make Your Point

• What Is Ethos?
• What Is Pathos?
• What Is Logos?
• Examples Of Each
• What Are Mythos And Kairos?

During an argument, people will often say whatever is necessary to win. If that is the case, they would certainly need to understand the three modes of persuasion, also commonly known as the three rhetorical appeals: ethos , pathos , and logos . In short, these three words refer to three main methods that a person can use to speak or write persuasively. As you’re about to find out, the modes of persuasion are important because a speaker who knows how to effectively use them will have a significant advantage over someone who doesn’t.

The terms ethos , pathos , and logos and the theory of their use can be traced back to ancient Greece to the philosophy of Aristotle . Aristotle used these three concepts in his explanations of rhetoric , or the art of influencing the thought and conduct of an audience. For Aristotle, the three modes of persuasion specifically referred to the three major parts of an argument: the speaker ( ethos ), the argument itself ( logos ), and the audience ( pathos ). In particular, Aristotle focused on the speaker’s character, the logic and reason presented by an argument, and the emotional impact the argument had on an audience.

While they have ancient roots, these modes of persuasion are alive and well today. Put simply, ethos refers to persuasion based on the credibility or authority of the speaker, pathos refers to persuasion based on emotion, and logos refers to persuasion based on logic or reason.

By effectively using the three modes of persuasion with a large supply of rhetorical devices, a speaker or writer can become a master of rhetoric and win nearly any argument or win over any audience. Before they can do that, though, they must know exactly what ethos , pathos , and logos mean. Fortunately, we are going to look closely at each of these three ideas and see if they are really as effective as they are said to be.

⚡️ Quick summary

Ethos , pathos , and logos are the three classical modes of persuasion that a person can use to speak or write persuasively. Specifically:

• ethos (character): known as “the appeal to authority” or “the appeal to credibility.” This is the method in which a person relies on their credibility or character when making an appeal or an argument.
• pathos (emotions): known as “the appeal to emotion.” Pathos refers to the method of trying to persuade an audience by eliciting some kind of emotional reaction.
• logos (logic): known as “the appeal to reason.” This method involves using facts and logical reasoning to support an argument and persuade an audience.

What is ethos ?

The word ethos comes straight from Greek. In Greek, ethos literally translates to “habit,” “custom,” or “character.” Ethos is related to the words ethic and ethical , which are typically used to refer to behavior that is or isn’t acceptable for a particular person.

In rhetoric, the word ethos is used to refer to the character or reputation of the speaker. As a rhetorical appeal, ethos is known as “the appeal to authority” or “the appeal to credibility.” When it comes to ethos , one important consideration is how the speaker carries themself and how they present themselves to the audience: Does it seem like they know what they are talking about? Do they even believe the words they are saying? Are they an expert? Do they have some experience or skills that tell us we should listen to them?

Ethos is important in rhetoric because it often influences the opinion or mood of the audience. If a speaker seems unenthusiastic, unprepared, or inexperienced, the audience is more likely to discount the speaker’s argument regardless of what it even is. On the other hand, a knowledgeable, authoritative, confident speaker is much more likely to win an audience over.

Ethos often depends on more than just the argument itself. For example, a speaker’s word choice, grammar, and diction also contribute to ethos ; an audience may react more favorably toward a professional speaker who has a good grasp of industry jargon and enunciates clearly versus a speaker who lacks the necessary vocabulary and fails to enunciate. Ethos can also be influenced by nonverbal factors as well, such as posture, body language, eye contact, and even the speaker’s choice of clothing. For example, a military officer proudly wearing their uniform bedecked with medals will go a long way to establishing ethos without them saying a single word.

Here as a simple example of ethos :

• “As a former mayor of this city, I believe we can solve this crisis if we band together.”

The speaker uses ethos by alerting the audience of their credentials and experience. By doing so, they rely on their reputation to be more persuasive. This “as a…” method of establishing ethos is common, and you have probably seen it used in many persuasive advertisements and speeches.

What are open-ended questions and how can you use them effectively? Find out here.

What is pathos ?

In Greek, pathos literally translates to “suffering, experience, or sensation.” The word pathos is related to the words pathetic , sympathy , and empathy , which all have to do with emotions or emotional connections. Aristotle used the word pathos to refer to the emotional impact that an argument had on an audience; this usage is still mainly how pathos is used in rhetoric today.

As a rhetorical appeal, pathos is referred to as “the appeal to emotion.” Generally speaking, an author or speaker is using pathos when they are trying to persuade an audience by causing some kind of emotional reaction. When it comes to pathos , any and all emotions are on the table: sadness, fear, hope, joy, anger, lust, pity, etc.

As you probably know from your own life, emotions are a powerful motivating factor. For this reason, relying on pathos is often a smart and effective strategy for persuading an audience. Both positive and negative emotions can heavily influence an audience: for example, an audience will want to support a speaker whose position will make them happy, a speaker who wants to end their sadness, or a speaker who is opposed to something that makes them angry.

Here is a simple example of pathos :

• “Every day, the rainforests shrink and innocent animals are killed. We must do something about this calamitous trend before the planet we call our home is damaged beyond repair.”

Here, the author is trying to win over an audience by making them feel sad, concerned, or afraid. The author’s choice of words like “innocent” and “calamitous” enforce the fact that they are trying to rely on pathos .

What is logos ?

In Greek, the word logos literally translates to “word, reason, or discourse.” The word logos is related to many different words that have to do with reason, discourse, or knowledge, such as logic , logical , and any words that end in the suffixes -logy or -logue .

As a mode of persuasion and rhetorical appeal, logos is often referred to as “the appeal to reason.” If a speaker or author is relying on logos , they are typically reciting facts or providing data and statistics that support their argument. In a manner of speaking, logos does away with all of the bells and whistles of ethos and pathos and cuts to the chase by trying to present a rational argument.

Logos can be effective in arguments because, in theory, it is impossible to argue against truth and facts. An audience is more likely to agree with a speaker who can provide strong, factual evidence that shows their position is correct. On the flip side, an audience is less likely to support an argument that is flawed or entirely wrong. Going further, a speaker that presents a lot of supporting evidence and data to the audience is likely to come across as knowledgeable and someone to be listened to, which earns bonus points in ethos as well.

While Aristotle clearly valued an argument based on reason very highly, we know that logos alone doesn’t always effectively persuade an audience. In your own life, you have likely seen a rational, correct speaker lose an argument to a charismatic, authoritative speaker who may not have the facts right.

Here is a simple example of logos :

• “According to market research, sales of computer chips have increased by 300% in the last five years. Analysis of the industry tells us that the market share of computer chips is dominated by Asian manufacturers. It is clear that the Asian technology sector will continue to experience rapid growth for the foreseeable future.”

In this paragraph, the author is using data, statistics, and logical reasoning to make their argument. They clearly hope to use logos to try to convince an audience to agree with them.

Do you need persuading to take this quiz on identifying ethos, pathos, and logos? We think you’ll be a champion at it.

Examples of ethos , pathos , and logos

Ethos , pathos , and logos can all be employed to deliver compelling and persuasive arguments or to win over an audience. Let’s look at a variety of examples to see how different speakers and authors have turned to these modes of persuasion over the years.

“Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me […] You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?” —Marc Antony, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

In this scene, Marc Antony is trying to win over the Roman people, so Shakespeare has Antony rely on ethos . Antony is establishing himself as both a person of authority in Rome (having the power to offer Caesar a crown) and an expert on Caesar’s true character (Antony was Caesar’s close friend and advisor).

“During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story , and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.” —Steve Jobs, 2005

Here, Steve Jobs is providing his background–via humblebrag – of being a major figure in several different highly successful tech companies. Jobs is using ethos to provide substance to his words and make it clear to the audience that he knows what he is talking about and they should listen to him.

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“Moreover, though you hate both him and his gifts with all your heart, yet pity the rest of the Achaeans who are being harassed in all their host; they will honour you as a god, and you will earn great glory at their hands. You might even kill Hector; he will come within your reach, for he is infatuated, and declares that not a Danaan whom the ships have brought can hold his own against him.” —Ulysses to Achilles, The Iliad by Homer

In this plea, Ulysses is doing his best to pile on the pathos . In one paragraph, Ulysses is attempting to appeal to several of Achilles’s emotions: his hatred of Hector, his infamous stubborn pride, his sympathy for civilians, and his desire for vengeance.

“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest—quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.” —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

In this excerpt from his “I Have A Dream” speech, King is using pathos to accomplish two goals at once. First, he is connecting with his audience by making it clear is aware of their plight and suffering. Second, he is citing these examples to cause sadness or outrage in the audience. Both of these effects will make an audience interested in what he has to say and more likely to support his position.

Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech is recognizable and noteworthy for many reasons, including the rhetorical device he employs. Learn about it here.

“Let it be remembered how powerful the influence of a single introduced tree or mammal has been shown to be. But in the case of an island, or of a country partly surrounded by barriers, into which new and better adapted forms could not freely enter, we should then have places in the economy of nature which would assuredly be better filled up if some of the original inhabitants were in some manner modified; for, had the area been open to immigration, these same places would have been seized on by intruders. In such case, every slight modification, which in the course of ages chanced to arise, and which in any way favoured the individuals of any of the species, by better adapting them to their altered conditions, would tend to be preserved; and natural selection would have free scope for the work of improvement.” —Charles Darwin, On the Origin of the Species , 1859

In this passage, Darwin is using logos by presenting a rational argument in support of natural selection. Darwin connects natural selection to established scientific knowledge to argue that it makes logical sense that animals would adapt to better survive in their environment.

“I often echo the point made by the climate scientist James Hansen: The accumulation of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases—some of which will envelop the planet for hundreds and possibly thousands of years—is now trapping as much extra energy daily as 500,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs would release every 24 hours. This is the crisis we face.” —Al Gore, “The Climate Crisis Is the Battle of Our Time, and We Can Win,” 2019

In this call to action, Al Gore uses logos to attempt to convince his audience of the significance of climate change. In order to do this, Gore both cites an expert in the field and provides a scientifically accurate simile to explain the scale of the effect that greenhouse gases have on Earth’s atmosphere.

What are mythos and kairos ?

Some modern scholars may also use terms mythos and kairos when discussing modes of persuasion or rhetoric in general.

Aristotle used the term mythos to refer to the plot or story structure of Greek tragedies, i.e., how a playwright ordered the events of the story to affect the audience. Today, mythos is most often discussed as a literary or poetic term rather than a rhetorical one. However, mythos may rarely be referred to as the “appeal to culture” or the “appeal to myth” if it is treated as an additional mode of persuasion. According to this viewpoint, a speaker/writer is using mythos if they try to persuade an audience using shared cultural customs or societal values.

A commonly cited example of mythos is King’s “I Have a Dream” speech quoted earlier. King says:

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable rights’ of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ ”

Throughout the speech, King repeatedly uses American symbols and American history ( mythos ) to argue that all Americans should be outraged that Black Americans have been denied freedom and civil rights.

Some modern scholars may also consider kairos as an additional mode of persuasion. Kairos is usually defined as referring to the specific time and place that a speaker chooses to deliver their speech. For written rhetoric, the “place” instead refers to the specific medium or publication in which a piece of writing appears.

Unlike the other modes of persuasion, kairos relates to the context of a speech and how the appropriateness (or not) of a setting affects how effective a speaker is. Once again, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is a great example of the use of kairos . This speech was delivered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Clearly, King intended to use kairos to enhance the importance and timeliness of this landmark speech.

Make your communication as smooth as can be by learning about filler words and when you should, and shouldn't, use them.

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Ethos, Logos, Pathos for Persuasion

• Writing Research Papers
• Writing Essays
• English Grammar
• M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
• B.A., History, Armstrong State University

You may be surprised to learn that much of your life consists of constructing arguments. If you ever plead a case to your parents—in order to extend your curfew or to get a new gadget, for example—you are using persuasive strategies. When you discuss music with friends and agree or disagree with them about the merits of one singer compared to another, you are also using strategies for persuasion.

Indeed, when you engage in these "arguments" with your parents and friends, you are instinctively using ancient strategies for persuasion that were identified by the Greek philosopher Aristotle a few thousand years ago. Aristotle called his ingredients for persuasion pathos , logos , and ethos .

Persuasion Tactics and Homework

When you write a research paper , write a speech , or participate in a debate , you also use the persuasion strategies mentioned above. You come up with an idea (a thesis) and then construct an argument to convince readers that your idea is sound.

You should become familiar with pathos, logos, and ethos for two reasons: First, you need to develop your own skills at crafting a good argument so that others will take you seriously. Second, you must develop the ability to identify a really weak argument, stance, claim, or position when you see or hear it.

Logos Defined

Logos refers to an appeal to reason based on logic. Logical conclusions come from assumptions and decisions derived from weighing a collection of solid facts and statistics . Academic arguments (research papers) rely on logos.

An example of an argument that relies on logos is the argument that smoking is harmful based on the evidence that, "When burned, cigarettes create more than 7,000 chemicals. At least 69 of these chemicals are known to cause cancer, and many are toxic," according to the American Lung Association. Notice that the statement above uses specific numbers. Numbers are sound and logical.

An everyday example of an appeal to logos is the argument that Lady Gaga is more popular than Justin Bieber because Gaga's fan pages collected 10 million more Facebook fans than Bieber's. As a researcher, your job is to find statistics and other facts to back up your claims. When you do this, you are appealing to your audience with logic or logos.

Ethos Defined

Trustworthiness is important in research. You must trust your sources, and your readers must trust you. The example above concerning logos contained two examples that were based on hard facts (numbers). However, one example comes from the American Lung Association. The other comes from Facebook fan pages. You should ask yourself: Which of these sources do you suppose is more credible?

Anyone can start a Facebook page. Lady Gaga may have 50 different fan pages, and each page may contain duplicate "fans." The fan page argument is probably not very sound (even though it seems logical). Ethos refers to the credibility of the person posing the argument or stating the facts.

The facts provided by the American Lung Association are probably more persuasive than those provided by fan pages since the American Lung Association has been around for more than 100 years. At first glance, you might think that your own credibility is out of your control when it comes to posing academic arguments, but that is incorrect.

Even if you write an academic paper on a topic that is outside your area of expertise, you can improve your credibility—using ethos to persuade—by coming across as a professional by citing credible sources and making your writing error-free and concise.

Pathos Defined

Pathos refers to appealing to a person by influencing his emotions. Pathos is involved in the strategy of convincing the audience by invoking feelings through their own imaginations. You appeal through pathos when you try to convince your parents of something. Consider this statement:

"Mom, there is clear evidence that cellphones save lives in emergency situations."

While that statement is true, the real power lies in the emotions that you will likely invoke in your parents. What mother wouldn't envision a broken-down automobile perched by the side of a busy highway upon hearing that statement?

Emotional appeals are extremely effective, but they can be tricky. There may or may not be a place for pathos in your research paper . For example, you may be writing an argumentative essay about the death penalty.

Ideally, your paper should contain a logical argument. You should appeal to logos by including statics to support your view such as data that suggests that the death penalty does/does not cut down on crime (there's plenty of research both ways).

Use Appeals to Emotion Sparingly

You may also use pathos by interviewing someone who witnessed an execution (on the anti-death penalty side) or someone who found closure when a criminal was executed (on the pro-death penalty side). Generally, however, academic papers should employ appeals to emotions sparingly. A long paper that is purely based on emotions is not considered very professional.

Even when you are writing about an emotionally charged, controversial issue like the death penalty, you can't write a paper that is all emotion and opinion. The teacher, in that circumstance, will likely assign a failing grade because you haven't provided a sound (logical) argument.

• “ What's In a Cigarette? ”  American Lung Association,
• Use Social Media to Teach Ethos, Pathos and Logos
• Logos (Rhetoric)
• Pathos in Rhetoric
• Artistic Proofs: Definitions and Examples
• Definition and Examples of Ethos in Classical Rhetoric
• Persuasion and Rhetorical Definition
• What is an Appeal in Rhetoric?
• An Introduction to Academic Writing
• AP English Exam: 101 Key Terms
• How to Write a Persuasive Essay
• Proof in Rhetoric
• Situated Ethos in Rhetoric
• How to Write and Structure a Persuasive Speech
• What Is Phronesis?
• Convince Me: A Persuasive Writing Activity
• Appeal to Force/Fear or Argumentum ad Baculum

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

III. Rhetorical Situation

3.6 Rhetorical Appeals: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos Defined

Melanie Gagich; Emilie Zickel; and Terri Pantuso

Rhetoric, as the previous sections have discussed, is the way that authors use and manipulate language in order to persuade an audience. Once we understand the rhetorical situation out of which a text is created (why it was written, for whom it was written, by whom it was written, how the medium in which it was written creates certain constraints, or perhaps freedom of expression), we can look at how all of those contextual elements shape the author’s creation of the text.

We can look first at the classical rhetorical appeals which are the three ways to classify an author’s intellectual, moral, and emotional approaches to getting the audience to react in the manner in which the author may have intended.

Rhetorical Appeals

In composition studies, the term rhetorical appeals refers to the use of ethos, pathos, and logos. These are classical Greek terms dating back to Aristotle who is traditionally viewed as the creator of rhetoric. To be rhetorically effective (and thus persuasive), an author must engage the audience in a variety of compelling ways which involves carefully choosing how to craft their argument so that the intended outcome is achieved. Often that outcome occurs when the audience agrees with the argument or point being presented. Aristotle defined these modes of engagement and gave them the terms that we still use today: logos, pathos, and ethos.

Logos: Appeal to Logic

Logic. Reason. Rationality. Logos is brainy and intellectual, cool, calm, collected, objective.

When an author relies on logos, it means that they are using logic, careful structure, and objective evidence to appeal to the audience. Objective evidence is anything that can be proven with statistics or other facts via more than one source. Oftentimes that evidence has been validated by more than one authority in the field of study.

For example, if Dr. Smith was trying to convince her students to complete their homework, she might explain that she understands everyone is busy and they have other classes (non-biased), but that completing their homework will help them get a better grade on their test (explanation). She could add to this explanation by providing statistics showing the number of students who failed and didn’t complete their homework versus the number of students who passed and did complete their homework (factual evidence). This is an example of logos employed for the purposes of argument and persuasion.

Logical appeals rest on rational modes of thinking , such as:

• Comparison: a comparison between one thing (with regard to your topic) and another, similar thing to help support your claim. It is important that the comparison is fair and valid – the things being compared must share significant traits of similarity.
• Cause/effect thinking:  you argue that X has caused Y, or that X is likely to cause Y to help support your claim. Be careful with the latter – it can be difficult to predict that something “will” happen in the future.
• Deductive reasoning:  starting with a broad, general claim/example and using it to support a more specific point or claim (picture an hourglass where the sands gather in the middle)
• Inductive reasoning: using several specific examples or cases to make a broad generalization (consider the old question of “if your friend jumped off of a bridge, would you” to make the sweeping claim that all young people are easily persuaded to follow the crowd)
• Analogical reasoning:  moves from one particular claim/example to another, seemingly sequential (sometimes this line of reasoning is used to make a guilt by association claim)
• Exemplification:  use of many examples or a variety of evidence to support a single point
• Elaboration:  moving beyond just including a fact, but explaining the significance or relevance of that fact
• Coherent thought:  maintaining a well-organized line of reasoning; not repeating ideas or jumping around

Pathos: Appeal to Emotions

When an author relies on pathos, it means that they are trying to tap into the audience’s emotions to get them to agree with the author’s claim. An author using pathos appeals wants the audience to feel something: anger, pride, joy, rage, or happiness. For example, many of us have seen the ASPCA commercials that use photographs of injured puppies, or sad-looking kittens, and slow, depressing music to emotionally persuade their audience to donate money. This is a classic example of the use of pathos in argument.

Pathos-based rhetorical strategies are any strategies that get the audience to “open up” to the topic, the argument, or to the author through an emotional connection. Emotions can make us vulnerable and an author can use this vulnerability to get the audience to believe that their argument is a compelling one.

Pathos appeals might include:

• Expressive descriptions of people, places, or events that help the reader to feel or experience those events
• Vivid imagery of people, places or events that help the reader to feel like they are seeing those events
• Sharing personal stories that make the reader feel a connection to, or empathy for, the person being described
• Using emotion-laden vocabulary as a way to put the reader into that specific emotional mindset (what is the author trying to make the audience feel? and how are they doing that?)
• Using any information that will evoke an emotional response from the audience. This could involve making the audience feel empathy or disgust for the person/group/event being discussed, or perhaps connection to or rejection of the person/group/event being discussed.

When reading a text, try to locate where the author is trying to convince the reader by strictly using emotions because, if used to excess, pathos appeals can indicate a lack of substance or emotional manipulation of the audience. If the only way in which an author can persuade the reader is by making him/her sad or angry, does that make for a solid, valid argument?

Ethos: Appeal to Values/Trust

Appeals using ethos are typically two faceted focusing on audience values and authorial credibility/character.

On the one hand, when an author makes an ethical appeal, they are attempting to tap into the values or ideologies that the audience holds. Examples include patriotism, tradition, justice, equality, dignity for all humankind, self-preservation, or other specific social, religious or philosophical values (Christian values, socialism, capitalism, feminism, etc.). These values can sometimes feel very close to emotions, but they are felt on a social level rather than only on a personal level. When an author evokes the values that the audience cares about as a way to justify or support their argument, we classify that as ethos. The audience will feel that the author is making an argument that is “right” (in the sense of moral “right”-ness, i.e., My argument rests upon the values that matter to you. Therefore, you should accept my argument ). This first part of the definition of ethos, then, is focused on the audience’s values.

On the other hand, this sense of referencing what is “right” in an ethical appeal connects to the other sense of ethos, the author. Ethos that is centered on the author revolves around two concepts: the credibility of the author and their character.

Credibility of the speaker/author is determined by their knowledge and expertise in the subject at hand. For example, if you are learning about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, would you rather learn from a professor of physics or a cousin who took two science classes in high school thirty years ago? It is fair to say that, in general, the professor of physics would have more credibility to discuss the topic of physics than your cousin. To establish their credibility, an author may draw attention to who they are or what kinds of experience they have with the topic being discussed as an ethical appeal (i.e., Because I have experience with this topic – and I know my stuff! – you should trust what I am saying about this topic ). Some authors do not have to establish their credibility because the audience already knows who they are and that they are credible.

Character is another aspect of ethos that is different from credibility because it involves personal history and sometimes personality traits. A person can be credible but lack character or vice versa. For example, in politics, sometimes the most experienced candidates – those who might be the most credible candidates – fail to win elections because voters do not accept their character. Politicians take pains to shape their character as leaders who have the interests of the voters at heart. The candidate who successfully proves to the voters (the audience) that they have the type of character that they can trust is more likely to win.

Thus, ethos comes down to trust. How can the author get the audience to trust him or her so that they will accept their argument? How can the author make himself or herself appear as a credible speaker who embodies the character traits that the audience values?

In building ethical appeals, we may see authors:

• Referring either directly or indirectly to the values that matter to the intended audience (so that the audience will trust the speaker)
• Using language, phrasing, imagery, or other writing styles common to people who hold those values, thereby “talking the talk” of people with those values (again, so that the audience is inclined to trust the speaker)
• Referring to their experience and/or authority with the topic (and therefore demonstrating their credibility)
• Referring to their own character, or making an effort to build their character in the text

When reading, you should always think about the author’s credibility regarding the subject as well as their character. Here is an example of a rhetorical move that connects with ethos: when reading an article about abortion, the author mentions that she has had an abortion. That is an example of an ethical move because the author is creating credibility via anecdotal evidence and first person narrative. In a rhetorical analysis project, it would be up to you, the analyzer, to point out this move and associate it with a rhetorical strategy.

When Writers Misuse Logos, Pathos, or Ethos, Arguments can be Weakened

Above, we defined and described what logos, pathos, and ethos are and why authors may use those strategies. Sometimes, using a combination of appeals leads to a sound, balanced, and persuasive argument. It is important to understand, though, that using rhetorical appeals does not always lead to a sound, balanced argument. In fact, any of the appeals could be misused or overused. When that happens, arguments can be weakened.

Using a social media platform, find a topic that is trending for today and create an argument using ethos, pathos, and logos for that topic.

Practice Activity

This section contains material from:

Gagich, Melanie and Emilie Zickel. “Rhetorical Appeals: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos Defined.” In A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing , by Melanie Gagich and Emilie Zickel. Cleveland: MSL Academic Endeavors. Accessed July 2019. https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/csu-fyw-rhetoric/chapter/rhetorical-strategies-building-compelling-arguments/ Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . Archival link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201027010216/https://pressbooks.ulib.csuohio.edu/csu-fyw-rhetoric/chapter/rhetorical-strategies-building-compelling-arguments/

Logical, reasonable, or sensible; having good sense; to be sane or lucid; usually refers to a state of mind.

Sequence; the order in which things occur.

3.6 Rhetorical Appeals: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos Defined Copyright © 2023 by Melanie Gagich; Emilie Zickel; and Terri Pantuso is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

What is Logos in Literature?

Before you can think about teaching argumentation and persuasion , you must understand the basics of logos, including what it is, why it’s used, and how to spot it in writing or argument. This article teaches you everything you need to know about the logical component of persuasion and argumentation.

Logos Definition

Derived from the Greek word for “word” or “reason,” logos is one of the three primary rhetorical appeals, alongside ethos and pathos. Just like you would assume based on how the word sounds, logos is the elements of an argument that appeal to an audience’s sense of logic and reasoning. Writers use several forms of logical evidence to convince the audience through a rational and well-supported argument, including:

• Test results
• Expert testimony
• Textual evidence
• Historical or literal analogies
• Cause and effect relationships

The term “logos” traces its roots to ancient Greek philosophy, particularly in the works of Aristotle. In his work “Rhetoric,” Aristotle broke down the key elements of persuasive communication, including supporting with logic (logos), appealing to emotions (pathos), and establishing trust and credibility (ethos). According to his work, these three elements work together to create a compelling and convincing argument. While logos can be found in literature, it is often used in academic writing, persuasive speeches, law, political campaigns, marketing, and advertisements.

Logos Pronunciation

Logos is a two-syllable word dating back to ancient Greek philosophy and is pronounced as low-gowz .

What are the Different Types of Logos?

All forms of logos serve the same purpose: to convince an audience using logical evidence and reasoning. However, this can be achieved through logic or perceived logic . Let’s break down the difference:

In rhetoric, logic involves using clear reasoning and concrete evidence to build a compelling argument. It adheres strictly to the principles of deductive and inductive reasoning, using facts, statistics, and logical connections to persuade the audience. Examples of this form of logic include:

• Presenting statistical data to support an argument.
• Defending a thesis with textual evidence and clear explanation.
• Citing well-established facts or scientific evidence.
• Utilizing deductive reasoning to draw a logical conclusion.

Perceived Logic

On the other hand, perceived logic focuses on creating an impression of logic when there isn’t much hard evidence. Instead, this form of logical reasoning relies on using relatable stories, comparisons, and a smooth flow of ideas to give the impression that the argument makes sense. Writers may create a sense of perceived logic using techniques such as:

• Using relatable anecdotes to make a point, even if they are not supported by statistics.
• Employing analogies to convey a sense of similarity or connection.
• Crafting a narrative that feels logically consistent, even if it lacks empirical evidence.
• Appealing to common beliefs to assert that an argument is valid.

Both approaches to logos can be effective in different contexts, catering to the diverse ways in which audiences engage with and understand logical arguments.

What it’s NOT: Logical Fallacies

When using logos, writers never want to unintentionally poking holes in their own argument. (Makes sense, right?) However, it happens all the time. Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning or flawed arguments that can weaken the validity and soundness of an argument. Understanding these fallacies is crucial for critical thinking and effective communication. Here are some common examples:

Ad Hominem: Attacking the character of the person making the argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself. Example: bashing someone’s environmental proposals because they are a vegan.

Straw Man: Misrepresenting an opponent’s argument to make it easier to attack instead of addressing the actual position. Example: Claiming that someone proposing a reduction in educational spending wants the population to be dumb.

False Cause , also called Causal Fallacy or Post Hoc: Incorrectly assuming that because one event follows another, the first caused the second. Example: “Since I started eating ice cream, I haven’t been sick. Therefore, ice cream must be keeping me healthy.”

False Dilemma: Presenting only two extreme options when there are actually more nuanced possibilities. Example: “Either you support this policy, or you don’t care about the future of our country.”

Appeal to Authority: Relying on the endorsement of an unqualified or irrelevant celebrity or authority figure rather than substantive evidence. Example: “Tom Brady uses that brand of toothpaste, so it must be the best out there.”

Red Herring: Attempting to shing the focus in a discussion or debate to divert attention away from the original topic or argument. Example: Shifting the focus to personal responsibility during a discussion on systemic issues contributing to healthcare costs.

Other logical fallacies include:

• Hasty Generalization
• Appeal to Ignorance
• Circular Reasoning
• Sunk Cost Fallacy
• Bandwagon Fallacy
• Slippery slope
• Equivocation

Why Do Writers Use Logos?

Writers employ logos as a persuasive strategy to build a rational and well-supported case, making their arguments more convincing and harder to argue against. By presenting concrete evidence and well-developed logic, authors build credibility to their argument. This not only enhances the persuasiveness of the writing but also provides a solid foundation for their claims.

Additionally, logos helps simplify complex ideas. Well-structured logical reasoning helps authors bridge the gap between their argument and the audience’s understanding or experiences, adding a compelling and convincing edge to their argument. Presenting logical connections and evidence makes the material more accessible and engaging for the audience.

How to Spot Logos in Writing

Sometimes logos is very straightforward, while other times, especially in more complex arguments or works of literature, it can be more challenging to pinpoint. However, in either case, the steps below make it easier to identify logos in writing or any form of persuasion:

1. Consider the claim, purpose, and evidence

Logos relies heavily on evidence, whether in the form of statistics, research findings, or real-life examples. Writers employing logos will support their claims with concrete data to strengthen their arguments. As yourself:

• What is the claim or argument the author is trying to make?
• Do they use concrete evidence, such as facts or statistics, to support their claim?
• Does the author reference credible sources or authorities to strengthen their points?

2. Pay attention to suture

The overall structure of the writing says a lot about logos. A well-organized piece will present ideas in a logical sequence, with each point building upon the previous one to form a coherent argument. Ask yourself:

• Is the argument presented in a clear and structured way, establishing a logical flow?
• Do the ideas progress logically, building upon each other to support the overall argument?

3. Look for clarity and precision

A clear argument is a strong argument. Writers using logos will carefully define terms, avoid ambiguity, and ensure that their arguments are presented in a straightforward manner. Ask yourself:

• Do I understand the point the author is trying to make?
• Are there any flaws in the reasoning or logical fallacies poking holes in the argument?
• Are key terms and concepts clearly defined to avoid ambiguity or confusion? 

Tips for Teaching Logos

• Start with the definition: Rather than assuming your students know what logos is, begin by providing a clear and concise definition of logos to ensure a foundational understanding.
• Use real-world examples: Add relevance and context to logos by using real-world examples, such as current events and contemporary issues, demonstrating its application in a real-world context. 
• Hold debates and discussions: Create an active learning experience by encouraging students to participate in class debates and discussions where students can practice and refine their logical reasoning skills. (Get things started with these engaging argumentative prompts .)
• Guide students through close readings: Analyze written texts together, identifying how authors use logos to build their arguments and discussing the effectiveness of different approaches.
• Look at advertisements: Bring logos to life by reviewing and analyzing advertisements for logical appeals. Look at advertisements such as print ads, social media ads, and commercials for a multimedia experience.
• Don’t skip logical fallacies : Discuss common logical fallacies to help students recognize and avoid them in their own writing and critical analysis of texts—and to save you stress and frustration when grading.

Examples of Logos

1. in literature: to kill a mockingbird by harper lee.

In “To Kill a Mockingbird,” logos shines through as Atticus Finch uses logical arguments and evidence to defend Tom Robinson during trial. For example, Atticus questions the lack of medical evidence to support Mayella Ewell’s claims and even proves Tom Robinson could not have caused the injuries to Mayella’s face due to his injured left arm.

Throughout the trial, Atticus emphasizes the absence of concrete proof, proving the case is rooted in hearsay versus factual reasoning. Unfortunately, despite Atticus’ strong logical reasoning, Tom Robinson is not set free, underscoring the racial injustices of the American South in the 1930s.

2. In a Famous Speech: “I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is a powerful example of logos as he crafts a logical and persuasive argument for civil rights. Dr. King makes several historical references, particularly to crucial American documents, including the Emancipation Proclamation, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, to make his case. This tactic allows him to highlight the gap between the nation’s founding principles and promises and the reality for many citizens.

King focuses on grounding his speech in logic before moving toward more emotional appeal to resonate with his audience, using the lessons of the past to support his vision for the future. Through a mix of logos and pathos, he presents a powerful, logical argument, calling on the need for racial equality and justice.

3. In an Essay: “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau’s essay, iconically written while in jail for not paying a poll tax as an act of peaceful protest, is a classic example of logos. To support his personal beliefs, he presents a logical argument supporting individual resistance against unjust laws and immoral government actions. Through the use of clear and specific examples, he advocates for the moral duty to resist policies that violate one’s personal principles.

Despite being rooted in his personal beliefs, Thoreau crafts a structurally sound argument, allowing the reader to follow along as he logically builds his case. His examples include both local references to drive his points home while drawing comparisons to broader-scale issues, such as the Mexican War, to help paint a clearer picture of reason and support for his argument.

Additional Resources for Teaching Logos

Check out my lesson plan on evaluating arguments to guide students through examining, analyzing, and evaluating arguments in nonfiction passages.

Read this post for more tips on teaching argument and persuasion .

Start here if you’re looking for more on how to teach argumentative message writing .

Looking to incorporate videos? Check these resources out:

• Dive into Ethos, Logs, and Pathos with the help of this TEDed video .
• Your students will have fun spotting the logos in these commercials . 

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Chapter 6: Thinking and Analyzing Rhetorically

6.4 Rhetorical Appeals: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos Defined

Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel

Rhetoric, as the previous chapters have discussed, is the way that authors use and manipulate language in order to persuade an audience. Once we understand the rhetorical situation out of which a text is created (why it was written, for whom it was written, by whom it was written, how the medium in which it was written creates certain constraints, or perhaps freedoms of expression), we can look at how all of those contextual elements shape the author’s creation of the text.

We can look first at the classical rhetorical appeals, which are the three ways to classify authors’ intellectual, moral, and emotional approaches to getting the audience to have the reaction that the author hopes for.

Rhetorical Appeals

Rhetorical appeals refer to ethos, pathos, and logos. These are classical Greek terms, dating back to Aristotle, who is traditionally seen as the father of rhetoric. To be rhetorically effective (and thus persuasive), an author must engage the audience in a variety of compelling ways, which involves carefully choosing how to craft his or her argument so that the outcome, audience agreement with the argument or point, is achieved. Aristotle defined these modes of engagement and gave them the terms that we still use today: logos, pathos, and ethos.

Logos: Appeal to Logic

Logic. Reason. Rationality. Logos is brainy and intellectual, cool, calm, collected, objective.

When an author relies on logos, it means that he or she is using logic, careful structure, and objective evidence to appeal to the audience. An author can appeal to an audience’s intellect by using information that can be fact checked (using multiple sources) and thorough explanations to support key points. Additionally, providing a solid and non-biased explanation of one’s argument is a great way for an author to invoke logos.

For example, if I were trying to convince my students to complete their homework, I might explain that I understand everyone is busy and they have other classes (non-biased), but the homework will help them get a better grade on their test (explanation). I could add to this explanation by providing statistics showing the number of students who failed and didn’t complete their homework versus the number of students who passed and did complete their homework (factual evidence).

Logical appeals rest on rational modes of thinking , such as

• Comparison –  a comparison between one thing (with regard to your topic) and another, similar thing to help support your claim. It is important that the comparison is fair and valid – the things being compared must share significant traits of similarity.
• Cause/effect thinking –  you argue that X has caused Y, or that X is likely to cause Y to help support your claim. Be careful with the latter – it can be difficult to predict that something “will” happen in the future.
• Deductive reasoning –  starting with a broad, general claim/example and using it to support a more specific point or claim
• Inductive reasoning –  using several specific examples or cases to make a broad generalization
• Exemplification –  use of many examples or a variety of evidence to support a single point
• Elaboration – moving beyond just including a fact, but explaining the significance or relevance of that fact
• Coherent thought – maintaining a well organized line of reasoning; not repeating ideas or jumping around

Pathos: Appeal to Emotions

When an author relies on pathos, it means that he or she is trying to tap into the audience’s emotions to get them to agree with the author’s claim. An author using pathetic appeals wants the audience to feel something: anger, pride, joy, rage, or happiness.  For example, many of us have seen the ASPCA commercials that use photographs of injured puppies, or sad-looking kittens, and slow, depressing music to emotionally persuade their audience to donate money.

Pathos-based rhetorical strategies are any strategies that get the audience to “open up” to the topic, the argument, or to the author. Emotions can make us vulnerable, and an author can use this vulnerability to get the audience to believe that his or her argument is a compelling one.

Pathetic appeals might include

• Expressive descriptions of people, places, or events that help the reader to feel or experience those events
• Vivid imagery  of people, places or events that help the reader to feel like he or she is seeing  those events
• Sharing  personal stories that make the reader feel a connection to, or empathy for, the person being described
• Using emotion-laden   vocabulary  as a way to put the reader into that specific emotional mindset (what is the author trying to make the audience feel? and how is he or she doing that?)
• Using any information that will evoke an emotional response from the audience . This could involve making the audience feel empathy or disgust for the person/group/event being discussed, or perhaps connection to or rejection of the person/group/event being discussed.

When reading a text, try to locate when the author is trying to convince the reader using emotions because, if used to excess, pathetic appeals can indicate a lack of substance or emotional manipulation of the audience. See the links below about fallacious pathos for more information.

Ethos: Appeal to Values/Trust

Ethical appeals have two facets: audience values and authorial credibility/character.

On the one hand, when an author makes an ethical appeal, he or she is attempting to  tap into the  values or ideologies that the audience holds , for example, patriotism, tradition, justice, equality, dignity for all humankind, self preservation, or other specific social, religious or philosophical values (Christian values, socialism, capitalism, feminism, etc.). These values can sometimes feel very close to emotions, but they are felt on a social level rather than only on a personal level. When an author evokes the values that the audience cares about as a way to justify or support his or her argument, we classify that as ethos. The audience will feel that the author is making an argument that is “right” (in the sense of moral “right”-ness, i.e., “My argument rests upon that values that matter to you. Therefore, you should accept my argument”). This first part of the definition of ethos, then, is focused on the audience’s values.

On the other hand, this sense of referencing what is “right” in an ethical appeal connects to the other sense of ethos: the  author. Ethos that is centered on the author revolves around two concepts: the credibility of the author and his or her character.

Credibility of the speaker/author is determined by his or her knowledge and expertise in the subject at hand. For example, if you are learning about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, would you rather learn from a professor of physics or a cousin who took two science classes in high school thirty years ago? It is fair to say that, in general, the professor of physics would have more credibility to discuss the topic of physics. To establish his or her credibility, a n author may draw attention to who he or she is or what kinds of experience he or she has with the topic being discussed as an ethical appeal (i.e., “Because I have experience with this topic –  and I know my stuff! – you should trust what I am saying about this topic”). Some authors do not have to establish their credibility because the audience already knows who they are and that they are credible.

Character  is another aspect of ethos, and it   is different from credibility because it involves personal history and even personality traits. A person can be credible but lack character or vice versa. For example, in politics, sometimes the most experienced candidates – those who might be the most credible candidates – fail to win elections because voters do not accept their character. Politicians take pains to shape their character as leaders who have the interests of the voters at heart. The candidate who successfully proves to the voters (the audience) that he or she has the type of character that they can trust is more likely to win.

Thus, ethos comes down to trust. How can the author get the audience to trust him or her so that they will accept his or her argument? How can the the author make him or herself appear as a credible speaker who embodies the character traits that the audience values?

In building ethical appeals, we see authors

• Referring either directly or indirectly to the values that matter to the intended audience (so that the audience will trust the speaker)
• Using language, phrasing, imagery, or other writing styles common to people who hold those values, thereby “talking the talk” of people with those values (again, so that the audience is inclined to trust the speaker)
• Referring to their experience and/or authority with the topic (and therefore demonstrating their credibility)
• Referring to their own character, or making an effort to build their character in the text

When reading, you should always think about the author’s credibility regarding the subject as well as his or her character. Here is an example of a rhetorical move that connects with ethos: when reading an article about abortion, the author mentions that she has had an abortion. That is an example of an ethical move because the author is creating credibility via anecdotal evidence and first person narrative. In a rhetorical analysis project, it would be up to you, the analyzer, to point out this move and associate it with a rhetorical strategy.

 When writers misuse Logos, Pathos, or Ethos, arguments can be weakened

Above, we defined and described what logos, pathos, and ethos are and why authors may use those strategies. Sometimes, using a combination of logical, pathetic, and ethical appeals leads to a sound, balanced, and persuasive argument. It is important to understand, though, that using rhetorical appeals does not always lead to a sound, balanced argument.

In fact, any of the appeals could be misused or overused. When that happens, arguments can be weakened.

To see what a misuse of logical appeals might consist of, see the next chapter,   Logical Fallacies.

To see how authors can overuse emotional appeals and turn-off their target audience, visit the following link from WritingCommons.org :   Fallacious Pathos . 

To see how ethos can be misused or used in a manner that may be misleading, visit the following link to WritingCommons.org :  Fallacious Ethos

A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing by Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Table of Contents

Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, logos – logos definition.

• CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by Emily Lane

What is Logos?

Logos refers to an appeal to logic as opposed to an appeal to pathos or ethos .

Here, logos does not refer to formal logic such as that practiced in mathematics, philosophy, or computer science. Rather, logos refers to the consistency and clarity of an argument as well as the logic of evidence and reasons. It plays a role as one of the main three modes of persuasion:

Utilizing these appeals to reason within our writing and daily life allows us to create more convincing arguments targeted to our audience .

Related Concepts: Evidence ; Inductive Order, Inductive Reasoning, Inductive Writing ; Deductive Order, Deductive Reasoning, Deductive Writing ; Reasoning – Guide to Reasoning with Evidence

In formal logic, in abstraction, the following is the case: if A is true and B is true and A is an instance of B, then the repercussions of B will always be true. The problem, however, is that this kind of logic doesn’t work for real-life situations. This is where the argument comes into play.

Formal logic would say that speeding, for example, is a violation of traffic laws. A repercussion of violating a traffic law is a ticket; therefore, every person who speeds gets a ticket. However, in real life, not in abstract theory, things aren’t that cut and dried. Most people would not agree that all speeders, in every circumstance, should receive a ticket. In an argument about a real-life situation, the audience needs particulars to make their decisions. Sometimes there’s an exception. Why was that person speeding? Well, if an eighteen-year-old is speeding to show off for his friends, then yes, most people would agree that he deserves a ticket. However, if a man is driving his pregnant wife to the hospital, then maybe he does not deserve the ticket. One could, and probably would, make the argument that he should not get a ticket.

How to Appeal to Logos?

Let’s examine how the appeal to logos would work in an argument for the speeding father-to-be.

Because arguments are based on values and beliefs as well as facts and evidence, it is logical that the argument must coincide with accepted values and beliefs.

What are enthymemes?

The enthymeme is the foundation of every argument.

Enthymemes have three parts:

• the unstated assumption that is provided by the audience.

All three of these textual elements must make sense to your audience in order for your argument to be considered logical. The claim of an argument for the father-to-be could be something like, “This man should not get a speeding ticket.” That’s it. The claim is pretty simple. It is your educated opinion on the matter. The reason would be something like “because his wife is in labor in the backseat.” So the two stated parts of your enthymeme would be, “This man should not get a speeding ticket because his wife is in labor in the backseat.” Now, this seems obviously logical to us; however, what is our underlying value, our unstated assumption about this argument? Most of us would probably agree that a hospital is a better place to give birth than a backseat. That is the third part of the enthymeme. Your audience must agree that your assumption is true in order for your argument to be considered logical. If your readers don’t have the same assumption, they are not going to see your logic. You must find an enthymeme that works for your audience. The pregnant wife’s enthymeme is fairly easy to see. In more volatile claims and reasons, the unstated assumptions can be trickier to identify and work out with your audience.

How do enthymemes Relate to Logos?

Reasons like “because his wife is in labor” are motivations for the driver’s actions, not evidence. Most audiences need facts. Evidence is the facts. Both reasons and evidence are used in appeals to logos ; however, reasons cannot be your only support. Evidence as to why the man should speed might include studies about the problems with births in difficult or dangerous circumstances, interviews with women who have given birth in automobiles, and infant mortality rates for births that do not occur in hospitals. As you can see, there are many different kinds of evidence you could provide for this argument.

Consistency means not changing the unstated or stated rules governing your argument. Consistency is essential to logic. Let us continue with the speeding example. If, for instance, you are arguing that the infant mortality rate is too high for babies born outside the hospital and that the father is required to speed for the safety of his unborn child, then you may not want to include evidence of the high infant mortality rate in car crashes. Although this information may be part of the infant mortality rate, it goes against the underlying assumption that speeding is acceptable because of the high risk of harming the baby if it is born in the backseat.

Why is Logos important?

So why should you care about logos? In your own writing, logos is important because it appeals to your readers’ intellect. It makes your readers feel smart. Logos is the part of the argument where you treat your audience like purely rational, “only the facts, ma’am” kind of people. Also, gaps, leaps, and inconsistencies in logic, no matter how well developed the other appeals may be, can tear apart an argument in short order. This is the same reason you cannot ignore logos in others’ arguments either. All the appeals are linked together; for instance, if you use as evidence an article that has leaps in logic, or relies only on authority and pathos , this article could damage your own ethos as an author . It is important to remember that all three appeals must be well developed and work together to make a good argument .

Logos Examples

As you now know, logos can be defined as a writer’s or speaker’s attempt to appeal to the logic or reason of their audience. Let’s look at some examples of logos that you might commonly find when reading texts of various media:

When a writer employs data or statistics within a text, you can probably assume that he or she is attempting to appeal to the logic and reason of the reader. For example, an argument in favor of keeping abortion legal may cite the May 2011 Pew Research poll that found 54 percent of Americans in favor of legal abortion. This figure makes a logical argument: abortion should be legal because the majority of Americans support it, and in a democracy, the majority makes the decisions.

Causal Statements

When you see an “if-then” statement, with credible supporting evidence, the writer is likely appealing to your reason. Consider an argument about lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18: a writer might suggest that, if the legal drinking age were 18, then people between 18 and 21 would be less likely to drive under the influence. If the writer offers evidence that the reason that some between the ages of 18 and 21 drive drunk is that they fear calling a friend or parent because they have illegally ingested alcohol, then this causal statement would be an appeal to a reader’s sense of reason.

Relevant Examples or Other Evidence

You might begin to think about logos as evidence that doesn’t involve an appeal to your emotions. Even expert testimony, which would certainly be an example of ethos, also could be an example of logos, depending on its content. For example, in a discussion about recent cuts in education funding, a statement from the Hillsborough County, Florida, the superintendent would be an appeal to authority. But if that statement contained a discussion of the number of teachers and classes that would have to be cut if the state were to reduce the district’s funding, the statement from the superintendent could also be an appeal to logic.

Fallacies of Logos

Appeal to Nature

Suggesting a certain behavior or action is normal/right because it is “natural.” This is a fallacious argument for two reasons: first, there are multiple, and often competing, ways to define “nature” and “natural.” Because there is no one way to define these terms, a writer cannot assume his or her reader thinks of “nature” in the same way he or she does. Second, we cannot assume that “unnatural” is the same as wrong or evil. We (humans) have made lots of amendments to how we live (e.g., wearing clothes, living indoors, farming) with great benefit.

Argument from Ignorance

Assuming something is true because it has not been proven false. In a court of law, a defendant is, by law, “innocent until proven guilty.” However, judges and jurors must hear testimonies from both sides and receive all facts in order to draw conclusions about the defendant’s guilt or innocence. It would be an argument from ignorance for a judge or juror to reach a verdict without hearing all of the necessary information.

Intentionally misrepresenting your opponent’s position by over-exaggerating or offering a caricature of his or her argument. It would be fallacious to claim to dispute an opponent’s argument by creating a superficially similar position and refuting that position (the “straw man”) instead of the actual argument. For example, “Feminists want to turn men into slaves.” This statement fails to accurately represent feminist motivations—which can be very diverse. Most feminists agree in their goal to ensure women’s equality with men. Conceptions of equality can vary among feminists, but characterizing them as men-haters detracts from their true motivations.

False Dilemma

Assuming that there are only two options when there are, in fact, more. For example, “We either cut Social Security, or we have a huge deficit.” There are many ways to resolve deficit problems, but this statement suggests there is only one.

Hasty Generalization

Drawing a broad conclusion based on a small minority. For instance, if you witnessed a car accident between two women drivers, it would be a hasty generalization to conclude that all women are bad drivers.

Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (With This, Therefore Because of This)

Confusing correlation with causation—that is, thinking that because two things happened simultaneously, then one must have caused the other. For example, “There has been an increase in both immigration and unemployment; therefore, immigrants are taking away American jobs.” This statement is fallacious because there is no evidence to suggest that immigration and unemployment are related to each other—other than that their rates increased simultaneously.

The Slippery Slope

The slippery slope argument is often a way to scare readers or listeners into taking (or not taking) a particular action (see “ Fallacious Pathos “). The slippery slope argument can also function as a false invocation of logic or reason in that it involves a causal statement that lacks evidence. For example, I might argue that if the drinking age were lowered from 21 to 18, vast numbers of college students would start drinking, which in turn would lead to alcohol poisoning, binge drinking, and even death. This conclusion requires evidence to connect the legality of drinking with overindulgence. In other words, it does not follow that college students would drink irresponsibly if given the opportunity to drink legally.

Brevity – Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence – How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow – How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity – Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style – The DNA of Powerful Writing

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15 Logos Examples

Logos is a rhetorical device that uses logic, reasoning, and factual evidence to support an argument or persuade an audience.

Logos refers to one of the three main technical means of persuasion in rhetoric. According to Aristotle, it is the means that has to do with the arguments themselves.

Aristotle claims that there are three technical means of persuasion:

“Now the proofs furnished by the speech are of three kinds. The first depends upon the moral character of the speaker, the second upon putting the hearer into a certain frame of mind, the third upon the speech itself, in so far as it proves or seems to prove” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ca. 367-322 B.C.E./1926, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 3).

Each of these corresponds to the three means of persuasion: 

• Ethos (Appeal to credibility) : Persuasion through establishing the character of the speaker.
• Pathos (Appeal to emotion) : Persuasion through putting the hearer into a certain frame of mind.
• Logos (Appeal to logic): Persuasion through proof or seeming proof.

For Aristotle, speech consists of three things: the speaker, the hearer, and the speech. These correspond to ethos, pathos, and logos , respectively. The latter is the subject of this article.

Definition of Logos

At its core, logos refers to the use of logic (or perceived logic) to persuade.

However, logos may be the most confusing of the three means of persuasion because the word has been used by different philosophers to mean different but related things.

• Heraclitus of Ephesus used the word logos to refer to something like the message that the world gives us (Graham, 2021).
• The sophists used the term to refer to discourse in general.
• Pyrrhonist skeptics used the term to refer to dogmatic accounts of debatable matters.
• The Stoics meant by it the generative principle of the universe.

I could list further examples, but for this article, Aristotle’s definition will suffice. 

Logos, in rhetoric, refers to persuasion through logical argumentation or its simulation (Keith & Lundberg, 2017).

As Aristotle writes,

“… persuasion is produced by the speech itself, when we establish the true or apparently true from the means of persuasion applicable to each individual subject.” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ca. 367-322 B.C.E./1926, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 6). 

Syllogisms, enthymemes, examples, and other arguments use logos to influence people’s thinking . Due to the structure of this persuasion tool, it is the only one that can directly argue for the speaker’s point of view. What Aristotle stresses over and over again is that deceptive or fallacious arguments can have a persuasive effect if the fallacy is concealed well enough.

Persuasion through logos requires only that the hearers think that something has been proven, whether it actually has been is a different matter. 

Logos Examples

• Scientific Research: Any form of scientific research is fundamentally grounded in logos, as it relies on empirical data, statistical analysis, and logical reasoning to draw conclusions. For example, if you were to present the scientific evidence to a consumer about why your product is the best, it may convince them to switch brand loyalty over to you.
• Legal Arguments: In court, attorneys use logos extensively when presenting evidence, citing precedents, or constructing logical arguments to persuade the judge or jury. Generally, it is expected that the jury be presented the best objective evidence in order for them to make an objective decision. However, at times, they will rely on pathos, and the judge’s job is often to curtail this if needed.
• Newspaper Editorials: Newspaper editorials often use logos to make a persuasive point, presenting facts, statistics, and logical analysis to support the writer’s viewpoint. Without facts and data, the readers my close the newspaper and dismiss the writer as simply engaging in hearsay.
• Referencing in Essays: In essays, we are often required to cite our sources. This is, in part, relying on ethos (appeal to credibility), but at the same time, it’s also allowing the reader to go ahead and check the primary data to ensure it’s correct.
• Financial Reports: Financial analysts use logos when they analyze data, financial statements, and market trends to provide investment advice. They know an investor wants to make the most evidence-based decision as possible with the data, so they need to present this evidence as clearly as possible.
• Medical Diagnosis: Doctors use logos when they diagnose patients by interpreting symptoms, medical histories, and test results to arrive at a logical conclusion. Without evidence, customers may distrust the doctor and refuse to follow the doctor’s advice.
• Speeches and Presentations: Speakers and debaters often use logos in their speeches or presentations to make their points more persuasive, providing evidence, statistics, and logical analysis to back up their arguments, with the intent of convincing the audience and winning the debate over the competitors (although, pathos is highly convincing in speeches as well).
• Instruction Manuals: Logos is used in instruction manuals for constructing furniture where a logical sequence of steps is provided to guide users in assembling a product or operating a piece of software. An instruction manual won’t say “if you feel like it,…” because this won’t get the job done – constructing the item!
• Funding Proposals: In making a funding pitch, proposals are often supported by logos in the form of cost-benefit analyses, case studies, and logical reasoning to convince others that their money will be in good hands.
• Problem-Solving: In a group’s blue skies brainstorming session or a problem-solving meeting, logos is used when the participants identify the problem, analyze the factors contributing to the problem, and propose logical solutions based on evidence and reasoning.
• Technological Innovations: When developing a new product or technology, engineers and designers use logos to analyze the needs of the market, create a logical design to meet those needs, and justify their decisions with reasoning and evidence. In fact, engineers need strong analytical skills and have to rely extensively on logos (rather than pathos or ethos) in their daily job roles.

Logos as Perceived Logic

Aristotle writes that even fallacious arguments are examples of logos, because they seem to prove something. In other words, logos isn’t just being logical , rather it’s attempting to appear logical .

Here are some examples:

• Straw Man Fallacy : This happens when an individual distorts, exaggerates, or misrepresents someone’s argument in order to make it easier to attack. For example, “My opponent believes in healthcare reform, he must want to give free healthcare to everyone.” Here, they are attempting to construct some logic that isn’t really there – they’re actually creating false facts to put forward a point of view!
• Slippery Slope Fallacy : This is an argument that suggests taking a minor action will lead to major and often ludicrous consequences. For example, “If we allow students to redo tests, they’ll want to redo homework, quizzes, and even final exams!” Here, the argument sounds like it could be logical, but draws a long bow and makes claims that something will happen, even though it may not (and probably won’t) actually come to pass.
• False Dichotomy Fallacy : This fallacy occurs when an argument presents only two options or sides when there may be more. For example, “You’re either with us, or against us.” Once the false dichotomy is constructed, logos can be used to convince people one perspective is better than the other, as if only the two exist.
• Hasty Generalization Fallacy : This happens when someone makes a broad conclusion based on a small or unrepresentative sample size. For example, “I met a rude person from City X, therefore everyone from City X must be rude.” Here, they are attempting to use logic – and their argument is ostensibly logical – but in reality, it (like the slippery slope) draws a long bow and is unlikely to actually be true.

Logos Strengths

• Appeal to rationality: For many people, the apparent rationality of a speech is its most important and persuasive part. Especially in academic settings where the orator cannot make themselves stand out through appeals to ethos and pathos, logos is often the most important part of the rhetorical triangle. 
• Trustworthiness : While pathos and ethos are often viewed with suspicion, there is no such negative stigma attached to logos. Appeals to emotion or personal authority may seem dishonest and manipulative, but arguments, unless fallacious, rarely seem so. 
• Counter arguments: Logos is the only mode of persuasion that can directly address objections because the evaluation of opposing views is itself a rational activity. 

Logos Weaknesses

• Subjective matters: In certain settings, logos can be far less persuasive than pathos and ethos. This is particularly evident in settings where there are no objective criteria for deciding if the speaker is right or wrong. 

See Also: The 5 Types of Rhetorical Situations

Aristotle. (1926). Rhetoric. In Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 22, translated by J. H. Freese. Harvard University Press. (Original work published ca. 367-322 B.C.E.) 

Hansen, H. (2020). Fallacies. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/fallacies/

Rapp, C. (2022). Aristotle’s Rhetoric. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/

Tio Gabunia (B.Arch, M.Arch)

Tio Gabunia is an academic writer and architect based in Tbilisi. He has studied architecture, design, and urban planning at the Georgian Technical University and the University of Lisbon. He has worked in these fields in Georgia, Portugal, and France. Most of Tio’s writings concern philosophy. Other writings include architecture, sociology, urban planning, and economics.

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Chris Drew (PhD)

This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.

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• Writing Tips

 Ethos, Logos, and Pathos – A Simple Guide

4-minute read

• 12th April 2023

Ethos, logos, and pathos are three essential components of persuasive communication . They’ve been used for centuries by great communicators to influence the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of their audiences. In this simple guide, we’ll take a closer look at these three components using examples from famous writing and speeches.

What Is Ethos?

Ethos is a persuasive appeal based on the credibility or character of the speaker or writer. It refers to the trustworthiness, expertise, or authority that they bring to the argument. It’s crucial in establishing the credibility of the speaker or writer and can be built in through a variety of means, such as reputation and sources, or language and tone.

How To Use Ethos

Ethos can be established through the speaker or writer’s reputation: if they are known for being knowledgeable, honest, and trustworthy, this can lend credibility to their argument. For example, in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. established his ethos by highlighting his role as a civil rights leader and his personal experience with racial injustice.

Another way you can achieve ethos in speech or writing is through the use of credible sources. For example, Rachel Carson established ethos in her book Silent Spring by providing extensive scientific evidence to support her argument that pesticides were harming the environment.

Finally, ethos can be accomplished through the use of language and tone . Using a professional and respectful tone can create the impression of credibility and authority. For instance, in his second inaugural address, President Abraham Lincoln employed ethos by using a solemn, reflective tone to convey the gravity of the situation.

What Is Logos?

Logos is a persuasive appeal based on logic and reasoning. It refers to the use of evidence and logical arguments to support the speaker or writer’s position.

How To Use Logos

One way you can implement logos in your speech or writing is through the use of statistics and data. When writing, or constructing a speech, try to incorporate reliable and credible stats or figures to strengthen your claims or argument and persuade your audience.

You can also employ examples and analogies to achieve logos. These can make your argument more accessible and understandable to a wider audience. For example, in his book The Tipping Point , Malcolm Gladwell uses the example of “the broken windows” theory to illustrate his argument that small changes can have a big impact on social behavior.

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Finally, logos can be established through the use of logical arguments . To ensure you have a logical argument, you should have a clear statement with definitions, examples, and evidence to support it. For instance, in his essay “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau made a logical argument that individuals have a moral obligation to resist unjust laws.

What Is Pathos?

Pathos is a persuasive appeal based on emotion. It refers to the use of language and imagery that elicits an emotional response. Pathos can be used to create a sense of urgency, inspire empathy, or evoke a particular mood.

How To Use Pathos

Vivid imagery is a great way in which a writer or speaker can implement pathos. Using descriptive language to paint a picture in your audience’s mind is a powerful and persuasive skill. For example, in his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Wilfred Owen used vivid imagery to describe the horrors of war and elicit an emotional response in his readers.

Pathos can also be accomplished by using personal anecdotes. The power of storytelling is an invaluable skill for any writer or speaker because it creates rapport and an emotional connection with your audience. For example, in her TED talk “The Power of Vulnerability,” Brene Brown shares personal stories about her struggles with shame and vulnerability to inspire empathy and connection with her audience.

Finally, pathos can be established through the use of rhetorical questions and appeals to shared values. A good example can be heard in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. He poses his biggest question to his audience (and the world): “Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history?” In response to this rhetorical question, he beautifully tries to persuade the audience to work together toward a common goal, stating, “It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity.”

Ethos, logos, and pathos are powerful tools for persuasive speech and writing. By establishing credibility, using logical arguments, and appealing to emotion, speakers and writers can influence the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of their audiences. When used effectively, these elements can help to create meaningful and lasting change in the world.

Interested in learning how to elevate your writing with more literary devices? Check our other articles .

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25 Elements of an Argument: Logos, Ethos, Pathos, and Kairos

Core Curriculum and Christina Frasier

Learning Objectives

• Define argument in an academic context.
• Understand an author’s argumentative strategy and its effectiveness.
• Learn about the different devices for an argument.

Identifying and analyzing arguments

When writers and speakers want to persuade their audiences, they have a series of tools or strategies at their disposal. These strategies can be called modes of persuasion. Because of their effectiveness, these modes have been employed by countless people over thousands of years. Among them were the ancient Greeks, who recognized that speakers frequently appealed to logic, to the speaker’s own character, and to the audience’s emotions, while paying special attention to the timing of an argument. The Greeks labeled these efforts, respectively, as logos, ethos, pathos, and kairos.

1. What is an argument?

An  argument  is a systematic attempt to support a debatable  claim  using  logical  explanations and reliable  evidence . The thesis or claim is debatable because an audience may not find it readily believable without supporting evidence. Stating a debatable claim alone is not sufficient for an argument, however. The author must also explain her reasoning and offer adequate and appropriate examples or data or other forms of evidence to support the claim.

2. How do I identify an author’s argument?

Writers and speakers often state their argument as part of their introduction. In this opening to a piece on children’s beauty pageants by J. Salzano (2013), her main claim is made in the final sentence:

When most people think of normal activities for a six year-old girl, they picture a sea full of Barbie dolls, coloring books and dress up clothes … Popular shows such as “Toddlers and Tiaras”, which revolves around exaggerated filming of child pageantry shows America one narrow view of what the pageant world is all about …The media distorts how society views pageants but they can be beneficial because they give children contestants useful life lessons and they can be viewed on the same positive level as other popular competitive sports.

In journalistic writing, it’s also common to find the argument in the title, as in the article “Pet ownership in college can be a full time job” (Banus, 2013).

Sometimes the argument is made in the conclusion. Sometimes, however, an argument is never distilled into one or two sentences. In that case, it’s up to the audience to decide what argument is being made based on the sum of all the claims the author makes.

3. What is an effective argument?

An effective argument supports a main claim—that is, a thesis—with a set of supporting claims. These key supporting ideas often are stated as topic sentences in body paragraphs. Each stage of the argument—each key supporting idea—is illustrated with logical and reliable evidence.

An effective argument also shows a clear understanding of differing viewpoints and does its best to acknowledge competing claims.

For example, in her argument in support of Oregon’s “pay it forward” college tuition plan, B. Dudley (2013) agrees with one set of opponents when she suggests that “we certainly agree that both the state and federal governments’ contributions to higher education need to be increased.” Yet she concludes that “pay it forward” is a good interim plan by arguing that “those are battles that will be fought out over several years. In the meantime, our students need and deserve a chance to get a college education without incurring enormous unrelenting debt.”

Dudley has not only acknowledged a set of opponents here, she has agreed that their argument is the best long-term goal.

4. What is an ineffective argument?

An argument may be ineffective for a variety of reasons. Maybe the “argument” does not make a claim that an academic audience would disagree with. For example, “smoking is bad for you” might be considered an ineffective argument, not because it is wrong but because your audience already knows this.

An argument also might be ineffective because the support for it is nonexistent. Paragraphs may make claim after claim while offering little to no evidence or illustration. Another reason that an argument may be ineffective is that the support is not logical. An example of an illogical argument would be that global warming doesn’t exist because it snowed in the Arizona desert last winter. An argument also may be ineffective if the evidence is unreliable, as would be the case if an author used material from a corporation’s website to praise or defend the company.

An argument also might be ineffective because it is too broad, which makes the claim difficult to “prove” in a short essay. Claims that gun control is needed/not needed or that abortion should be legal/illegal are examples of assertions that may lead to overly broad—and therefore ineffective—arguments.

Making a broad claim about an ongoing debate also makes it difficult to bring new perspectives to the discussion.

5. What is logos?

An appeal to logos relies upon on reason or logic. If an author appeals to logos, she is implying that her argument is convincing because it is rational (i.e., it “makes sense”).

The following logos-based appeal from Grist Magazine’s website aims to convince readers that they should do something about global warming:

• every year since 1992 has been warmer than 1992;
• the ten hottest years on record occurred in the last 15;
• every year since 1976 has been warmer than 1976;
• the 20 hottest years on record occurred in the last 25;
• every year since 1956 has been warmer than 1956; and
• every year since 1917 has been warmer than 1917.

(Beck, 2006)

Ideally, appeals to logos stand on their own, regardless of who is speaking and without the need to appeal to emotions.

6.  How do I recognize and evaluate logos in an argument?

While authors are free to draw on any of the three modes of persuasion, most academic arguments are grounded in logic, the careful use of reasoning, and evidence.

To determine whether a logos-based appeal is effective, ask the following questions:

• How rational are the author’s claims? Are they logical?
• Does the author have enough information to support his argument? Is the information sufficient ?
• Is the author’s information typical , or is it so unusual that it really can’t be used to suggest that the claims in the argument are generally true?
• How reliable are the author’s facts? Is his information accurate ?
• Does the information the author is including actually have any bearing on his claims? Is the information relevant ?

When you ask whether the author’s information is sufficient , typical , accurate, and relevant , you are applying the STAR criteria: S ufficiency, T ypicality, A ccuracy, and R elevance.

7. What is ethos?

An appeal to ethos emphasizes the character of the author or speaker. If an author appeals to his ethos, he is suggesting that an audience should believe his claims because he is honest, trustworthy, and knowledgeable.

If the writer (or his publisher) emphasizes his authority or qualifications, or if he appeals to a shared sense of morality, he is making an appeal to his ethos.  A student writer might bolster his ethos by listing an author’s credentials:

Raghu Murtugudde is executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Forecasting System at the University of Maryland Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) and a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science. ( LiveScience, 2013)

This statement of Murtugudde’s credentials is a rather overt appeal to his ethos, but there are many subtler versions of such appeals. A writer bolsters her ethos by presenting her papers in error-free prose, with no formatting anomalies. A speaker increases his ethos by dressing suitably and using style and tone appropriate to his audience. Both writers and speakers bolster their ethos by being knowledgeable and fair.

8. How do I recognize and evaluate ethos in an argument?

To determine whether an ethos-based appeal is effective, ask the following questions:

• How knowledgeable is the author about her topic?
• Is the author employing a confident, authoritative tone in her writing?
• Is the author using reliable sources?
• Has the author cited her sources accurately?
• Does the author acknowledge the existence of other points of view?
• Should the author be using other modes of appeal along with ethos, or is her argument primarily ethos-based?
• Has the author proofread her work?

9. What is pathos?

An appeal to pathos uses emotion to persuade. If an author appeals to pathos, she is counting on an emotional response (pity, compassion, anger, fear, excitement, nostalgia, among others) to bring the reader/listener over to her side.

The following is a pathos-based appeal from the trailer for Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth meant to convince viewers that they should do something about global warming (and, of course, watch the movie):

The Arctic is experiencing faster melting. If this [Arctic ice] were to go, sea level worldwide would go up 20 feet. . . . Here’s Manhattan. The World Trade Center Memorial would be underwater. Think of the impact of a couple hundred thousand refugees and then imagine 100 million.  . . . We have to act together to solve this global crisis. Our ability to live is what is at stake. (Gore, 2007)

Gore’s statement about the World Trade Center Memorial clearly appeals to our emotions. After all, he could have chosen countless other landmarks in the country, but he chose the site commemorating the loss of several thousand innocent civilians from an act of terrorism. We might assume, then, that his primary goal is to instill a sense of grief, fear, and outrage.

10. How do I recognize and evaluate pathos in an argument?

To determine whether a pathos-based appeal is effective, ask the following questions :

• How vivid and engaging is the author’s language?
• What kinds of anecdotes or stories does the author include that seem intended to appeal to his reader’s emotions?
• Should the author be using other modes of appeal along with pathos, or is his argument primarily pathos-based?

11.  What is the rhetorical triangle?

The rhetorical triangle is a term used to describe the three major components of a communication situation:  the author, the audience, and the text. The author is the speaker or writer who produces the text, the audience is the listener or reader who receives the text, and the text is the set of words and/or images that is transmitted (or communicated) between the two parties (i.e., the author and the audience).

You can visualize this relationship like this:

   Audience

Author                   Text

The three points of the rhetorical triangle reflect and influence each other. For example, a speaker who is advocating for a new sports team on campus will present himself differently and argue different points depending upon whether he is making his case to a group of students or to the Radford University Board of Visitors. Good communicators know that a change in any one of the three elements of the rhetorical triangle will affect the other two elements.

12. How are logos, ethos, and pathos related to the rhetorical triangle?

Logos, ethos, and pathos can be paired with the three points of the rhetorical triangle.  Logos relies upon the rational qualities of the text or message to convince the reader/listener; ethos emphasizes the qualities of the author; and pathos draws on the emotional response of the audience.

You can visualize the relationship like this:

Audience (Pathos)

Author (Ethos)     Text (Logos)

While it is helpful to recognize the relationship between logos, ethos, and pathos and the three points of the rhetorical triangle, it is also important to note that actual communication situations are more complicated. For example, a speaker at a funeral might begin to cry as he relates a story of the deceased, thus bringing his audience to tears. It would be inappropriate, in this instance, to associate pathos only with the audience.

13. What is kairos?  

When an author employs kairos, she recognizes the timeliness of an issue, addresses a subject or point at an appropriate time, and/or provides examples that reflect a particular cultural moment. If an author uses kairos, she is likely addressing a current event or pressing issue or she has organized her claims in an appropriate and effective manner.

For example,  Tareg Hajj’s 2013 essay “The Grading Dispute at Radford University” addresses the issue of adding a plus and minus to final grades given at Radford University. Hajj was a freshman in the first undergraduate class to enter under the new grading system, and emotions were high regarding the changes that academic year. While the issue seems settled and perhaps uninteresting now, it was kairotic in its time.

When the a controversy moves past its kairotic window of relevance, we call the argument or discussion moot. Arguments can be become moot when the issue is resolved.

Some arguments leave the public consciousness for a while, only to resurface later. An example this would be the ongoing and changing nature of debates focusing on climate change.

14. How do I recognize and evaluate kairos in an argument? 

To determine whether a written argument or claim is kairotic, ask the following questions:

• How current or relevant is the issue and/or the evidence?
• Where and/or when is the argument being made?
• Are points and/or illustrations ordered effectively? (Do claims build upon one another? Does each appear at the right moment?)

15. How can logos, ethos, pathos, and kairos work together?

It is important to note that one passage or even statement might draw on more than one appeal. The passage above from Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth certainly is designed to evoke emotion, but it also relies on observations of the increasing speed of melting in the Arctic. The word “inconvenient” provides a nod to kairos and the timing of the argument.

The following example from economists Gernot Wagner and Martin L. Weitzman uses appeals to logos, ethos, and pathos and shows an awareness of kairos:

What is scarier still is the uncertainty about the truly extreme outcomes [of climate change]. Our own calculations estimate that there is a roughly 5 percent to 10 percent chance that the eventual average temperature could be 6 degrees Celsius higher [than pre-industrial levels], rather than 3. What this would mean is outside anyone’s imagination, perhaps even Dante’s. (Wagner & Weitzman, 2013; brackets added)

Wagner and Weitzman refer to their “own calculations” (ethos) about the percent chance that temperature increases would double original expectations (logos). They then invoke the poet Dante Alighieri, whose Inferno describes the torments of Hell in hauntingly vivid fashion (pathos). Their attention to kairos is also signalled by the opening phrase “[w]hat is scarier still,” indicating that the reader has been given some less scary scenarios in order to prepare them for this more terrifying piece of evidence.

It is important not only to recognize the use of the different appeals, but also to evaluate their effectiveness. In addition, it’s important to recognize that they might not always be easy to separate; notice that in the example above, logos, ethos, pathos, and kairos are all present in two sentences. Further, “what is scarier still” works to both appeal to pathos and to indicate the writer’s awareness of the right time to present each bit of information. To what extent are you convinced by the different modes of persuasion? To what extent should you be?

References for Approaches to Written Argument

Banus, S. (2013 , April 17). Pet ownership in college can be a full time job.  The Tartan . Retrieved from http://www.rutartan.com/wordpress/?p=5498

Beck, C.  (2006, October 31).  One record year is not global warming – Luckily, there are plenty more years to consider. Grist . Retrieved from http://grist.org/climate-energy/one-record-year-is-not-global-warming/

Dudley, B. (2013, July 10). A desperate measure for desperate times.  New York Times . Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/07/09/study-nowpay-later/desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures

Murtugudde, R. (2013, November 27). Climate change needs an elephant whisperer. LiveScience . Retrieved from www.livescience.com/41578-climate-change-needs-communicators.html

Salzano, J. (2013, April 10). Glitter and glamour: Inside children beauty pageants. The Tartan .Retrieved from www.rutartan.com/wordpress/?p=5459

Wagner, G., & M. Weitzman. (2013, October 10). Inconvenient uncertainties. The New York Times . Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/opinion/inconvenient-uncertainties.html.

Adapted from Radford University Core Handbook , by Core Curriculum,  Public Domain

This work ( Elements of an Argument: Logos, Ethos, Pathos, and Kairos by Core Curriculum and Christina Frasier) is free of known copyright restrictions.

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Modes of Persuasion: Logos

Logos or the appeal to logic, means to convince an audience by use of logic or reason.

To use logos would be to cite facts and statistics, historical and literal analogies, and citing certain authorities on a subject. Logos is the Greek word for “word,” however the true definition goes beyond that, and can be most closely described as “the word or that by which the inward thought is expressed" and, "the inward thought itself" ( 1 ). The word “logic” is derived from logos.

Logos can be developed by using advanced, theoretical or abstract language, citing facts (very important), using historical and literal analogies, and by constructing logical arguments.

Logos in Academic Writing

In academic writing, a writer uses logos by supporting his or her thesis with evidence from credible sources and by clearly and logically arranging his or her argument. Evidence can be facts, statistics, historical references, scientific findings, or even literary allusions. All evidence should be true and from credible sources. Sources should also be relevant, properly cited, and in most cases current.

The objective of academic writing is to compel readers to buy into a thesis by making that thesis easy to comprehend and accept. If a paper presents an argument that is confusing or illogical, readers will not find it convincing; therefore, academic writing must flow and avoid logical fallacies. Gaps or leaps in logic will diminish a piece’s logos, as will generalizations or broad statements supported by little evidence. 

Logos in academic writing also depends heavily on audience awareness. Addressing readers’ concerns with logical solutions and directly refuting their counter arguments are effective ways to include logos and convince an audience to accept a thesis. 

Logos in Advertising 

Advertisers use logos to convince people to invest money and/or time into a product, service, event, person, or organization. The purpose of an advertisement is to get people to do something that will ultimately benefit the advertiser, and logos is an important tool advertisers use to reach their target audiences and achieve their marketing goals.

Logos is commonly used in advertisements having to do with nutrition, money, performance, or politics, which can all be shown with numbers. Think calories, financial returns, miles per gallon, employment rates, etc. Numbers and statistics are compelling ways advertisers use logos to convince people to buy what they’re selling.  

Another common way advertisers use logos is by presenting an “if/then” argument. By using convincing images and/or language, many ads lead consumers to believe that if they purchase a product or service, then they will have more fulfilling lives or be more attractive, successful people; if they do what the ad suggests, then they will solve a problem the ad has convinced them they have.  

Take a look at the Popchips ad below for an example of logos in print advertising. 

By presenting nutritional facts and using a logical comparison, Popchips uses logos to show that their chips are better for consumers than their competitors’ chips. The visual aspect of the ad also appeals to the audience’s sense of logic, because who wouldn’t want a bigger stack of chips? This ad uses a common form of logos with a “more bang for your buck” strategy that works well not only in advertisements for food products but also in ads regarding money or performance. Finally, this ad presents the “if/then” strategy by arguing that if you buy Popchips, then you will be a healthier person. 

Logos in Public Speaking and Oral Presentations

Speakers and presenters use logos when they support their assertions with facts, cite credible sources, quote reliable experts, and present clear lines of reasoning. Arrangement is also important. By first establishing ethos, or likability and credibility, a speaker will then be able to effectively use logos. If the audience doesn’t trust the speaker, then the audience won’t likely trust the information presented by the speaker. 

Delivery is another important way speakers use logos. By speaking clearly and in a convincing tone, and by using timing and pauses to reinforce important facts and claims, a speaker can easily appeal to his or her audience. When delivering citations, effective speakers do so as naturally as possible by citing only what’s necessary; they don’t let citations overshadow the facts and interrupt the flow of the argument. 

Take a look at Graham Hill’s TED talk Less Stuff, More Happiness for an example of effective logos in public speaking:

Notice how Hill uses logos by presenting statistics to support his thesis, and he logically arranges his speech by using a convincing “cause and effect” strategy. Because Hill has already established himself as a credible researcher and public speaker, he doesn’t need to cite his sources; he would if he were a student or amateur. 

Hill’s delivery is particularly appealing and positively affects the impact of his logos. He is confident and obviously well-practiced, and he uses a clear tone and an easy-to-follow pace. Notice how he subtly pauses after important facts and assertions, and he consistently reinforces his thesis without being obnoxious or monotonous. 

Hill also uses logos by showing his audience how he personally applied his principles to his own life, which leads the audience to think, “If he can do it, then I can do it.” Hill shows that he understands his audience by presenting examples that are relatable and easy to understand.  At the end, he addresses his audience’s potential counter arguments or concerns and presents practical solutions. Finally, the images throughout the presentation reinforce the facts and make the argument seem logical and attainable. 

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Using Logos

Logos is a persuasive literary and rhetorical device used for logical reasoning, evidence, and factual information to support an argument or point of view.

Introduction

Table of Contents

Logos is a persuasive literary and rhetorical device used for logical reasoning, evidence, and factual information to support an argument or point of view. It appeals to the audience’s rational capability by presenting coherent and rational explanations, using statistics, research, and logical connections. Through the use of logos, writers, and speakers aim to convince their audience by demonstrating the validity of their claims.

How to Create Logos

Creating logos involves using logical reasoning, evidence, and arguments to persuade an audience. Here are some steps to help you create logos:

• Identify your audience: Understand who your target audience is. Recognize their characteristics, preferences, and potential biases. Tailor your logical arguments to resonate with their perspectives and values.
• Define your purpose: Clearly state the objective of your argument. Whether you aim to inform, convince, or persuade, a well-defined purpose guides your logical reasoning and evidence selection.
• Gather evidence: Collect relevant facts, statistics, research findings, and examples that support your argument. Strong evidence enhances the credibility of your logical appeals and reinforces your position.
• Structure your argument: Organize your thoughts logically. Present your ideas in a coherent manner, using a clear introduction, a well-structured body with supporting evidence, and a conclusive summary that restates your main points.
• Use clear and concise language: Employ language that is easily understandable to your audience. Avoid jargon or overly complex terms that could hinder comprehension. Clarity in your language reinforces the strength of your logical appeal.
• Address counterarguments: Anticipate potential objections or opposing viewpoints. Address these counterarguments logically and respectfully. Demonstrating awareness of alternative perspectives enhances the overall strength of your argument.
• Revise and edit: Review your argument critically. Ensure the logical flow of your reasoning, the relevance of your evidence, and the overall coherence of your message. Edit for grammar and clarity to eliminate any distractions from your logical appeals.

Remember, the creation of logos involves crafting a persuasive argument based on reason and evidence. By following these steps, you can develop a compelling case that appeals to your audience’s rational thinking and fosters understanding and agreement.

Benefits of Logos

• Enhances Credibility

Providing logical reasoning and well-supported arguments increases the credibility of your message. When you present facts and evidence in a clear and structured manner, your audience is more likely to trust your perspective and conclusions.

• Appeals to the Intellect

Using logos in communication appeals to the audience’s intellectual faculties. Logical arguments stimulate thinking and reasoning, engaging the audience’s analytical and rational side. This approach encourages them to process information critically and thoughtfully.

• Strengthens Critical Thinking

Logos prompts the audience to evaluate information objectively. By presenting a well-constructed logical argument, you challenge the audience to consider different viewpoints and assess evidence. This engagement with logic nurtures their critical thinking skills.

• Improves Communication

Incorporating logos in your communication makes your message more organized and coherent. A structured argument is easier for the audience to follow, ensuring that your ideas are conveyed clearly and effectively.

• Encourages Informed Decision-Making

Logos aids in presenting information and evidence necessary for making informed decisions. By relying on logical reasoning and credible data, you empower your audience to make choices based on a deeper understanding of the topic at hand. This contributes to sound decision-making processes.

Logos and Literary Theory

Suggested readings.

• Booth, Wayne C., et al. The Craft of Research . 4th ed., University of Chicago Press, 2016.
• Corbett, Edward P. J., and Robert J. Connors. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student . 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times . University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
• Lanham, Richard A. Analyzing Prose . 2nd ed., Continuum, 2003.
• Perelman, Chaim, and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation . University of Notre Dame Press, 1969.
• Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric . Oxford University Press, 1936.
• Rosenwasser, David, and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically . 8th ed., Cengage Learning, 2017.

More from Literary Devices:

• Internal Rhyme: A Poetic Device
• Hypophora: Using and Critiquing It
• Hypophora: A Rhetorical Device

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, ethos, pathos, logos, kairos: the modes of persuasion and how to use them.

General Education

Ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos all stem from rhetoric—that is, speaking and writing effectively. You might find the concepts in courses on rhetoric, psychology, English, or in just about any other field!

The concepts of ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos are also called the modes of persuasion, ethical strategies, or rhetorical appeals. They have a lot of different applications ranging from everyday interactions with others to big political speeches to effective advertising.

Read on to learn about what the modes of persuasion are, how they’re used, and how to identify them!

What Are the Modes of Persuasion?

As you might have guessed from the sound of the words, ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos go all the way back to ancient Greece. The concepts were introduced in Aristotle’s Rhetoric , a treatise on persuasion that approached rhetoric as an art, in the fourth century BCE.

Rhetoric was primarily concerned with ethos, pathos, and logos, but kairos, or the idea of using your words at the right time, was also an important feature of Aristotle’s teachings.

However, kairos was particularly interesting to the Sophists, a group of intellectuals who made their living teaching a variety of subjects. The Sophists stressed the importance of structuring rhetoric around the ideal time and place.

Together, all four concepts have become the modes of persuasion, though we typically focus on ethos, pathos, and logos.

What Is Ethos?

Though you may not have heard the term before, ‘ethos’ is a common concept. You can think of it as an appeal to authority or character—persuasive techniques using ethos will attempt to persuade you based on the speaker’s social standing or knowledge. The word ethos even comes from the Greek word for character.

An ethos-based argument will include a statement that makes use of the speaker or writer’s position and knowledge. For example, hearing the phrase, “As a doctor, I believe,” before an argument about physical health is more likely to sway you than hearing, “As a second-grade teacher, I believe.”

Likewise, celebrity endorsements can be incredibly effective in persuading people to do things . Many viewers aspire to be like their favorite celebrities, so when they appear in advertisements, they're more likely to buy whatever they're selling to be more like them. The same is true of social media influencers, whose partnerships with brands can have huge financial benefits for marketers .

In addition to authority figures and celebrities, according to Aristotle, we’re more likely to trust people who we perceive as having good sense, good morals, and goodwill —in other words, we trust people who are rational, fair, and kind. You don’t have to be famous to use ethos effectively; you just need whoever you’re persuading to perceive you as rational, moral, and kind.

What Is Pathos?

Pathos, which comes from the Greek word for suffering or experience, is rhetoric that appeals to emotion. The emotion appealed to can be a positive or negative one, but whatever it is, it should make people feel strongly as a means of getting them to agree or disagree.

For example, imagine someone asks you to donate to a cause, such as saving rainforests. If they just ask you to donate, you may or may not want to, depending on your previous views. But if they take the time to tell you a story about how many animals go extinct because of deforestation, or even about how their fundraising efforts have improved conditions in the rainforests, you may be more likely to donate because you’re emotionally involved.

But pathos isn’t just about creating emotion; it can also be about counteracting it. For example, imagine a teacher speaking to a group of angry children. The children are annoyed that they have to do schoolwork when they’d rather be outside. The teacher could admonish them for misbehaving, or, with rhetoric, he could change their minds.

Suppose that, instead of punishing them, the teacher instead tries to inspire calmness in them by putting on some soothing music and speaking in a more hushed voice. He could also try reminding them that if they get to work, the time will pass quicker and they’ll be able to go outside to play.

Aristotle outlines emotional dichotomies in Rhetoric . If an audience is experiencing one emotion and it’s necessary to your argument that they feel another, you can counterbalance the unwanted emotion with the desired one . The dichotomies, expanded upon after Aristotle, are :

• Anger/Calmness
• Friendship/Enmity
• Fear/Confidence
• Shame/Shamelessness
• Kindness/Unkindness
• Pity/Indignation
• Envy/Emulation

Note that these can work in either direction; it’s not just about swaying an audience from a negative emotion to a positive one. 

However, changing an audience's emotion based on false or misleading information is often seen as manipulation rather than persuasion. Getting into the hows and whys requires a dive into the ethics of rhetoric , but suffice to say that when you attempt to deceive an audience, that is manipulation.

If you really want to get an audience fired up about something, you can inspire righteous anger, which may or may not be manipulation. If somebody is offended that you’ve asked them for something, you can try making them feel sorry for you by turning indignation into pity— that’s manipulation.

What Is Logos?

Logos comes from a Greek word of multiple meanings, including “ground,” “speech,” and “reason.” In rhetoric, it specifically refers to having a sense of logic to your persuasion; logos-based rhetoric is founded in logic and reason rather than emotion, authority, or personality.

A logic-based argument appeals to a person’s sense of reason— good logos-based rhetoric will persuade people because the argument is well-reasoned and based in fact. There are two common approaches to logos: deductive and inductive arguments.

Deductive arguments build on statements to reach a conclusion —in effect, the conclusion is reached in reverse. A common method is to propose multiple true statements which are combined to reach a conclusion, such as the classic method of proving that Socrates is mortal.

All men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates must be mortal.

That’s not really a case that needs to be argued, but we can apply the same framework to other arguments as well. For example, we need energy to live. Food gives the body energy. Therefore, we need food to live.  

All of this is based on things we can prove, and results in a conclusion that is true , not just theorized. Deductive reasoning works on the assumption that A = B, B = C, so therefore A = C. But this also supposes that all the information is true, which is not always the case.

Sometimes the conclusions you reach with deductive reasoning can be valid, as in the reasoning makes sense, but the conclusion may not be necessarily true. If we return to the Socrates argument, we could propose that:

All men eat apples. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates must eat apples.

The problem is that we can’t prove that all men eat apples —some do, some don’t. Some might eat an apple once but never again. But based on our arguments, the conclusion that Socrates must eat apples is valid.

A strong deductive argument for logos-based reasoning will be composed of provable facts that can reach a provable conclusion. However, a valid but not entirely sound argument can also be effective—but be wary of shifting from persuasion to manipulation!

Another approach to logos-based rhetoric is inductive reasoning, which, unlike deductive reasoning, results in a probable argument rather than a definite one. That doesn’t mean that it is less effective—many scientific concepts we accept as truth are inductive theories simply because we cannot travel back in time and prove them— but rather that inductive reasoning is based on eliminating the impossible and ending in an argument that is based in sound logic and fact, but that may not necessarily be provable.

For example, all people with a cough have a cold. Kelly has a cough. Therefore, Kelly likely has a cold.

Our conclusion is likely , but not absolute. It’s possible that Kelly doesn’t have a cold—not because she doesn't have a cough, but because there are other possible causes, such as having allergies or having just breathed in some dust. The conclusion that she has a cold is likely based on data, but not absolute.

Another example would be that Kelly picks her nose. Kelly is a woman, therefore all women must pick their nose.

Inductive reasoning is based on generalizations. The first example, in which Kelly likely has a cold, makes sense because it’s based on something provable—that a sampling of people who have a cough have colds—and followed up with a likely conclusion. In the second example, this is a less sensible conclusion because it’s based on extrapolation from a single reference point.

If we reverse the claim and say that all women pick their noses, and Kelly is a woman, therefore Kelly must pick her nose, that would be more sound logic. Still not necessarily true—not all women pick their noses—but a more sound example of inductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning can still be incredibly effective in persuasion, provided that your information is well-reasoned. Inductive reasoning creates a hypothesis that can be tested; its conclusion is not necessarily true, but can be examined.

As always, be wary of venturing into manipulation, which is more likely to be based on erroneous or misleading facts.

What Is Kairos?

Kairos is the Greek word for the opportune moment, which is precisely what it means in rhetoric. According to this principle, the time in which an argument is deployed is as important as the argument itself. An argument at the wrong time or to the wrong audience will be wasted; to be effective, you must also consider when you are speaking and to whom.

In effect, kairos means choosing the correct rhetorical device to match the audience and space in which you’re attempting to persuade. If you wanted to persuade people to go vegetarian, the middle of a hot dog-eating contest is probably not the right time. Likewise, you’re probably not going to persuade a room of data-driven scientists of something by appealing to pathos or ethos; logos is probably your best bet.

In essence, kairos asks you to consider the context and atmosphere of the argument you’re making. How can you deploy your argument better considering time and space? Should you wait, or is time of the essence?

As Aristotle famously said, “Anybody can become angry—that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”

The goal of kairos is to achieve exactly that. Effective use of kairos strengthens your persuasion ability by considering how people are already feeling based on context. How can you influence or counteract that? Or maybe pathos isn’t the right approach—maybe cold hard facts, using logos, is more suited. Kairos works in conjunction with the other modes of persuasion to strengthen your argument, so as you’re putting a persuasive piece together, consider how and when it’ll be deployed!

How to Identify Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos

Understanding how the modes of persuasion work can make you better at identifying and picking them out. Not only is a better understanding of them useful for composing your own arguments, but it’s also beneficial when seeing other people’s arguments. When you understand how ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos work, you’re less susceptible to them.

Advertising is one of the places we see the modes of persuasion most often. Looking at each of these advertisements, you can see how they use each mode of persuasion to convince audiences to convince an audience of something.

Using celebrities is a classic example of ethos, which uses authority or recognition to convince an audience of something. In this case, celebrities like Michelle Obama, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Janelle Monáe discuss the importance of voting.

It doesn’t matter that they’re not politicians or political scientists; audiences find them appealing and genuine. When they speak of the importance of voting, audiences listen because they like what these figures have to say . If talented, famous people like this are taking the time to vote, it must be important!

Historians or those well-versed in politics might make different arguments about why audiences should vote, but in this case, the goal is to inspire people. When we see people we admire doing things, we want to do them too; hence the reason that ethos works so well.

ASPCA’s commercials are some of the most infamous examples of pathos in advertising. Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” plays over footage of abused animals in shelters, encouraging viewers to donate money to support the organization.

It’s not hard to understand why it works; both the song and the imagery are heartbreaking! You can’t help but feel sad when you see it, and that sadness, when followed up by a prompt to donate, encourages you to take immediate action.  And these ads are effective— the campaign raised millions of dollars for ASPCA .

By appealing to our emotions and making us feel sad, this advertisement encourages us to act. That’s a classic use of ethos—it influences our feelings through the one-two punch of sad music and imagery, encouraging us to perform the desired action.

In some cases, emotion and authority aren’t the right tactic. Logos often appears in tech advertisements, such as this one for the iPhone XS and XR.

Notice how the advertisement focuses on product shots and technological terms. Most audiences won’t know what an A12 bionic neural engine is, but it sounds impressive. Likewise, that “12 MPf/1.8 wide-angle lens, with larger, deeper 1.4 micron pixels” is pretty meaningless to most people, but the numbers suggest that this phone is something special because it uses scientific-sounding language.

It doesn’t matter whether audiences really understand what’s being said or not. What matters is that they feel confident that the ad is selling them something they need —in this case, impressive technological specifications that make this phone an improvement over others.

Kairos should ideally factor into all uses of the modes of persuasion, but timeliness can also be a big selling point. In this Christmas-themed M&Ms advertisement, the company uses timely humor to forge a connection between the holidays and M&Ms.

Because these commercials have been running for such a long time, there’s also a nostalgic attachment to them. Just as people look forward to new Budweiser advertisements during the Super Bowl, others look forward to seeing M&Ms or the Coca-Cola polar bear during the holidays.

Though this commercial doesn’t go out of its way to tell you the benefits of M&Ms, it does forge a connection between M&Ms and Christmas, encouraging people to purchase them around the holidays.

Examples of the Modes of Persuasion

Now that you’ve had some exposure to how ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos function and what they can do, you can test your ability to recognize them using the images below!

There are a few things to notice about this image:

• The anonymous figure
• The language
• The use of a statistic

Can you figure out which mode of persuasion this represents?

The fact that the figure is anonymous tells us it’s probably not ethos. While we might be influenced by a person who’s in shape, there’s not really an appeal here based on the person—they’re just an image to support the ad.

“DOMINATE” is a pretty loaded word, suggesting that this may have elements of pathos.

However, take a look at that statistic. Whether it’s true or not, a hard statistic like that suggests that this ad is using logos to appeal to viewers. You can draw out an argument from there—75% of users lose weight within weeks. You’re a user. Therefore, you will likely lose weight within weeks.

What do you notice about this image?

• The way the text frames the woman’s body
• The name of the perfume
• The color choice

What mode of persuasion is this?

Again, we don’t know who the model is, and perfume isn’t going to make us look like her, so we can count ethos out.

The ad seems pretty intent on making us look at certain things—the woman’s lips and chest in particular. What is it trying to make us feel?

“FORBIDDEN FRUIT” has a connotation of sensuality.

Red is a color commonly associated with passion.

When you combine the photo, the framing, the perfume name, and the color, you get a strong sense of sex appeal from the advertisement. This makes it an example of pathos—the ad is trying to make us feel a certain way . If we buy this perfume, maybe we would feel attractive, too.

How about this advertisement?

• A serious-looking photo
• Text promising “no more back pain”
• “Doctor recommended.”

Seeing a doctor might make you tempted to think the answer is logos, but there’s no appeal to logic here.

“No more back pain,” is a nice promise, but there’s no attempt to appeal to emotions, so it can’t be pathos.

What’s important in this image is the combination of the doctor in the image and the line “doctor recommended.” This doctor might not be famous, but he does have authority, making this an example of ethos.

Our confidence in this treatment grows because we trust that a doctor understands how to address back pain.

What mode of persuasion is this?  Think about:

• The framing

She does look fashionable and the ad mentions stylists, so it’s possible that this is ethos.

There are no statistics or arguments being made, so the answer probably isn’t logos.

Pathos is possible, but despite having a heavily made-up model, this ad is far less about sex appeal than the previous one.

But the text mentions a specific holiday—New Year’s—suggesting that this is kairos. Kairos can, and often should, be combined with all the modes of persuasion to be even more effective. In this case, the model’s appearance could suggest either ethos or pathos in addition to kairos. The message here is that you should act now, at the beginning of the year, to take advantage of the deal and to start the year off with a new style, much like the one the model is sporting.

Key Tips for Identifying Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos

Now that you know the difference between all the modes of persuasion, you’ll have a much easier time identifying them. If you run into trouble, you can always ask questions about what you’re seeing, hearing, or reading to understand what mode of persuasion it’s using.

#1: Is It Related to a Specific Time?

If the argument is based on a specific day or context, such as Valentine’s Day or appealing only to a select group of people, such as people with dogs, it’s more likely to be kairos.

#2: Does It Involve a Celebrity or Authority Figure?

Celebrities are often a dead giveaway that an argument is using ethos. But authority figures, such as doctors, dentists, or politicians, can also be used to appeal to ethos. Even regular, everyday people can work, particularly when combined with pathos, to appeal to you based on a mutual connection you have.

#3: Does It Involve Statistics?

Statistics are a huge clue that an argument is using logos. But logos can also just be a logical argument, such as that if plants need water, and it’s hard to remember to water them, you should buy an automatic plant waterer. It makes perfect sense, making you more likely to buy it, rather than changing your habits to remember to water your plants more frequently.

#4: Does It Influence Your Emotions?

If an argument tries to change your emotions, whether by making you sad, happy, angry, or something else entirely, it’s a good indicator that it’s using pathos. Sex appeal is one of the biggest examples of pathos in advertising, appearing everywhere from makeup ads to car commercials to hamburger advertisements.

What’s Next?

Need help understanding the historical context for The Great Gatsby to perfect your kairos-based argument?

You can always combine the modes of persuasion with literary devices to make your arguments even stronger!

Learn how to say "good morning" in Japanese ! Even if it's not a mode of persuasion, it's just good manners.

Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

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Learning Objectives

• Identify common persuasive strategies.
• Explain how speakers appeal to logos.

Persuasive Strategies

Do you think you are easily persuaded? If you are like most people, you aren’t swayed easily to change your mind about something. Persuasion is difficult because changing views often makes people feel like they were either not informed or ill-informed, which also means they have to admit they were wrong about something. We will learn about nine persuasive strategies that you can use to more effectively influence audience members’ beliefs, attitudes, and values. They are ethos, logos, pathos, positive motivation, negative motivation, cognitive dissonance, appeal to safety needs, appeal to social needs, and appeal to self-esteem needs. In this excerpt, we will learn about logos.

Ethos, Logos, and Pathos

Ethos, logos, and pathos were Aristotle’s three forms of rhetorical proof, meaning they were primary to his theories of persuasion.

Logos refers to the reasoning or logic of an argument. The presence of fallacies would obviously undermine a speaker’s appeal to logos. Speakers employ logos by presenting credible information as supporting material and verbally citing their sources during their speech. Using the guidelines from our earlier discussion of reasoning will also help a speaker create a rational appeal. Research shows that messages are more persuasive when arguments and their warrants are made explicit (Stiff & Mongeau, 2003). Carefully choosing supporting material that is verifiable, specific, and unbiased can help a speaker appeal to logos. Speakers can also appeal to logos by citing personal experience and providing the credentials and/or qualifications of sources of information (Cooper & Nothstine, 1996). Presenting a rational and logical argument is important, but speakers can be more effective persuaders if they bring in and refute counterarguments. The most effective persuasive messages are those that present two sides of an argument and refute the opposing side, followed by single argument messages, followed by messages that present counterarguments but do not refute them (Stiff & Mongeau, 2003). In short, by clearly showing an audience why one position is superior to another, speakers do not leave an audience to fill in the blanks of an argument, which could diminish the persuasive opportunity.

Speakers should strive to appeal to ethos, logos, and pathos within a speech. A speech full of facts and statistics appealing to logos would result in information overload. 

Review of Logos

• presenting factual, objective information that serves as reasons to support the argument;
• presenting a sufficient amount of relevant examples to support a proposition;
• deriving conclusions from known information; and
• using credible supporting material like expert testimony, definitions, statistics, and literal or historical analogies.

Review of Persuasive Strategies

• Logos. Evokes a rational, cognitive response from the audience.

“Getting Competent”

Identifying Persuasive Strategies in Mary Fisher’s “Whisper of AIDS” Speech

Mary Fisher’s speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, “A Whisper of AIDS,” is one of the most moving and powerful speeches of the past few decades. She uses, more than once, all the persuasive strategies discussed in this chapter. The video and transcript of her speech can be found on the  American Rhetoric website  (www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/maryfisher1992rnc.html). As you watch the speech, answer the following questions:

• Logos. List specific examples of how the speaker uses logic to persuade her audience.

Key Takeaways

• Logos refers to the reasoning or logic of an argument. Speakers appeal to logos by presenting factual objective information, using sound reasoning, and avoiding logical fallacies.

Cooper, M. D., and William L. Nothstine, Power Persuasion: Moving an Ancient Art into the Media Age (Greenwood, IN: Educational Video Group, 1996), 48.

Fletcher, L., How to Design and Deliver Speeches , 7th ed. (New York: Longman, 2001), 342.

Maslow, A. H., “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review 50 (1943): 370–96.

Stiff, J. B., and Paul A. Mongeau, Persuasive Communication , 2nd ed. (New York: Guilford Press, 2003), 105.

• Development

Ethos, Pathos & Logos: Definition and Examples of Persuasive Advertising Techniques (2023)

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• Ethos, Pathos & Logos
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E thos, pathos and logos are techniques of persuasion that form the rhetorical triangle. A compelling argument, sales pitch, speech, or commercial ideally uses elements of all three strategies. We’ll show you how to employ each of the techniques and present some awesome examples along the way.

Ethos, Pathos and Logos: How to Create Persuasive Ads

Ethos, Pathos, Logos, Definition

Persuasion in advertising.

What are persuasive advertising techniques? They're how you convince a buyer of your product through visuals.

You can thank Aristotle for inventing persuasive advertising techniques . More than 2,000 years ago, he categorized how rhetoric is used in arguments into three groups: ethos, pathos and logos.

This is also known as the the rhetorical triangle .

And we still depend on it today.

Ethos, pathos and logos are the three categories of persuasive advertising techniques.

Each category invokes a different appeal between speaker and audience.

Ethos calls upon the ethics, or what we'd call the values, of the speaker. Pathos elicits emotions in the audience. Finally, logos puts logic into play by using evidence and facts.

Good persuasive advertising technique is when you balance all three.

But using ethos, pathos and logos in commercials sometimes means featuring one advertising technique prominently.

ETHOS DEFINITION

What is ethos.

Ethos  is the persuasive technique that appeals to an audience by highlighting credibility. Ethos advertisement techniques invoke the superior “character” of a speaker, presenter, writer, or brand.

Ethos examples aim to convince the audience that the advertiser is reliable and ethical. It’s easier to make a decision when someone you respect signs off on it, right?

This is broadly the function of ethos in commercials.

When an esteemed public figure endorses a product, it validates it to the end consumer.

An ethos advertisement plays off the consumer’s respect for a given spokesperson.

Through that respect, the spokesperson appears convincing, authoritative and trustworthy enough to listen to. Of the types of persuasive techniques in advertising, ethos is best used to unlock trust.

USE OF ETHOS IN ADVERTISING

How is ethos used in advertising.

So what does ethos mean?

It’s all about credibility. Famous people enjoy a high status in our society. So they’re the ones selling products to us -- whether or not they have product-specific expertise.

Example of ethos in advertising: Jennifer Aniston in a campaign for Glaceau Smart Water

For example, a recent Infiniti commercial featured Steph Curry. Even though he’s not known for his taste in vehicles, his stature validates the product.

This is ethos in commercials at work.

Example of ethos in commercials: Steph Curry in a recent spot for Infiniti.

Ethos rhetoric is also invoked to tie a brand to fundamental rights.

Brands build trust with their audience when they stand with an important cause. Anheuser-Busch illustrated this in their recent “Born the Hard Way” spot.

Ethos examples: This ethos advertisement by Anheuser-Busch underscores the value of multiculturalism.

This spot focuses on the origin story of Anheuser-Busch’s founders.

It shows Busch’s turbulent immigration from Germany to St. Louis, and speaks to the importance of immigration and multiculturalism.

This is how ethos rhetoric is used in advertising.

Of the many types of persuasive advertising techniques in advertising, ethos is best for playing up the strength of a brand or spokesperson’s character.

ETHOS EXAMPLE IN COMMERCIALS

Ethos advert case study.

If you want a really strong example of Ethos that also has a pretty funny meta quality to it, check out the shot list for this Heineken spot. See how many times they use foreground elements and OTS shots in this spot:

Ethos Examples • Shot Listed in StudioBinder

This Heineken commercial shows famous actor Benicio Del Toro at the bar enjoying a Heineken. Benicio chats about how both he, and Heineken, are world famous and instantly recognizable.

Then, a pair of goofy tourists spot him in the bar, and they call out for him to pose for a photo, but... they actually think he's Antonio Banderas.

Ethos Example in Heineken Commercial

This commercial not only uses ethos as a way to tie the celebrity of Benicio to the celebrity of Heineken, but it uses humor and the bold faced usage of ethos to make fun of the brand, people, and fame. 

THE "PLAIN FOLKS" PERSUASIVE ADVERTISING TECHNIQUE

How is "plain folks" used in ads.

Ethos rhetoric often employs imagery of everyday, ordinary people.

Known as the  Plain Folks persuasive advertising technique,  in this approach a spokesperson or brand appears as an Average Joe to feel common and sensible. In doing so, they appear concerned and cut from the same cloth as you.

This approach is very common in political ads. Consider the “Family Strong” ad from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Ethos Examples: Hillary Clinton underscores the “Plain Folks” definition in her campaign videos.

Despite her status and wealth, Clinton draws on imagery of her family and upbringing to make her feel more relatable. In this way, “Plain” folks is propaganda and also a logical fallacy .

But it’s also an effective and persuasive advertising technique.

Of the types of persuasive techniques in advertising, Plain Folks aligns your brand with the values of the everyday consumer.

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Pathos DEFINITION

What is pathos.

Pathos is persuasive technique that try to convince an audience through emotions. Pathos advertisement techniques appeal to the senses, memory, nostalgia, or shared experience. Pathos examples pull at the heartstrings and make the audience feel.

A quick way to appeal to a viewer’s emotions? A cute animal. A devastated family. A love story. Overcoming great odds. An inspirational song and imagery. A good zinger. 

Learn More Logos Ethos and Pathos

Comparing other techniques.

There are many types of rhetorical strategies. To get a full picure on how they work together, or when to use which rhetorical strategies, explore the full guide below.

EVERYTHING ABOUT Rhetorical appeals

Basics & terminology, appeal to credibility , appeal to emotion, appeal to logic, appeal to purpose, appeal to timeliness.

Each of these rhetorical strategies can be effective in its own way. When combined, their potential effects grow exponentially. To fully understand the power of persusaion, these are the tools you need.

Emotions create responses and, in our increasingly consumer-driven culture, the response is to buy something. Pathos appeals to an audience’s basic emotions like joy, fear, and envy. All are easily triggered in many ways.

So what is pathos?

Well, it's a model enjoying a refreshing Coke. Or a frustrated infomercial character desperate for a better remedy. And "tired" of the "same old blah-blah-blah."

The many different pathos advertisement examples not only evoke your feelings but anticipate your responses too. If you want to explore pathos in advertising, language is the best place to start.

Because the words we hear and read  trigger specific feelings . Positive words conjure feelings of love, excitement and wonder.

What is pathos? Cutting to the emotional core, really.

Look at how General Mills and Cheerios achieved this in their “Good Goes Round” campaign.

Example of pathos: This Cheerios pathos advertisement injects good vibes with positive words

We see sunshine, smiles and bright colors while we hear the words “good goes around.”

It invites positivity and encourages us to associate Cheerios accordingly.

On the other hand, pathos advertisements can also employ unpleasant emotions like fear and worry just as effectively.

Pathos examples: this somber pathos advertisement says don’t let heart disease happen to you.

This ad by the British Heart Foundation underscores the dangers of heart disease. As the spot unfolds, you start to realize that the narrator suddenly died at her sister’s wedding.

Her tragic story encourages you to not let it happen to you.

Pathos examples: BMW warns against drinking and driving in this pathos advertisement example.

Pathos example in commercials, pathos advert case study.

If you want a really strong example of pathos is an advertisement, check out this shot list from a particularly emotional Zillow spot. Notice how the shots on the son are often singles and medium close-ups:

Pathos Examples  • Shot Listed in StudioBinder

This Zillow commercial shows a father and son who have just suffered the terrible loss of their wife/mother. The father tries to cheer his son up by finding a new home, one preferably near the boy's grandparents. 

The son seems disinterested, but then the father finds his son and the family dog looking up at the stars, one of which is particularly bright. The son decides that the star is his mother, looking down on him.

That gives the father an idea:

Pathos example in Zillow Commercial

The father searches on Zillow, finds a home, and buys it. We then learn that the home is not only close to the grandparents, but it also has a skylight in the son's room, allowing him to see his Mother's star at night.

This commercial uses the emotions of the father, the son, the grandparents, and of course the viewer to suggest that Zillow is the type of website that can balm grief through its functionality.

USE OF PATHOS IN ADVERTISING

The appeal of pathos in advertising.

Sex appeal is of course also hugely successful among the pathos advertising techniques. Open any  Cosmopolitan  magazine and you’ll find scantily clad models, muscular men and sexual innuendo.

Although the common expression “sex sells” has been debated, sexually provocative ads do leave a lasting impression. Mr. Clean , for example, spiced up their eponymous mascot for comedic effect.

Pathos Examples: This Mr. Clean pathos advertisement gave their mascot a sexy upgrade.

Their brawny Mr. Clean upgrade wears tight clothes and turns mopping the floor into something more... sensual?

Humor, patriotism and snob appeal are also all common in pathos advertisement examples. The pathos definition even extends to nostalgia and the strategic use of music in ads.

Pathos Examples: The pathos definition extends to evoking emotions with music ... even *NSYNC

The bandwagon advertising technique, what is the "bandwagon advertising".

“Bandwagon advertising” is commonly categorized under pathos advertisement examples. While it may sound unfamiliar, you're probably pretty familiar with it.

It creates that impression that using certain product will put you on the “winning team”. It adheres to the pathos definition because it plays off your fear... of being left out.

Old Spice used this in their “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” spot.

Bandwagon advertising: to be The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, you buy Old Spice.

In its comical way, it puts pressure on men to smell as good as the Old Spice Guy. Like the “Plain Folks” technique, Bandwagon advertising is a very popular form of propaganda.

Of the persuasive advertising techniques, “Bandwagon” puts your brand on the right side of popular opinion. Remember the "Be like Mike" Ads?

Pathos example: Talk about putting the consumer on the "winning team"

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LOGOS DEFINITION

What is logos.

Logos is the persuasive technique that aims to convince an audience by using logic and reason. Also called “the logical appeal,” logos examples in advertisement include the citation of statistics, facts, charts, and graphs.

Logos Examples: This Samsung ad puts the Logos persuasive advertising technique to work.

Ever told someone to “listen to reason” during an argument? This is what logos does. The best logos advertisement examples are when a speaker appeals to logic.

Statistics, surveys, facts, and historical data can make a product seem like a more reasonable decision. Whether the data is sound or not is another story...

LOGOS EXAMPLE IN COMMERCIALS

Logos advert case study.

If you want a really strong example of logos is an advertisement, check out this shot list from a recent Nissan Commercial. You'll notice how the angles and shot size change when the "ProPilot" system clicks on:

Logos Advertisment Examples  • Shot Listed in StudioBinder

This Nissan commercial shows a daughter and father driving on a highway. The daughter is about to drive past some scary construction, but then the father uses his sage like wisdom to instruct her to turn on the "ProPilot" system that Nissan now features in their cars.

Once the daughter does this, we see a Star Wars battle scene playing out in front of out eyes, and she becomes so distracted that she begin to veer off the road... but guess what? The "ProPilot" system saves her by auto-correcting the trajectory of the car based on the sensor system. 

So how is this logos? Well, the commercial places the daughter in a relatively common situation and uses the machine logic behind having a guided system in the car to keep your distracted children safe.

Now... is it logical that this Star Wars homage suggests the daughter reach out to use the force by using a guided machine? Of course not! That's the opposite of what Luke does in the movie. Is it logical for your kid to be scared of driving past construction at 40mph? Of course not!

Is there anything in this spot that is logical? The basic fact that young drivers get distracted, and the Nissan "ProPilot" system might just save their lives one day, well that is how you use logic to sell cars.

LOGOS TECHNIQUES

How is logos being used in advertising.

Technology advertisements use logos because their goal is to showcase cool new features. Consider the example of logos in Apple’s advertisement for the iPhone X:

A logos advertisement example: In Apple’s iPhone X spot, the features pop out at you.

In logos rhetoric, you have to the sell best reasons to buy your product..

How does Apple do that?

They have their new innovative features pop out at you. From durable glass to Face ID software. It effectively asks you why you would choose any phone but iPhone. Logos often use buzzwords to sell the product. 

What's a great example of this?

Food companies capitalizing on the rising demand for healthy choices.

Logos Examples: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter underscore organic and vegan offerings

This I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter ad hinges on the two words “organic” and “vegan" to prove the point that they’re “made with the goodness of plants.” Of the types of persuasive techniques in advertising, logos will build your brand as the most logical, functional and helpful option.

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Wrapping up ethos, pathos, logos

When browsing the many types of persuasive techniques in advertising, consider what your user needs from you. Then ideate on which technique can best fulfill that need.

As you’ve seen in these ethos, pathos and logos ads, the brand should guide how the persuasive advertising techniques are deployed. What is the company known for? What does it stand for? 

Hopefully you’ve found a few striking examples to inspire you. If so, create a free moodboard to capture the look and feel you’re going for. And be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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5.6: Identifying and Using Logos

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• Gabriel Winer & Elizabeth Wadell
• Berkeley City College & Laney College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)

What is logos?

An appeal to   logos, as you can guess from the word, is about logic—the writer sets up a solid structure of reasons with evidence. To use logos is to point out facts we can measure, count, and agree on, and convince our readers that because we agree on these facts, we therefore must agree on ideas that are bigger than the facts. We sometimes call this "building a case" for our position. Like the containers stacked on the ship in Figure 5.6.2, we carefully build a logical structure.

How do we look for logos as readers?

As a reader, to analyze the logos of a reading means we must carefully take apart the ideas and see if they work together like a math problem:

• Does the writer really support each reason with strong evidence?
• Do the reasons work together to support the writer’s main idea?
• Can we find any places where the logic falls apart?

How do we use logos as writers?

As a writer, to build logos is to build a case like a lawyer for your thesis so your reader can easily follow your reasoning and, if they don't already agree with you, might change their mind. To do this,

• Start from common ground—a position everyone can already agree with, or would at least pretend to agree with so they seem like a good person: for example, we all want a cleaner environment, even if we disagree about how to make it cleaner and which people should give up what to make it cleaner.
• Write a strong thesis statement that is narrow enough to defend.
• Write clear topic sentences for each body paragraph that state reasons your thesis is true, name areas of the thesis their paragraphs will explain, or set up concessions/counterarguments.
• Use clear connecting words to show relationships between ideas, mark which ideas are more specific than others, and show where you are changing perspectives.

What is a categorical syllogism?

A categorical syllogism is a way of forming a logical argument. Here’s an example:

• Petroleum products cause pollution.
• Polyester fabric is made from petroleum.
• Therefore, polyester fabric causes pollution.

We know intuitively that if 1 and 2 are both true, 3 also must be true.

Here's another example that goes beyond facts and makes a case for an action:

• Toxic chemicals should be kept out of the water.
• Textile factories in a particular town are releasing ammonia and nitrates into local rivers.
• Therefore, those factories should find a way to process their toxic waste without dumping it into the water.

The categorical part of categorical syllogism means you are grouping ideas in categories to make the case that if we can all agree on one big idea, and you show a smaller idea to be true, then we have to agree on a third idea.

Parts of a syllogism

• What should be true?
• What is something we all agree is right or wrong?
• What do we all want for our families or societies?

It’s helpful to state the major premise in your introduction paragraph between the hook and thesis, or in your conclusion paragraph, and/or in the explanation part after pieces of evidence, even if it seems really obvious. Stating the major premise reminds your reader that they agree with you on the foundation of your argument.

• Minor premise: a more specific claim that you will show to be true with evidence. You can think of your topic sentences as minor premises.
• Conclusion: in a syllogism, if both of the premises are true, then the conclusion has to be true.

Note: the term "conclusion" can be confusing because in a syllogism, the part we call a conclusion is actually the same logical part as what we call a thesis in an essay. In an essay, the thesis is usually stated in the introduction paragraph. These words explain the logical structure underneath your words, not the actual order of words in your essay.

This is the classic categorical syllogism Aristotle used as an example:

• Major premise : All humans are mortal (don’t live forever).
• Minor premise : All Greeks are humans.
• Conclusion: All Greeks are mortal.

Valid vs. true

A syllogism can be valid (the conclusion must be true based on the two premises) without being true:

• Major premise : All people who wear glasses have X-ray vision.
• Minor premise : Ahmed wears glasses.
• Conclusion: Ahmed has X-ray vision.

The major premise isn’t true, so the whole thing falls apart. If you take a logic or critical thinking class, you might see examples like this that demonstrate how a syllogism can be valid but not true .

A syllogism can also have three true statements without being valid:

• Major premise : Anyone who lives in Sacramento lives in California.
• Minor premise : Esme does not live in Sacramento.
• Conclusion: Therefore, Esme does not live in California.

If Esme in fact lives outside of California, this might be true. But she could live in another place in California besides Sacramento. The two premises do not work together to guarantee that the conclusion is true, so the syllogism is not valid.

The logic that forms the "bones" of an argumentative essay should be both valid and true .

Practice with syllogisms

Let's look at some examples of syllogisms that form the "bones" of arguments and guess the missing parts:

Finish the incomplete part in each set to make a valid syllogism:

1. Major premise : Governments are responsible for regulating fair wages.

Minor premise : The workers in the textile factories in Bangladesh that export clothing to the U.S. are not earning a living wage.

Conclusion: Therefore, the U.S. and Bangladeshi governments should step in to ____.

2. Major premise : To help change worker exploitation, we should use the strategy the workers in the situation are asking for.

Minor premise : In this case, the workers do not want U.S. consumers to ___ the company.

Conclusion : Therefore, if we want to help, we should use a different strategy besides boycotting.

3. Major premise : We can all agree that ___ is more important than temporary profits.

Minor premise : Retrofitting factory exhaust machinery costs money now, but reduces air pollution for years.

Conclusion: Factory owners should spend the money on retrofitting the exhaust machinery.

Finding deductive logic in a text

Now let's find the logical structure of a longer piece of writing:

Read this article and pay attention to the logical structure of the whole article and of the different parts.

• What is the major premise?
• What is the minor premise?
• What is the logical conclusion?

For suggested answers, see 5.12: Analyzing Arguments Answer Key

Reading from an online magazine: Untrustworthy Memories Make it Hard to Shop Ethically

Imagine a shopper, Sarah, who is concerned about child labor and knows about groups like the Fair Wear Foundation that certify which brands sell ethically produced clothing. Hours after learning that fashion giant H&M reportedly sells clothing made by children in risky workplaces in Burma, she goes shopping. Completely forgetting about what she just heard, she buys an H&M dress.

What happened? Sarah either forgot about that child labor allegation, or she mistakenly recalled that H&M was on Fair Wear’s list of ethical brands – which it isn’t. Either way, how could she make such an error?

We are interested in how actual purchasing can be different from consumers’ own values. Our research shows that even though most consumers want to buy ethically sourced items, it’s hard for them to heed these sentiments, especially when adhering to their sentiments requires remembering something.

Selective memories

It’s not easy to shop ethically in the U.S. Nearly all the clothing sold here is imported. Although not all imported clothing is made in exploitative workplaces, companies that demonstrably benefit from unfair and even dangerous labor practices abroad continue to flourish.

Prior consumer psychology research has shown that people dislike thinking about unethical issues associated with their purchases. When you buy a new sweater, you probably don’t want to contemplate the harsh reality that it might have been made by exploited workers. And you may be tempted to come up with rationalizations to avoid thinking much about these issues. In fact, consumers may do their best to remain ignorant about whether a product is ethical or not, simply to avoid the anguish they would experience if they were to find out.

Unethical amnesia

We wanted to learn what consumers would do if they had to face the truth. Perhaps they might just forget that truth. After all, memory is not a particularly accurate recording device. For example, recent psychological research suggests that people experience “unethical amnesia” – a tendency to forget when they have behaved unethically in the past. So would shoppers also prefer to forget when a company exploits workers or engages in other unethical actions? We predicted that they would.

In a series of studies described in an article published in the Journal of Consumer Research, we explored why consumers’ memories might fail them when it comes to recalling whether products are ethical. It turns out that there is a predictable pattern for what consumers are likely to remember (or forget) about the ethicality of products.

In general, we found that consumers are worse at remembering bad ethical information about a product, such as that it was produced with child labor or in a polluting manner, than they are at remembering good ethical information – such as that it was made with good labor practices and without much pollution. Our findings should trouble the many companies now vying for the ethical consumerism market and the people who buy those products.

Avoiding feeling torn

To test our hypothesis, we studied how well 236 undergraduates would remember manufacturing information about six wooden desks. We did not select any of the participants for these studies based on whether they did or did not see themselves as ethical consumers.

We told these students that half of the six brands of desks were made from wood sourced from endangered rainforests and that the rest came from wood sourced from sustainable tree farms. After they had several opportunities to study and memorize the descriptions, the participants completed unrelated tasks for approximately 20 minutes. Then we displayed only the desks’ brand names and asked the students to recall their descriptions.

The participants were significantly less likely to correctly remember when a desk was made with rainforest wood compared to when it was made with sustainable wood. They either did not remember the wood source at all or wrongly recalled that the desk was made from sustainable wood.

Did that suggest shoppers just don’t want to remember unpleasant information about brands? To find out, we looked into how accurately the students would remember other attributes of the desks, such as their prices. We found that they didn’t make the same kinds of errors.

People generally strive to act morally, which in this case would mean remembering whether products are ethically sourced or not and then presumably acting accordingly. However, people also do not want to feel bad or guilty. And no one enjoys feeling torn. The easiest way for conscientious shoppers to avoid this inner conflict is to yield to their consumerist whims by forgetting details that might trigger ethical concerns.

Do these jeans make me look unethical?

In another study, we had 402 adults participate in an online experiment. As part of a shopping task, this group, which averaged 38 years old and included slightly more women than men, read about a pair of jeans. Half of them saw jeans made by adults. The others saw jeans made by children.

Consistent with our other findings, people who saw the child-labor jeans were significantly less likely to remember this detail compared with people who had seen the jeans made by adults. Notably, participants who saw the child-labor jeans said they felt more uncomfortable. We determined that this desire to not feel uncomfortable again led participants to forget about the child labor detail.

I don’t remember and I feel fine

In another online experiment, we presented 341 adults (with the same demographic profile) with one of two scenarios.

Half of them read about a consumer who, when trying to recall a description of jeans they were interested in purchasing, forgot whether the jeans were ethically made. The other half read about a consumer who instead remembered whether the jeans were made ethically, but chose to ignore this information.

It turns out that participants judged consumers less harshly for buying jeans they forgot were made by children rather than when they remembered but ignored this information. So, maybe consumers forget when products are made unethically so they can buy what they want without feeling (as) guilty.

Reminding consumers

How can marketers help consumers make more ethical choices?

One possibility is to continually remind them, even at point of purchase, of their products’ ethical attributes. That is what companies such as Everlane, a clothing company that has built social responsibility into its business model, and the outdoor apparel giant Patagonia already do. Also, companies can concentrate on the bright side, describing how happy their well-paid workers are and how their contractors are good environmental stewards instead of pointing out the bad things their competitors do. Based on what we learned, that approach would make ethical consumers less likely to subconsciously dodge this issue.

How can consumers make more ethical choices?

For starters, they can forget about relying on their memories when they shop. They can use guides like the one Project Just has created to assess their next purchase, and they can also make notes to themselves about brands to avoid. The key is to realize our memories are not perfect and that shopping without a plan may lead us away from our values.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

Applying deductive logic

Now let's apply this to your own writing:

Apply this!

Consider an opinion piece you are reading or an argumentative essay you or a classmate are working on.

Identify the deductive logic in the form of a syllogism: what are the major premise, the minor premise(s), and the conclusion?

If you can't tell, it's possible that the writer has not made a strong argument.

If it is your writing, what can you add or change to make the logic stronger?

Licenses and attributions

Cc licensed content: original.

Authored by Gabriel Winer, Berkeley City College. License: CC BY NC.

CC Licensed Content: Previously Published

"Untrustworthy Memories Make it Hard to Shop Ethically" is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

Morning Rundown: Israel halts military leave after Iran threats, Trump special counsel rips judge request, and why Germany is being threatened with elephants

RFK Jr. calls Biden a greater threat to democracy than Trump

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr . said Monday that he sees President Joe Biden as more of a threat to democracy than presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump .

In an interview on CNN , Kennedy argued that Biden "has used the federal agencies to censor political speech," appearing to refer to a case before the Supreme Court that could affect the level of contact between government officials and social media companies regarding content removal.

Last month, a majority of Supreme Court justices appeared to be wary of arguments that the Biden administration was unlawfully telling social media platforms to take down problematic conduct.

“I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history, that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech ... to censor his opponent,” Kennedy said.

“I can say that because I just won a case in the federal court of appeals and now before that Supreme Court that shows that he started censoring,” Kennedy also said.

The Kennedy campaign did not directly respond to a question about the legal case he appeared to refer to.

Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist, has used social media to spread misinformation related to vaccines and Covid. The Children’s Health Defense group, an anti-vaccine group led by Kennedy, was kicked off Instagram and Facebook, both owned by Meta, in 2022 for spreading misinformation about vaccines and Covid.

The Democratic National Committee blasted Kennedy in a statement after the interview.

"With a straight face Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump because he was barred from pushing conspiracy theories online," DNC senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill said. "There is no comparison to summoning a mob to the Capitol and promising to be a dictator on day one."

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid to rest tonight any doubts that he’s a spoiler candidate by pushing his MAGA talking points in prime time," she added.

Cahill was a chief of staff for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, Kennedy’s uncle.

The Biden campaign deferred to the DNC when it was reached for comment.

Biden has made preserving democracy a cornerstone of his re-election campaign, juxtaposing his actions to protect democratic institutions with Trump's actions.

"Folks, but for all the threats posed to the country, the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy, and that’s not hyperbole," Biden said about Trump at a campaign event last week.

As Biden allies fear that Kennedy could siphon votes away from the president and help Trump return to the White House, several members of Kennedy's family have been vocal in their support for Biden and their criticism of RFK Jr.

Kennedy, like Trump, has a history of arguing that elections were "stolen."

During Monday's CNN interview, he reiterated a false claim that the 2000 and 2004 elections were "stolen."

Similarly, Trump has regularly made false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Rioters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have echoed his falsehoods as rationale for their behavior.

Megan Lebowitz is a politics reporter for NBC News.