Appeal to Emotion Fallacy

By Yiler Huang

The Appeal to Emotion fallacy happens a lot in arguments. It is the situation in which someone uses more subjective and emotional arguments instead of arguing with logic. Two common emotions used in arguments are emotions such as empathy or anger. This is because empathy often makes us soften our argument out of feeling bad for other people, and anger can sometimes make us aggressive and prevents us from thinking logically. This fallacy is often used in areas like politics, advertising, or just casual arguments between friends and families. This is because these three areas often involve subjective and opinion based arguments, which makes this fallacy more effective since there is no objective evidence that proves one right or wrong.

One example of an advertisement that uses this fallacy is this commercial from Apple (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sMBhDv4sik&t=58s&ab_channel=HarryPiotr). It attempted to give people a sense of anticipation and hope about the products they are making by using encouraging quotes and emotional music, which should make people feel excited about their products and more convinced to purchase Apple computers.

Another example is this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeUX6LABCEA&t=29s&ab_channel=CarKeysUK) from the uk government. It attempts to make the audience empathize with the girl in the video brutally killed by a car, which should cause them to feel bad about speeding thus follow the traffic rules more strictly.

Appealing to emotions in arguments can be bad sometimes because it stops you from thinking logically and might make you make wrong decisions accidentally. It is important to realize it when people are trying to use this fallacy in arguments, so we can avoid being manipulated and think logically.