Fallacies of Emotional Appeal

What is it?
Emotions and thoughts are states of one’s mind. They are information going about in our brain, not physical objects. Hence, they in fact cannot exist in the normal, physical sense of buildings, people, planets and air. They exist only in the sense of culture produced by us, the sense in which numbers or, more generally, mathematics, can be said to exist.

Consider a soft drink ad. There is very little marketing that can be done for soft drinks based upon facts alone. If they were advertised solely on facts, we'd hear that they are sweet and carbonated and that's about it. That doesn't make you want to run out and buy any, does it?

So, marketers create much more interesting advertisements by linking the drinks to comforting images or home and family, or to sports and recreation. The implication is, you can enjoy similar feelings in reality by consuming their product.

This is known as Appeal to emotion which is a type of fallacy of relevance. In simple terms we can define it as "An appeal to emotion is a type of argument which attempts to arouse the emotions of its audience in order to gain acceptance of its conclusion."

Its Forms

Appeal to Fear

The emotional appeal of religion is strong. It is appealing to think that there is some sense of cosmic justice where good is rewarded and evil punished. It is nice to think that in the afterlife, those who suffered unjustly will be rewarded and that there is a heavenly war trial where all those who have been responsible for willful and major human suffering would face their ultimate comeuppance. I think that it is this emotional appeal that keeps people faithful to religion.

But atheists know that no such cosmic justice exists. The fate that evil people ultimately face is the same as the fate that anyone else faces, and that is death. If this is the one life that we have, it becomes clearer that our obligation to ourselves and to others is to make sure that it is the best it can be, so that everyone had a chance at a decent life.

Appeal to pity

A familiar type of emotional appeal is the appeal to pity or sympathy, which is used by many charities. Photographs of crippled or hungry children are shown in order to arouse one's desire to help them, with the charity trying to motivate you to write a check. However, there may be little or no connection between your check and the poor children you wish to help. Certainly, your money will probably not help the specific children you see in such appeals. At best, it may go to help some similar children who need help. At worst, it may go into further fund raising efforts, and into the pockets of the people who work for the charity.