Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Appeal to Emotion
According to the textbook, emotions definitely influence our reasoning. Our emotions influence almost all decisions that we make on a daily basis. In chapter 10 of the textbook, it states that: "An appeal to emotion in an argument is just a premise that says you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way." Even though this is dealing with the premise, most of the time the entire argument is called an appeal to emotion. One of the aspects of appeal to emotion that caught my attention was appealing to fear. Appeal to fear happens when a claim is used to create fear. I found this aspect of appeals to emotion to be very interesting because of all of the political campaigning that has been going on. Appeal to fear can be easily found in many campaign advertisements for politicians. This aspect of appeal to emotion is also extremely common in marketing. Appeal to fear is considered bad if one legitimate concern is substituted for all others. On the other hand, appeal to fear is good if it is the only factor in making a decision.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hey Kenny Powers, I agree with you that fear is a very important factor in appealing to emotions. With the elections going on in California in recent weeks, I can definitely see how some of these ads could incite fear in someone, especially the fear that if a certain candidate is elected, then our state could change for the worst. Seeing some of the negative ads against Whittman definitely made me think how California would turn out if she was elected. This was also true anytime I saw the other negatives ads against other candidates. Good example! Really does show that even politicians could use fear to get what they want!
ReplyDelete