Appeal to emotion

What it is

Tries to win agreement by stirring feelings (fear, anger, pity, pride) instead of offering evidence or reasons. Emotion can be relevant to a decision, but it is not evidence that a claim is true.

Related

• Affect heuristic bias
  Appeals to emotion work because of the affect heuristic: we let how we feel about something stand in for judging it.
• Appeal to fear fallacy
  Fear is the most common emotion used in appeals to emotion.
• Appeal to pity fallacy
  Pity is a gentler appeal to emotion, used to win agreement on sympathy rather than merit.
• Appeal to ridicule fallacy
  Ridicule persuades by making an idea feel embarrassing rather than by showing it is wrong.
• Salience bias bias
  Vivid, emotional images and stories stand out, which is why they persuade without evidence.

References

• Wikipedia: Appeal to emotion en.wikipedia.org
• Your Logical Fallacy Is: Appeal to emotion yourlogicalfallacyis.com
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies iep.utm.edu
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Fallacies plato.stanford.edu
• Wikipedia: List of fallacies en.wikipedia.org
• Purdue OWL: Logical fallacies owl.purdue.edu

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