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Ivan Martinez

Professor Beadle

English 115

20 September 2019

Strategic Writer

Writing has helped individuals communicate their ideas to a wider audience, a tool that is

very help if one knows how to use it properly. Knowing this, anyone can make an argument and

convince an audience to agree with his/her idea by using rhetorical strategies such as ethos,

credibility, logos, reasoning, and pathos, emotions. These strategies play a huge role in getting an

audience to agree with one thus, many authors use these strategies to get an audience’s attention.

In the articles “How Happy Are You and Why?”, “What Suffering Does”, and “Living with

Less. A Lot Less.”, Lyubomirsky, Brooks and Hill have tried to make an argument about

happiness while using the rhetorical strategies that have been mentioned before, respectively.

After seeing how they all used these strategies to make their point, a reader can conclude that

Sonja Lyubomirsky was most successful in presenting an argument because she presented

concrete statistical evidence from reliable sources and presented personal experiences to the

audience in order to get them to feel emotion. For these reasons, Lyubomirsky writing showed

more strength compared to Brooks and Hill’s work.

Looking at what made Lyubomirsky’s argument about happiness stronger, compared to

the other works, was that readers could note right away that Lyubomirsky is well informed about

the subject she’s discussing by referencing reliable sources to support the conclusion she made,

setting herself as a credible source to the reader. She demonstrated this best when she used the

evidence gathered from the “Twin study”, where researchers examined if the level of happiness

differ between two identical and fraternal twins, to support her claim that genes did have some

influence in how happy a person could be (Lyubomirsky 190). In this small section alone, she
sets a good impression for her credibility because she used reliable resources and by referencing
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their findings to support her argument, she used logic to win the audience’s attention. She

continued using research conducted by reliable individuals, such as the “New Zealand research”

which was conducted by Professor Avshalom Caspi from Harvard and his collaborators,

throughout her article to support her claims. Through these references, she builds a reputation of

being an author who knows a lot about her subject and that her work is well thought out, and

important thing many authors strive for.

Lyubomirsky wasn’t the only one who used research as evidence to support her claim.

Brooks also took a similar approach to support his argument. In his article, “What Suffering
Does”, he used historical figures to support his argument of how suffering allows individuals

find their purpose thus, allowing them to achieve happiness. He referenced Abraham Lincoln and

how he was able to find his calling during the Civil War (Brooks 286). He interprets this as a

demonstration of someone finding happiness when they find out that an individual can make a

difference during bad times (Brooks 286). This was strong evidence that he presented but it was

only one piece. He didn’t add more to make his argument stronger. He did show how this theme

has played out in that past but, it would have been better if he at least referenced more historical

figures to further prove his argument.

While Lyubomirsky and Brooks presented evidence to strengthen their arguments, Hill’s

evidence went on a tangent, defeating the whole purpose of using evidence. In his article,

“Living with Less. A Lot Less.”, he did reference researched conducted by a reliable source, but

it didn’t help strengthen his main argument. Hill was talking about America’s material

consumption and how its effecting people’s and the Earth’s health and showed evidence of that

by referencing the research done by researchers from UCLA but, it didn’t directly help show

how it’s affecting one’s happiness (Hill 310). His evidence went on a tangent and left his main

argument defenseless. He relied more on his personal experience to help support his argument, a

different method a writer could use to convince readers.

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Although many writers use evidence from reliable resources to support their argument to

win an audience over, others use a different approach involving emotion, another powerful too

that can help an author make an argument.

Lyubomirsky has used emotion to help her argument about happiness as well. In the

beginning of her article, she used personal accounts from individuals she interviewed for her

research to see how personal events have made these individuals the happiest people they are and

where’s there placed in the “Subjective Happiness Scale”, a numerical scale that measures one’s

happiness (Lyubomirsky 180-183). In their accounts, readers dived into their personal
background stories and learn that through the hardships the interviewees, Angele and Randy, had

gone through, they were able to persevere and find happiness at the end. These background

stories allowed the readers connect with the text through emotions and has helped Lyubomirsky

set up the stage for the arguments about what dictates a person’s level of happiness.

This wasn’t the only part of the text where she used pathos to get the audience’s

attention. After she was done with making her claims and supporting them with evidence, she

concluded her article by leaving the readers with a sense of hope. Referencing back at the “What

Determines Happiness” pie chart, a chart that divides the influence different components have

over one’s happiness, Lyubomirsky lets her readers know that happiness can still be achieved,

even if your genetics, one of the components that influence an individual’s happiness, are

playing against you (Lyubomirskym195-196). This gives readers who are find happiness a sense

of reassurance that they still can achieve happiness in their lives because they have control over

their actions, which can impact one’s happiness by 40% (Lyubomirsky 196).

The rhetorical strategy involving emotion didn’t only make an appearance in

Lyubomirsky work, it was also used by Hill’s article to help his argument about happiness. In his

work, he used his own personal experience of finding love in order to prove his argument about

happiness. He proposed that the individuals are able to achieve happiness if they stop being
blinded my materialistic needs and focused on creating memories and relationships with others

instead. He supported his claim when he opened up about the relationship he had with a woman
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and how with very little and her by his side, he was able to be the happiest person he’s ever been

(Hills 331). Although Hills was weak in involving evidence from reliable resources to support

his argument, he did succeed in this method. He was able to demonstrate that he was genuinely

happy with his girlfriend, traveling alongside her and was enjoying life not worrying much about

his materialistic wants. Seeing the author’s happy experience, readers can see that his argument

is valid because the outcomes are shown in the author’s personal life. His example was strong,

which helped his argument, but he relied heavily on that one example to support his argument. It

would have been better if he’d mentioned other examples from either his or other people’s
experience to strengthen his argument a bit more.

Hills relied on one personal experience to help support his idea, but he wasn’t the only

one who did so. Brooks used an “if” situation, where he comes up with probable situations, that

might have happened in someone’s life, to support his argument. He did so when he stated,

“Parent who’ve lost a child start foundation” (286 Brooks). Here, he played a scenario to his

audience in order to get the audience to get emotional and see that his argument might be indeed

true. It was strategic but it wasn’t as strong enough as Lyubomirsky’s examples. What made his

example weak, compared to Lyubomirsky’s, was that it was an “if’” situation. It would have

been stronger if he used an individual’s real experience in order to support his argument. It

would have been more authentic to the reader would have gotten them to feel more emotion

towards his example. If he’d done this, he’s example would’ve been stronger, just like

Lyubomirsky’s.

By reading these three articles, readers can see what makes a writer a good writer, and

would conclude that Lyubomirsky article is a perfect example of a good writer. She was able to

present argument effectively by using all rhetorical strategies, ethos, logos and pathos. She made

sure she showed her credibility over the topic of happiness by using evidence from reliable

resources, used logic and reasoning to justify her conclusions, and used emotion to get her
audience to support and interact with her text. With these strategies, she was able to deliver her
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strong argument to however comes across it. But who knows whether her writing is strong

enough to last through the test of time?

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Works Cited

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew Profit and

Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Marti, 2016, pp 284-287.

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew

Profit and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Marti, 2016, pp 308-313.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew

Profit and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Marti, 2016, pp179-197.