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The Importance of a Sympathetic Audience

It's important that you are able to create a sympathetic audience because a

sympathetic audience is:

More likely to listen to you
More likely to believe you

Will prove easier to address

Will seem less intimidating

One way that you can create a sympathetic audience is by helping them feel a certain

way. If you can help an audience associate good feelings with your ideas and
positions, then you will have an easier time persuading them because they will feel

more at ease and they will more readily identify with you. To do this, however, you

must identify what particular emotion in the given situation could prove helpful and
then you must perfect generating that emotion in the greater portion of your given

audience.

In addition to producing certain emotions, you must be able to manage them as well.

If an audience is too taken with particular types of emotion, it can complicate the

people's ability to think critically and creatively. Consequently, good communicators
can manage difficult emotions as well as they can produce persuasive ones.

Producing Emotions

To a certain degree, all people respond differently to different stimulus, which can
make establishing a sympathetic audience difficult. For example, as the student

might recall from our discussion about clothing, you never fully know how a

particular garment or color is going to affect a particular person. However, studies
have been conducted on people's general responses to certain colors, and examining

common usage can tell you something about the emotional effects of particular

words.

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