Patterns of Development

Pattern: Persuasion

When using the persuasion pattern of development, the goal or intent is to influence the audience. Tone is important to keep in mind when using persuasion, because alienating the audience with the improper tone would cause them to not be receptive to the ideas you are presenting. Knowing your audience will help to develop the correct tone to use, and also will help guide your use of evidence. After establishing credibility, ideas in a persuasion argument are presented logically in a way that is appealing to the audience. Appealing to the audience's emotions is also a useful tool when using persuasion.

Topic: Vaccinations

Using the persuasion pattern of development for arguing the benefits of vaccinations would be useful because there is bountiful evidence that vaccinations are safe and effective. People tend to get emotional in their personal reasons why they might think vaccinations are unsafe or dangerous, so appealing to that emotion with a calm and reassuring tone would be beneficial.

A drawback to using persuasion to argue the benefits of vaccinations could be using too much emotion. When an argument appears too emotionally-motivated, then it can seem irrational or biased. People who believe vaccinations are unsafe are avoiding what most people would consider to be factual science, so a logical persuasion argument might not have any effect on them as well.