Steve: Appeal to Emotion Fallacy

By: steve-wang

The Appeal to Emotion Fallacy is where one attempts to persuade another by using emotions instead of logical arguments. Two emotions that are often used for this fallacy is anger and sympathy because they are extremely powerful emotions and can stop a person from thinking rationally and thinking logically. Appeal to Emotion Fallacy is often used in politics, marketing/advertising and, media. A reason the Appeal to Emotion Fallacy is often used in these areas might be because it is the strongest argument. For example, if someone is trying to convince a person to choose their product instead of another's. However, if their product is not fundamentally better and you will not benefit you to use their's instead of the another's. They will use emotions to manipulate you and stop you from thinking from thinking logically. One real life example, is old American cigarette ads like this. This ad gives off the impression you will more likely get a female partner if you smoke. It also tries to tell you that smoking will get more friends and be caught up with the times/ “trendy”. This ad takes advantage of people's fear of losing out and falling behind. They try to make people think other people can have friends, girlfriends, be cool and trendy and so can you if you use our cigarettes.

Another good example is this video ad for Super Bowl. It uses a dog as the main character and it makes you feel bad for the dog. When you feel bad and connected to the cute but pitiful dog, you will also remember the other aspects of foodball put into the ad.

We have to be careful so as to not fall to the Appeal to Emotion Fallacy because it can stop us from thinking logically and do stupid things.