Ethical persuasion concerns the moral principles associated with a speaker's use of

persuasion Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term for Social influence, influence. Persuasion can influence a person's Belief, beliefs, Attitude (psychology), attitudes, Intention, intentions, Motivation, motivations, or Behavior, behaviours. ...

to influence an audience's

belief A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take i ...

s, attitudes,

intention Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''a ...

motivation Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-dire ...

s, or

behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...

s. An ethical speaker may endeavor to: #Explore the audience's viewpoint, #Explain the speaker's viewpoint, and #Create resolutions. The ethics of persuasion in professional media fields such as journalism have received some academic attention. Baker and Martinson present a five-part test which defines the five principles of

truth Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs ...

fulness,

authenticity Authenticity or authentic may refer to: * Authentication, the act of confirming the truth of an attribute Arts and entertainment * Authenticity in art, ways in which a work of art or an artistic performance may be considered authentic Music * A ...

respect Respect, also called esteem, is a positive feeling or action shown towards someone or something considered important or held in high esteem or regard. It conveys a sense of admiration for good or valuable qualities. It is also the process of ...

, equity, and social responsibility (i.e., the importance of the common good). Thus, the TARES test serves as a metric of a speaker's adherence to some ethical principles in professional persuasive correspondence. Fitzpatrick and Gauthier ask several questions of their own to evaluate the ethics of persuasion: # For what purpose is persuasion being employed? # Toward what choices and with what consequences for individuals is persuasion being used? # Does the persuasion contribute to or interfere with the audience's decision-making processes? Relatedly, the

ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

is concerned with a person's ability to resist the temptation of helping themselves by harming others. Another instance of unethical persuasion would be to use persuasion for personal gain without the knowledge of the audience.

References

Community building Human communication {{cultural-anthropology-stub