Although using emotions as a way to appeal to your audience is a very persuasive way to get them to believe your argument, it is a major fallacy. People use other's emotions in place of sufficient reasoning for their argument. The person knows that if they can get the audience to feel good about their claim, then they don't need to provide strong or valid reasoning. A specific type of appeal to emotion is the appeal to pity. This is when somebody uses pity to convince another person to believe their claim. This is seen a lot when people try to get out tickets. A cop will pull somebody over for speeding, and they will usually make an excuse that appeals to the cops pity. An example would be, "Oh, I'm sorry officer. I didn't notice how fast I was going because i have a lot on my mind. You see, I just caught my girlfriend cheating on me... with my father." Something like that would be considered an appeal to emotion because the driver is attempting to get the officer to feel pity for him hoping that he could get out of the ticket.
And boom goes the dynamite,
Melvin Banner
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