Poisoning the well

What it is

Discredits a person in advance so that anything they later say will be dismissed. The attack comes before the argument is made, so the argument never gets a fair hearing.

Related

• Ad hominem fallacy
  Poisoning the well is an ad hominem delivered in advance, so that nothing the person says is heard fairly.
• Halo effect bias
  Poisoning the well uses the halo (horn) effect deliberately: a negative first impression colours everything that follows.
• Primacy and recency effects bias
  What we hear first weighs most, so the first thing said about a person shapes how everything else is heard.

References

• Wikipedia: Poisoning the well en.wikipedia.org
• 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

More in “Attacking the person or the source”