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Chapter 24: Motivational Appeals
Key Concepts
24-1 Recognize the emotional impact of your words.
24-2 Develop appeals to listeners’ needs.
24-3 Relate your speech to listener’s values.
Suggested Activities and Exercises
Motivational Appeals in Advertising
After breaking the class into small groups of four or five students, give each group an
advertisement that incorporates needs and values in order to motivate consumers to action. Each
group should discuss its assigned advertisement’s visual images as well as written text. The
groups should look for implicit as well as explicit motivational appeals. Each group should
discuss the following questions:
a. What is the purpose or goal of the advertisement?
After each group has worked with its individual advertisement, it should present its
advertisement and the results of its discussion to the entire class. Each group member should
Needs
Have students discuss how and why it is that each of the lower needs (24b) must be met before
the higher needs can be addressed. How would they apply this to a speech?
Examining Motivational Appeals in Editorials
Clip several editorials from recent opinion/editorial pages. Have students form small groups and
Unethical Use of Appeals
Show students examples of infomercials that contain questionable use(s) of emotional appeals.
Universality of Values
Have students look over the Key Point in 24c of the Compact Handbook. Have the students rank
Tests
Correct answers are marked with an asterisk. The places in the Compact Handbook where the
information was presented are shown in brackets.
True/False Questions
Multiple Choice Questions
8. According to Chow and Amir’s research on the universality of values, a striver values all of
the following except _____.
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9. A personal belief that a particular thing is basically good or bad is called _____.
Essay and Short Answer Questions
10. Assume that you are a president of a university and you are giving a speech to a group of
high school students. How might you appeal to needs and values in order to persuade your
audience to attend your university? [24a, b, c]