Psychologie der Überzeugung

Abstract

Abstract The article focuses on the role of psychological topics in the efforts of persuasion. Even Aristoteles mentioned psychology as an important part of rhetoric, but the research results of social psychology has been neglected during the adaption of rhetoric in the modern age. Introducing topics of this field, the article discusses exemplarily ways that lead to conviction, and that have been explored and described by different psychologist, with a special focus on Robert Cialdini’s „weapons of influence“ in his Psychology of Persuasion. The integration of the insights of social psychologists could lead to a new coalescence of the rhetorica docens and the rhetorica utens, helping to raise practical rhetoric on a more ambitious level.