Fallacy: Appeal to Emotion
An Appeal to Emotion is a fallacy with the following structure:
This fallacy is committed when someone manipulates peoples' emotions
in order to get them to accept a claim as being true. More formally,
this sort of "reasoning" involves the substitution of various
means of producing strong emotions in place of evidence for a claim. If
the favorable emotions associated with X influence the person to accept
X as true because they "feel good about X," then he has fallen
prey to the fallacy.
This sort of "reasoning" is very common in politics and it
serves as the basis for a large portion of modern advertising. Most
political speeches are aimed at generating feelings in people so that
these feelings will get them to vote or act a certain way. in the case
of advertising, the commercials are aimed at evoking emotions that will
influence people to buy certain products. In most cases, such speeches
and commercials are notoriously free of real evidence.
This sort of "reasoning" is quite evidently fallacious. It
is fallacious because using various tactics to incite emotions in people
does not serve as evidence for a claim. For example, if a person were
able to inspire in a person an incredible hatred of the claim that 1+1 =
2 and then inspired the person to love the claim that 1+1 = 3, it would
hardly follow that the claim that 1+1 = 3 would be adequately
supported.
It should be noted that in many cases it is not particularly obvious
that the person committing the fallacy is attempting to support a claim.
In many cases, the user of the fallacy will appear to be attempting to
move people to take an action, such as buying a product or fighting in a
war. However, it is possible to determine what sort of claim the person
is actually attempting to support. In such cases one needs to ask
"what sort of claim is this person attempting to get people to
accept and act on?" Determining this claim (or claims) might take
some work. However, in many cases it will be quite evident. For example,
if a political leader is attempting to convince her followers to
participate in certain acts of violence by the use of a hate speech,
then her claim would be "you should participate in these acts of
violence." In this case, the "evidence" would be the
hatred evoked in the followers. This hatred would serve to make them
favorable inclined towards the claim that they should engage in the acts
of violence. As another example, a beer commercial might show happy,
scantily clad men and women prancing about a beach, guzzling beer. In
this case the claim would be "you should buy this beer." The
"evidence" would be the excitement evoked by seeing the
beautiful people guzzling the beer.
This fallacy is actually an extremely effective persuasive device. As
many people have argued, peoples' emotions often carry much more force
than their reason. Logical argumentation is often difficult and time
consuming and it rarely has the power to spurn people to action. It is
the power of this fallacy that explains its great popularity and wide
usage. However, it is still a fallacy.
In all fairness it must be noted that the use of tactics to inspire
emotions is an important skill. Without an appeal to peoples' emotions,
it is often difficult to get them to take action or to perform at their
best. For example, no good coach presents her team with syllogisms
before the big game. Instead she inspires them with emotional terms and
attempts to "fire" them up. There is nothing inherently wrong
with this. However, it is not any acceptable form of argumentation. As
long as one is able to clearly distinguish between what inspires
emotions and what justifies a claim, one is unlikely to fall prey to
this fallacy.
As a final point, in many cases it will be difficult to distinguish
an Appeal to Emotion from some other fallacies and in many cases
multiple fallacies may be committed. For example, many
Ad Hominems
will be very similar to Appeals to Emotion and, in some cases, both
fallacies will be committed. As an example, a leader might attempt to
invoke hatred of a person to inspire his followers to accept that they
should reject her claims. The same attack could function as an Appeal to
Emotion and a
Personal Attack.
In the first case, the attack would be aimed at making the followers
feel very favorable about rejecting her claims. In the second case, the
attack would be aimed at making the followers reject the person's claims
because of some perceived (or imagined) defect in her character.
This fallacy is related to the
Appeal to Popularity
fallacy. Despite the differences between these two fallacies, they are
both united by the fact that they involve appeals to emotions. In both
cases the fallacies aim at getting people to accept claims based on how
they or others feel about the claims and not based on evidence for the
claims.
Another way to look at these two fallacies is as follows
Appeal to Emotion
On this view, in an
Appeal to Popularity
the claim is accepted because most people approve of the claim. In the
case of an Appeal to Emotion the claim is accepted because the
individual approves of the claim because of the emotion of approval he
feels in regards to the claim.
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Description of Appeal to Emotion
Examples of Appeal to Emotion