what is the role of rhetoric in influencing people's atitudes and beliefs?

Answer 1

Hey me again

Below is a clinical study resource in rhetoric...I have a couple common examples.
Home:
A child is raised by parents who continually refer to ethnics in a negative way and continually point out only the negative news that applies to certain groups. The child will grow up with these attitudes.
Office:
A worker gets along well with a co-worker but hears negative conversations by superiors about the co-worker and gets a "friendly" heads up that that person is not the best person to hang around in the office. So they distance themselves.
Yahoo Answers:
You have a particular answer to a question that you believe in but you see other answers sway a different direction. You either tend to sway your answer that way (to get the 10 points) or decide not to answer the question as to not hurt your "average."
Rhetoric is powerfull and is usually used in a negative form.
Social:
You are at a gathering and the group is discussing politics, you views are strong along with your beliefs, because so many others do not agree with you and tend to agree with the crowd you tend to soften your views in your conversation.
I guess that is why the old saying started, applying to being in a situation you are not comfortable or goes against what you are used to...."When in Rome..."

Source(s):

This portion of the Working Psychology website offers a brief introduction to a big topic: social influence, the modern, scientific study of persuasion, compliance, propaganda, "brainwashing," and the ethics that surround these issues. Although these topics aren't always simple (it is, after all, science), I've done my best to make this introduction interesting.
Social scientists attempt to support any assertion with facts. As empiricists, we don't guess, we test-- and the result of decades of testing, by thousands of scientists who study human behavior, has yielded a rich body of knowledge--facts!--on how and why people are persuaded by another person's arguments, or decide to comply with another person's request
....
We live in an environment dense with influence attempts. A large portion of the population makes a living simply getting others to comply with their requests. Conservative estimates suggest that a person will receive up to 400 persuasive appeals from marketers alone in the course of a single day. Whether a manager encouraging productivity, a policeman directing traffic, a salesperson closing a sale, or a president telling us we need to spend more money on social programs-- each of us is subjected to an uncountable number of influence attempts each day.

Since Aristotle recorded his principles of persuasion in Rhetoric, humans have attempted to define and refine the principles of successful influence. Persuasion has been studied as an art for most of human history.
http://www.workingpsychology.com/intro.h...
also:
Rhetoric

By Aristotle
Part 1

Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others. Ordinary people do this either at random or through practice and from acquired habit. Both ways being possible, the subject can plainly be handled systematically, for it is possible to inquire the reason why some speakers succeed through practice and others spontaneously; and every one will at once agree that such an inquiry is the function of an art.....
http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/mir...
Sorry for being so lengthy but this was really facinating to research