Temple Grandin and her mastery of Logos, Pathos, and Ethos

Since my son's diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome, I have had an extensive hunger for information related to it and other areas of the Autism spectrum. Temple Grandin, has been a pioneer in understanding people in this spectrum and in helping others to better understand how Autistic people thing and perceive the world.

In her writing in the article "This issue we're thinking about..." she uses the persuasive techniques of Logos, Pathos, and Ethos to teach her audience about Autistic people and their perception of the world and also draws an emotional response from the non autistic people in the audience to want to learn more about this and to be active in their education about Autism.

Temple demonstrates  Ethos with the fact she has lived with Autism for her entire life and through her own understanding of it, she has a first hand ability to teach others about what it is like. She explains how she has never thought in words or ideas but instead see pictures in her head that she has associated with ideas. When Someone says horse, she sees numerous pictures of horses in her mind instead of just thinking of the word horse as many non-autistic people do.

Next she demonstrates Pathos by helping non-autistic people to put themselves in the shoes of an autistic person and experience the trials they have with innocuous situations or activities. Through helping to develop this connection and understanding between the non-autistic and autistic persons, she helps them to become more emotionally invested in Autism and the understanding of it. By forming this emotional connection to Autistic people, she helps to encourage people to become more proactive in their help for Autistic people and in their teaching them how to use this as more of a positive than negative effect in their lives.

Dr. Grandin uses Logos in her description of what it is like to live with Autism, thus helping people to go from once conclusion to the next to form their own personal understanding of what it is like to live with Autism. She uses logic and simple steps to change the way that people view the environment they are in to briefly see things as an autistic person does. She then takes this a step farther and helps them to learn how through seeing the world this way, how they can use this as a talent in their careers and future life choices to actually become better than the average person at some tasks. An example of this is in her description of Autistic people who are pattern thinking minds being more advanced in understanding of Geometry and mathematical patterns than the average non-autistic person.

Through Dr. Grandin's use of these three persuasion techniques, primarily Ethos and Pathos, she is able to help people not only learn about Autistic people and to put themselves in their shoes for a brief moment, but also instills a hunger for more information related to this field of study. If this interests you, I encourage you to read any of her numerous books, or watch the Temple Grandin story movie.