Appeal to emotion

Cogito ergo sum
Logic and rhetoric

Key articles

* Logical fallacy
* Syllogism
* Argument

General logic

* Nemmeno sbagliato
* Science doesn't know everything
* Shill gambit
* Credentialism
* Lógica
* دوگانگی مرتن

Bad logic

* Poisoning the well
* Danth's Law
* Linking to authority
* Wronger than wrong
* Media was wrong before
* False dilemma

v \- t \- e

An appeal to emotion (Latin: argumentum ad passiones) (sometimes personal appeal or argumentum ad personam) is a logical fallacy that occurs when a debater attempts to win an argument by trying to get an emotional reaction from the opponent(s) and/or audience by eliciting (for example) fear or outrage. The appeal generally features the use of loaded language — concepts like religion, nationalism, and nostalgia being common favored topics, while homosexuality, drugs, and crime are popular disfavored ones. In debating terms, it is often effective as a rhetorical device. Still, it is dishonest as a logical argument, since it often appeals to listeners' prejudices instead of being a sober assessment of a situation.

Emotional appeal overlaps with other fallacies such as argumentum ad populum, appeal to consequences, appeal to shame, appeal to force, appeal to fear, and poisoning the well.

The appeal to emotion is an informal fallacy.

## Contents

* 1 Acceptable use
* 2 Examples
* 2.1 Animals
* 2.2 Autistic people
* 2.3 Children
* 2.4 Emotion-baiting
* 2.5 Veterans
* 3 See also
* 4 External links
* 5 References

## Acceptable use[edit]

There are times that appealing to people's emotions is acceptable. This is usually when attempting to motivate people rather than influence or alter their beliefs. Occasionally, this may still be unsound, particularly if the emotions being appealed to have little to do with the action the appellant intends to motivate.[1]

## Examples[edit]

### Animals[edit]

PETA's infamous "Holocaust on your plate" campaign was seen by many as an example of using one of the largest genocides in human history for little more than a cheap comparison in hopes of attempting to turn the public against chicken farming without making a rational argument.

As with children, cute animals override most people's reasoning. Even if the pictures of animal testing published by PETA are 50 years out of date, they still provoke an emotional response rather than a reasoned one when trying to assess cruelty in animal testing. This is also the reason PETA tried to rename fish "sea kittens", which resulted in the word getting the 2009 title of "Most Unnecessary Word of the year" by the American Dialect Society.

### Autistic people[edit]

"Think of the autistic people!" is the new "Think of the children!" in some bigoted spaces. TERFs and ace exclusionists love to claim that autistic people are somehow victims of transgender and asexual people (never mind the existence of trans and asexual autistics or autistic people telling them to knock it off[2]).

Unfortunately, using autistic people as a rhetorical prop often ends up infantilizing and speaking over them. The autistic community has fought hard to be taken seriously and be allowed self-determination. Reducing them to helpless childlike figures in your argument is pretty darn horrible.

Of course, there are legitimate cases where autistic people are being harmed (think Autism Speaks and ABA therapy), and encouraging people to empathize with autistics can be good. Many autistic adults can use social media to say, "X is hurting us." There's a vast difference between speaking in solidarity with them and speaking over them to use them as a tool against someone or some policy you don't like.

### Children[edit]

Helen Lovejoy in The Simpsons.

“”Won't somebody please think of the children?!

—Helen Lovejoy, The Simpsons

Children are more often than not toddled out as an appeal to emotion. From pictures of starving children to motivate people to give to charity to using them as an excuse to ban things that children shouldn't even be aware of (porn, for example), they are repeatedly paraded in front of audiences to appeal to their emotional protective instincts, often overriding anyone's sense of rationality. "For the children" or "think of the children" as emotional appeals have been used successfully in passing political motions such as Proposition Hate in California. More recently, conservatives have been pushing anti-trans bathroom laws to protect children from trans people (cis people never ever molest childrenDo You Believe That?). One case of a bill specifically for this emotional appeal is the Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, which would require ISPs to store and provide the government with backlogs of every user's online activity on demand. By titling it that way, it makes it easy to claim opponents are in favor of child pornography even if they're talking about the privacy implications and the $200 million burden it imposes on private ISPs.

### Emotion-baiting[edit]

See the main article on this topic: Pathos gambit

The ever-prevalent "hysterical woman" caricature is a particularly ironic form of emotional appeal (combined with poisoning the well), as it automatically dismisses the opponent's argument as being entirely based on it regardless of their actual argument, even more so as most perpetrators of this argument claim to be entirely rational. The target doesn't have to be female, but we all know being motivated by emotion is a female trait.

### Veterans[edit]

Since the advent of 9/11, appealing to veterans has become increasingly popular, particularly in the United States. One such famous example is the Colin Kaepernick National Anthem kneeling controversy. The argument successfully deflects the intended purpose of Kaepernick's kneeling (protesting police brutality and institutionalized racism) to claiming that kneeling was disrespectful to veterans who "fought and died for the flag". Which, in fact, helped to further solidify Kaepernick's complaints in the first place.

The problems with this are numerous. One is that it clearly appeals to emotion ("Think of the veterans!"). Another is that it is co-opting a social cause and attaching veterans to something that has nothing directly to do with them. One further is that it disregards civilians who likewise fought (and died) for civil rights, human rights, and/or "for their country".

## See also[edit]

* Post-truth

## External links[edit]

* Emotional Appeal, Fallacy Files
* The Personal Appeals Family, Bruce Thompson
* Appeals to Emotion and Desire, Atheism/Agnosticism About.com
* Your logical fallacy is appeal to emotion, YLFI
* Role Models – Hillary Clinton showing Donald Trump to be a bad influence on children.

## References[edit]

1. ↑ See the Fallacy Files for more info.
2. ↑ Tumblr post in which an autistic person tells exclusionists to stop fake defending autistics

v \- t \- e

Articles about logical fallacies

Informal fallacies: |  Appeal to tradition • Appeal to novelty • Appeal to nature • Argument from morality • Argumentum ad martyrdom • Big words • Certum est quia impossibile est • Morton's fork • Friend argument • Exception that proves the rule • Extended analogy • Hindsight bias • Race card • Moralistic fallacy • Release the data • Gish Gallop • Terrorism-baiting • Uncertainty tactic • Greece-baiting • Ham Hightail • Red-baiting • Gore's Law • Nazi analogies • Mistaking the map for the territory • Red herring • Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur • Presentism • Sunk cost • Two wrongs make a right • Flying carpet fallacy • My enemy's enemy • Appeal to ancient wisdom • Danth's Law • Argumentum ad lunam • Balance fallacy • Golden hammer • Loaded question • Escape to the future • Word magic • Spider-Man fallacy • Sanctioning the devil • Appeal to mystery • Informal fallacy • Common sense • Post-designation • Hyperbole • Relativist fallacy • Due diligence • Straw man • Good old days • Appeal to probability • Infinite regress • Circular reasoning • Media was wrong before • Is–ought problem • Ad iram • Just asking questions • Pink-baiting • Appeal to faith • Appeal to fear • Appeal to bias • Appeal to confidence • Appeal to consequences • Appeal to flattery • Appeal to gravity • Appeal to hate • Argument from omniscience • Argument from silence • Argumentum ad baculum • Argumentum ad fastidium • Association fallacy • Broken window fallacy • Category mistake • Confounding factor • Counterfactual fallacy • Courtier's Reply • Damning with faint praise • Definitional fallacies • Equivocation • Fallacy of accent • Fallacy of accident • Fallacy of amphiboly • Gambler's fallacy • Imprecision fallacy • Moving the goalposts • Nirvana fallacy • Overprecision • Pathos gambit • Pragmatic fallacy • Quote mining • Argumentum ad sarcina inserta • Science doesn't know everything • Slothful induction • Spotlight fallacy • Style over substance • Toupee fallacy • Genuine but insignificant cause • Argument from incredulity • Appeal to age • Argumentum ad nauseam • Phantom distinction • Appeal to common sense • Argumentum ad hysteria • Omnipotence paradox • Argument from etymology • Appeal to trauma • Countless counterfeits fallacy •
| Ad hoc: |  No True Scotsman • Moving the goalposts • Escape hatch • Handwave • Special pleading • Slothful induction • Nirvana fallacy • God of the gaps • PIDOOMA • Ad hoc • Tone argument •
| Arguments from ignorance: |  Science doesn't know everything • Argument from incredulity • Argument from silence • Toupee fallacy • Appeal to censorship • Science was wrong before • Holmesian fallacy • Argument from omniscience • Willful ignorance • Argument from ignorance •
| Causation fallacies: |  Post hoc, ergo propter hoc • Correlation does not imply causation • Wrong direction • Counterfactual fallacy • Regression fallacy • Gambler's fallacy • Denying the antecedent • Genuine but insignificant cause •
| Circular reasoning: |  Infinite regress • Argument by assertion • Argumentum ad dictionarium • Appeal to faith • Circular reasoning • Self-refuting idea •
| Emotional appeals: |  Appeal to fear • Appeal to confidence • Deepity • Argumentum ad baculum • Appeal to shame • Appeal to flattery • Tone argument • Appeal to money • Argumentum ad fastidium • Appeal to gravity • Appeal to consequences • Loaded language • Style over substance • Appeal to pity • Appeal to hate • Pathos gambit • Shaming • Degenerate • Abomination •
| Fallacies of ambiguity: |  Fallacy of accent • Equivocation • Fallacy of amphiboly • Quote mining • Fallacy of ambiguity • Moral equivalence • Scope fallacy • Suppressed correlative • Not as bad as • Etymology • Continuum fallacy • Wronger than wrong • Definitional fallacies • Code word • Phantom distinction •
Formal fallacies: |  Confusion of the inverse • Denying the antecedent • Non sequitur • Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise • Not even wrong • Chewbacca Defense • Affirming a disjunct • Illicit process • Four-term fallacy • Negative conclusion from affirmative premises • Fallacy fallacy • Substituting explanation for premise • Enthymeme • Syllogism • Formal fallacy • Existential assumption • Masked man fallacy • Self-refuting idea • Argument by gibberish • One single proof • Affirming the consequent • False dilemma • Conjunction fallacy •
Fallacious arguments: |  Bumblebee argument • Fatwa envy • Gotcha argument • Hoyle's fallacy • Intuition pump • Logic and Creation • Not Circular Reasoning • Peanut butter argument • Great Beethoven fallacy • Fallacy of unique founding conditions • Evil is the absence of God • Argument from first cause • How do you know? Were you there? • Argument from design • Argument from beauty • Appeal to nature • Solferino fallacy • Religious scientists • Nothing to hide • Argument from fine tuning • Creep shaming • "I used to be an atheist" • Atheism as a religion • Argumentum ad populum • Argument from morality • Anti-environmentalism • Appeal to bias • Apophasis • Argumentum ad nauseam • Appeal to censorship • Argumentum ad sarcina inserta • Blaming the victim • Bait-and-switch • Danth's Law • Chewbacca Defense • Canard • DARVO • Demonization • Escape hatch • Friend argument • Everyone is racist • Gish Gallop • Greece-baiting • Gore's Law • Ham Hightail • Just asking questions • Leading question • Loaded language • Linking to authority • Loaded question • Lying by omission • Motte and bailey • Nazi analogies • Moving the goalposts • One single proof • Pink-baiting • One-way hash argument • Pathos gambit • Quote mining • Poisoning the well • Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur • Race card • Red-baiting • Red herring • Release the data • Science was wrong before • Shill gambit • Straw man • Silent Majority • Uncertainty tactic • Style over substance • Terrorism-baiting • Weasel word • What's the harm (logical fallacy) • Whataboutism • Bullshit • Logical fallacy • Banana argument • Scapegoat • How come there are still monkeys? • Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white • Ontological argument • Omnipotence paradox • Presuppositionalism • Just a joke • Countless counterfeits fallacy •
Conditional fallacies: |  Slippery slope • What's the harm (logical fallacy) • Special pleading • Conditional fallacy • On the spot fallacy • Appeal to the minority • Argumentum ad populum • Galileo gambit • Professor of nothing •
| Genetic fallacies: |  Genetic fallacy •
|  | Appeals to authority: |  Ipse dixit • Appeal to confidence • Argumentum ad populum • Argument from authority • Linking to authority • Silent Majority • Invincible authority • Appeal to celebrity • Ultracrepidarianism • Appeal to the minority • Galileo gambit • Appeal to identity • Weasel word • Professor of nothing • Euthyphro dilemma • Divine command theory •
|  | Ad hominem: |  Ad iram • Argumentum ad cellarium • Bulverism • Poisoning the well • Blaming the victim • Tu quoque • Whataboutism • Nutpicking • Jonanism • Demonization • Shill gambit • Appeal to bias • Fallacy of opposition • Association fallacy • Damning with faint praise • Pathos gambit • Appeal to identity • Argumentum ad hominem • Nazi analogies • Not an argument • Nothing to hide • Scapegoat • 地下室论证 •
| Imprecision fallacies: |  Apex fallacy • Overprecision • Cherry picking • Overgeneralization • Texas sharpshooter fallacy • False analogy • Appeal to fiction • Spotlight fallacy • Pragmatic fallacy • Selection bias • Anecdotal evidence • Category mistake • Nutpicking • Imprecision fallacy • Confounding factor • Fallacy of accident • Neyman's bias •
Valid logical methods: |  Rapoport's Rules • Negative evidence • Reductio ad absurdum •
Fallacy collections: |  SeekFind • Nizkor Project • Fallacy Files • Your Logical Fallacy Is • Logically Fallacious •