After reading the section Content Fallacies in Chapter 11, I decided to talk about the fallacy "Appeal to emotion". I picked this one because I believe it was easy to understand. Appeal to emotion means to decide on a certain subject, due to your emotions. This is a fallacy because the conclusion is not always true. For example, certain diet food companies try to win people over by saying they will lose 20 pounds if they eat and drink their products. They will also add that everyone will be attracted to you, and if your a man, women will be constantly staring at you (Vice Versa). This will cause people to be persuaded by their emotions, and what they feel.
Another example of "Appeal to emotion" fallacy might be "The new Apple MacBook Pro laptop gives you the power you need. If you buy one, people will envy you. They will look up to you and wish they were just like you." By saying this, it may persuade people to buy the laptop even though what the company said may not be true.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You are right! Appeal to emotion is commonly used in advertising. Diet books with promises that you will lose weight easily and quickly are consistently on the best sellers list. The sad thing about this is that advertisers are actually getting consumers to feel bad about themselves and take their money….talk about a raw deal! I recently watched the Michael Moore move Capitalism: A Love Story, and I noticed he employs this same fallacy quite a bit. When we discussed the film in class, many of the students were outraged after seeing the crying children of a deceased Wal-Mart employee, only to have it pointed out to them that while it is sad to see crying children, the argument itself didn’t make any sense. Needless to say this appeal to emotion can be very effective!
ReplyDeleteI agree 100% with your description of appeal to emotion. Using the example of weight loss is a perfect way to explain it. That’s what all those advertisements for weight loss do. They get deep into a person’s feelings to make them not feel good about themselves and it persuades them to eventually buy the product. Therefore it is appealing to emotion even though it may be false advertisement. You also did a good job of relating your topic to the new MacBook’s apple has come out with. Both examples displayed your knowledge of the appeal to emotion fallacy. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDelete