Appeal to Emotion

“Appeal to emotion in an argument is just a premise that says, roughly, you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way” (Epstein 191). There are many types of emotion: pity, consequences, flattery, ridicule, spite, wishful thinking, ignorance, and fear. Appealing to fear is a way for people to manipulate, convince, and trick you. Appeal to pity is “in which a person substitutes a claim intended to create pity for evidence in an argument” (http://www.nizkor.org). I think that appealing to fear emotion strikes me more. Appealing to fear strikes me more because I use it in my everyday life. For example, my brother in law was driving too fast on interstate highway 5 this summer when we went on a vacation to Los Angeles.

Me: You shouldn’t drive so fast at night.

Brother-in-Law- Why not?

Me: Because there are many cops.

This argument appeals to my brother in laws fears. The unstated appeal to emotion is, “you should drive too fast at night because the cops can pull you over and give you a ticket”.

Soon after I said that, just our luck, my brother in law got pulled over. He was going 103 MPH on the highway. I mean I did not see why we could not go so fast because no one else was on the road but that is the law and we cannot do anything about it.