8.4 Creating Emotional Appeals

Perhaps this section should be called “Drawing Emotions Out,” since Part 1 of the Palette Principle says you can’t create an emotion in your audience out of thin air. Still, there are proven techniques for adding emotional impact to a message. One technique — telling stories — is covered in Chapter 11, and Chapter 10 discusses the importance of sensory language and vividness. Both techniques have the same effect of making things real for the audience and allowing them to imagine what it’s like to be in a particular situation. Here are other techniques to consider:

1. Make associations with something emotional. Chapter 6 looked at Pavlov’s experiment on dogs, and how easy it was to get dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell by associating that sound with food. Another point to make about that is: the dogs must have also felt happy about hearing that bell, because it connected to something they enjoyed. This is why Michelin Tires makes associations to babies in its ads — people may not have emotional reactions to tires, but they care about babies.
2. Appeal to identity. Why do Miami residents get excited about the Florida Panthers hockey team, even though not a single player comes from Miami? Because people care about their own city and state, at least if they feel that it’s part of their identity. Anything connected to a person’s sense of identity tends to create strong emotional reactions. This is why rock stars on a stadium tour always make a point of yelling out the name of the city they’re in, and if a talk show host mentions a particular state, anyone in the audience from that state is likely to hoot in response. In addition to geography, a person’s identity is often wrapped up in their race, ethnicity, family, gender and sexual orientation, generation, occupation, hobbies, or education. Positive discussions of any of those things are likely to bring up feelings of pride, hope, and excitement, and attacks will likely produce anger, shame, or fear.
3. Focus on the human scale. There’s an old expression: “One death is a tragedy; a thousand deaths is a statistic.” News outlets know this lesson so well that virtually every story about a large-scale earthquake or tornado begins by focusing on one person and what happened to them. Filmmakers likewise know that shows about large-scale events like a zombie apocalypse won’t grab viewers if that’s all the show is about; make it about a small number of survivors, and The Walking Dead is a hit. Why? Because viewers can put themselves in the shoes of the characters, and grow to care about these people as they learn more about them. If you’re giving a speech about prison reform, don’t make it about the entire penal system: make it about Wayne the inmate, and everyone will want to know what happens to him.
4. Allow yourself to feel the emotion, and let it come out. If that emotion is genuine, and listeners have that same “color” on their palette, it will resonate with them (they’ll be the piano humming back the note you are singing). If it’s a speech in front of a live audience, eye contact is obviously helpful. This requires vulnerability on your part, but the payoff is worth it; the people in your audience will be moved.
5. Use your voice. The human voice is a remarkably expressive instrument, and listeners respond powerfully to the emotion in someone else’s voice. One of Martin Luther King Jr.’s best skills was the use of his voice, and if you’ve ever heard a recording of one of his speeches, you can probably hear his voice in your head right now. [See Chapter 14 for guidelines on how to use your voice effectively in public speaking]. What about written messages? Even on paper, there are ways to “use your voice” (let your unique character show through), which is why I’ve included so much first person writing in a textbook.