110 pages • 3 hours read
Jay HeinrichsThank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Index of Terms
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaPart 3, Chapters 17-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Defense”
Part 3, Chapter 17 Summary: “Know Whom to Trust: Persuasion Detectors”
The basic principles of ethos—disinterest, virtue, and practical wisdom—can help an audience assess a persuader’s level of sincerity and trustworthiness. Heinrichs devotes Chapter 17 to disinterest and virtue; Chapter 18 covers practical wisdom.
To assess a person’s disinterest, Heinrichs recommends “applying the needs test” (210). An argument starts with a persuader trying to determine an audience’s needs; manipulation comes into play when the persuader tries to convince their audience that their solution matches said needs. To prevent manipulation, an individual should look for disconnects between their own needs and those of the persuader. If there is a gap between needs, Heinrichs argues against trusting the persuader’s disinterest. Similarly, one should not trust a persuader if they fail to give a straightforward answer should one ask who benefits from their choice.
“Check[ing] the extremes” (210) enables one to assess a persuader’s virtue. Virtue “is a temporary, rhetorical condition—a state of character, not a permanent trait—and you can find it in the middle of the audience’s opinions, or the sweet spot between extreme ranges of a choice” (207). Simply put, a moderate choice is a virtuous choice. One way to measure a person’s virtue is through their ability to compromise, their ability to find a middle ground between extremes. Heinrichs also recommends listening to how someone discusses the middle ground. If they use extreme language to describe it, then they lack rhetorical virtue. A person also lacks virtue if they describe an extreme position as moderate.
Part 3, Chapter 18 Summary: “Find the Sweet Spot: More Persuasion Detectors”
Chapter 18 focuses on the third principle of ethos: practical wisdom. Individuals need to assess a persuader’s ability in order to make beneficial choices. There are three ways to do this—the first being to listen for “That depends” (210). A trustworthy persuader should use this phrase. “That depends” illustrates that the persuader matches advice to circumstances; they should share a comparable experience after “that depends.” Persuaders who are practically wise use examples from their own life. Comparable experience is easy to spot in politics, but more difficult to assess in business transactions. For these situations, Heinrichs recommends determining whether a salesperson received their information from company training or personal experience with a product. Finally, an individual needs to assess the persuader’s “sussing ability” (214): A trustworthy persuader “figures out what the audience really needs, and what the issue really is” (215).
Part 3, Chapter 19 Summary: “Deal with a Bully: Socrates’ Smile”
Bullies challenge others’ ethos by demeaning or interrupting them (often in front of an audience). To minimize or stop bullying in its many forms, people can use tools of persuasion. Heinrichs details four such tools.
The first tool is audience targeting. Just like persuasion is not about the persuader, bullying is not about the bully; the audience is still the most important player. Agents need to look for onlookers who might sympathize with them during a bullying experience. They then need to use this experience to enhance their ethos to said onlookers.
The second tool is ironic love. When an individual responds to a bully with a “loving, slightly pitying smile” (226), the latter will have a hard time responding.
The third tool is virtue pose, or being the better person. This entails calmly dealing with one’s bully and showing limited negative emotion. Heinrichs suggests inviting conversation with the bully in front of an audience.
The fourth and final tool is aggressive interest, which works especially well for political bullies. Individuals can respond to a political bully by pretending to be curious and respectfully asking them to provide details and sources. In doing so, the individual forces the bully to explain their position, which might even help the latter moderate their opinion since “unconsidered stances tend to be more extreme” (224).
Part 3, Chapters 17-19 Analysis
In Chapters 17-19, Heinrichs focuses on how to use tools of persuasion to spot manipulation and stop bullying. Disinterest is one of the easiest rhetoric tricks to spot. Heinrichs notes that “interest often lies close to the surface of a choice” (204). Politicians notoriously use this trick; they often pretend a selfish choice is grounded in disinterest. For example, Senator John Thune of South Dakota voted in favor of a railroad project that he financially benefited from prior to his election. He defended himself by saying, “If you start banning elected officials from using their working knowledge on behalf of constituents, I think it would greatly erode our representative form of government” (204). He switches issues in the middle of his argument (i.e., shifting the audience’s attention from his own deception), a tactic known as a red herring or the Chewbacca defense. A railroad extension might be a good choice for Senator Thune’s constituents, but he did not vote in favor of it out of selflessness. Constituents often fail to spot this deception, but Heinrichs aims to change this by persuading people to learn the art of persuasion.
Rhetoric can also help people evaluate strangers. Hiring managers can use ethos principles to evaluate candidates for a management position. In turn, applicants should demonstrate disinterest, virtue, and practical wisdom. They should note what they can do for the company, rather than what the company can do for them during the application process (caring). The personalities of applicant and company should match (cause). An applicant also needs to have the right experience and be able to use this experience to benefit the company (craft). Deviations from the ethos principles suggest a candidate is an ill fit. College admissions officers use this same criteria to evaluate prospective students. By understanding the evaluation process, students can better craft an essay that might hook an admissions officer—increasing their chances of being accepted by a college of their choosing.
Bullies often use rhetoric to try to “blow away” (222) people who disagree with them. The use of rhetoric for bullying is not a fallacy, but it does increase tribalism and disrupts social occasions. Rhetoric comprises persuading someone to one’s side through beliefs and expectations. To Heinrichs, bullying is “rhetoric at its worst” (222). Individuals cannot strike back at a bully. Instead, they need to use tools of persuasion (i.e., respectful questioning) to challenge their bully’s assumptions. Rhetoric enables dialogue between individuals with different perspectives—something especially necessary in today’s polarized climate.
