A sincere and moving speaker conveys their message with much greater strength and impact if they use their emotions, argued Lazarius and Folkman through the theory of cognitive appraisal. Yet, in the collective imagination, sharing one’s feelings is seen as a sign of weakness and lack of self-control. The speaker would discredit themselves by giving in to their feelings and would show impulsiveness rather than reflection. Thus, whether for professional or personal public speaking, one might think that a purely rational speech has a stronger propensity to get the audience to agree with its message. Through this article, we will explore the levers of emotion in a speech and reveal why they are so essential in messages, both professional and personal. It is the secret of great speakers; it will be yours by the end of this article.

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The ABCs of public speaking

Removing doubt and facilitating decision-making

If there were one theory reigning supreme in the world of eloquence, it would be Mehrabian’s “3V Theory.” Named after the American sociologist, born in Iran in 1939, this theory breaks down the impact of public speaking into three parts:

Based on a study of emotional messages on a female population, this theory illustrates the importance of nonverbal communication in a speech.

• Thus, 55% of your message’s impact comes from the visual component (posture, gestures, gaze, etc.).

• Next comes the vocal component, which accounts for 38% (silences, intonation, volume, etc.)

• Finally, the remaining 7 percent focuses on the verbal component (language register, the argumentation deployed, etc.)

One aspect cuts across these three components: emotion. Indeed, only emotion can have vocal, visual, and verbal impact. It is a matter of the lexicon, syntax, and phonetics of speech. It therefore appears essential to learn to integrate it into all your speeches.

At Seven, we run a communication workshop around this theory. After detailed feedback on each V, participants are invited to prepare a speech on a topic close to their hearts, highlighting these three parts of speech.

Emotions in political speech

The sequence is well known, commented on, sometimes mocked, yet it is revealing of the relationship we have with emotions today. On December 10, 2016, the presidential candidate fresh out of Bercy gets excited, arms raised, and carried away by the crowd’s fervor, shouts “Because it is our project.” Repeated at the time in many newspapers, Le Parisien emphasized the lyricism and force of conviction of the candidate during this Paris rally. Far from making this sequence the reason for the election of the 8th President of the Fifth Republic, it is rather the metonymy of the power of emotions in speeches. That is the whole point of analyzing political speeches to think about all forms of speaking: politicians are subject to constant judgment and criticism, making speech their only weapon to defend their ideas and convictions. Political speeches are therefore often revealing of an era and pioneering in rhetorical techniques.

Even back then, emotions were central to building touching and impactful speeches. Plato spoke of Pathos in his book Rhetoric. Pathos is the emotion a speaker manages to convey to their audience. In Greece, Cicero’s 14 speeches in The Philippics reveal that there is an argumentative pattern underlying the emotional register. That is to say, the structure of speech relies on pathos, on the evocation of emotions. Cicero develops an argumentative and plausible line of thought there, supported by the emotional register. Thus, from the very foundations of rhetoric, emotion played a leading role.

Why do emotions drive action?

Behind the idealized figure of the rational Human being who bases decisions solely on factual elements, contemporary sociology demonstrates that emotions play a major role in all our decision-making. For several decades now, and thanks to the work of Lazarus or Damasio, it has been highlighted that we make our decisions mostly through feelings and emotional impulses. Some people maintain that they are—and will remain—perfectly rational, but they succumb to a well-known bias in neuroscience: the self-serving bias. This is the tendency to attribute the merits of our positive decisions to ourselves and to evade responsibility when we make bad ones. Closing a prospect is the perfect example: when a business developer brings in a new client, it is obviously thanks to their hard work and negotiation finesse; conversely, when they fail, it is the context’s fault or the counterpart’s, who was not very nice anyway… In our functioning, and unconsciously, there is a tendency to claim credit for our successes and to shirk our failures. To connect this with emotions, a person attributes all the merits of their good decisions through the lens of reason alone, forgetting the major role of emotions in that success.

If we look more closely at neuroscience, emotions are useful and necessary for our decision-making. Darwin had already intuited this in his book The Expression of emotions in man and animal decisions (1872). Since then, contemporary sociology has highlighted the predominant place of emotions in our decisions and actions. Alain Damasio reveals this through his somatic marker theory (1994). He points out that to make all our decisions based on mathematical and analytical reasoning, our brain would need almost unlimited capacities, as it would have to retain a very high number of possible combinations. To remedy this, our memory is supported by emotional cues that guide our actions. Besides, don’t we use our emotions to judge whether our decisions are right? The expression “I feel I made a good decision” illustrates this perfectly.

Moreover, because perceived emotion is almost instantaneous, this recourse to emotional action allows us to act and react to thousands of requests and interactions per day. Without it, we could not live in our complex environments. Thus, it appears natural and essential to integrate an emotional register into all your speeches.

Another psychologist, this time Maltese, highlighted the place of emotions in our reflective framework in his work Six Thinking Hats (1985). In this book, he develops the theory of the six thinking hats. The red hat is the emotional hat. This hat makes us see the world through our feelings and sensations. Thus, at certain moments in our lives, we perceive our environment and are driven to action thanks to our emotions. This cognitive science theory is perfectly illustrated on social media through product placement. We want to go to the same places, buy the same clothes, the same products as the influencers we follow and like. In the same way, when the media raise the possibility of a product shortage, we tend to rush to buy it in stores—even when that possibility is unfounded.

At Seven, we have developed a training program based on Edward de Bono’s theory. Through practical cases, we study the communicator profile of each participant. We then materialize this workshop with communication glasses (in six colors, like De Bono’s hats). And unsurprisingly, the red glasses often stand out…

How to include emotions in your speeches?

It is by creating consistency between your ideas, your arguments, and the emotions you convey orally that you work on the congruence of your speech. Congruence implies consistency between the image projected by a speaker and the speech heard. Thus, with good congruence, you convey an impression of sincerity to your audience. This impression is the condition for their adherence to your message. Certainly, sincerity alone is not enough to convince, but without it, it is impossible to have a strong impact on your audience. You can work on this aspect through different techniques:

• Empathy

One use of our emotions when we think through an action that affects other people—that is, the majority of our decisions—is to anticipate the impact of our decision. We imagine and feel for the other person. In your speeches, this empathy gives your audience a sense of being considered. Phrases like “I perceive the disappointment my decision will cause”; “I know how much this measure causes fear among you…” will show the consideration you have for your interlocutors and will allow you to create adherence, impossible without emotion.

• Interiority

The issue of using emotions in a speech is one of accuracy. Indeed, resorting to false empathy and artificially expressed emotions will have the opposite effect from the one sought: you will be perceived as a manipulative speaker. One way to express emotions accurately is to talk about yourself. Through a personal story, you can make people feel emotions. The speech by director Agnès Jaoui for the Assises for parity in 2020 especially underscores this. In this imperfect, raw speech, yet marked by a shattering past, the primary power of emotions is revealed. To move, carry along, and unsettle the other. Here, speech is all the more touching when it is sincere and expresses interiority and memories through lived and felt sentiments.

Historical example of the importance of emotions

One of the most compelling examples of the importance of emotions in a speech is the debate around the abolition of the death penalty. Whether in 1908 with Raphaël Micheli, or in 1981 with Robert Badinter, debates in the Assembly around the two bills were heated and long. Many politicians spoke and confronted their emotions. In reality, when we focus on the pure substance of this law, the opposition is clear and comes down to the following question: what rational place do I grant to an individual’s existence in society? In its complexity, debates on the death penalty confront us with our own memories, our own interiority, and question our reaction if the defendant were our brother, our father, our son. They brush against feelings that are uniquely ours. Robert Badinter’s speech at the Assembly podium illustrates this perfectly: “The death penalty is contrary to what humanity for two thousand years has thought most highly of and dreamed most nobly of. It is contrary both to the spirit of Christianity and to the spirit of the Revolution.” This passage evokes the feeling generated by the hope carried by this text, the shame of past years spent sentencing men to death, and at the same time directly addresses our values. Robert Badinter demonstrated intelligent use of emotions in his positions in 1981, his speech delivered during the vote on the bill has remained in the annals as it spoke to everyone and marked history, far beyond the sole vote for abolition.

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Thus, quite clearly, emotions make it possible to give depth and impact to your speeches. Thanks to them, you can move your audience and convince them. That is the universal reach of emotions. More generally, using them in your speeches allows you to resonate with your audience’s values. Emotions are intimately linked to a vision and conception of reality, and intrinsically touch your audience’s values. Since values are a major part of individual identity, the use of emotions thus makes it possible to go beyond simple adherence to your speech and reach adherence of the heart and convictions. In doing so, your audience identifies with your speech. The case is therefore won. Your message will have been heard and your ideas will have been defended.