Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

L E S S O N
Emotional
Versus Logical
Appeals
L E S S O N S U M M A R Y
Writers often appeal to your emotions to try to persuade you of some-
thing. But unless they also provide logical evidence to back up their
claims, you have no reason to accept their argument as valid. This les-
son helps you see how to distinguish between appeals to your emo-
tions and appeals to your sense of reason.
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T h e D i f f e r e n c e b e t w e e n
L o g i c a l a n d E m o t i o n a l A p p e a l s
When writers want to convince people of something or
influence them to think a certain way, they generally
rely on two means of persuasion: appealing to the
reader’s sense of logic and appealing to the reader’s
emotions. It is important to be able to distinguish
between these two types of appeal because when writ-
ers rely only on appeals to emotion, they neglect to
provide any real evidence for why you should believe
what they say. Writers who rely solely on emotional
appeals usually hope to get their readers so angry,
scared, or excited that they will forget to look for rea-
son or sense in the argument.
Unfortunately, many readers aren’t aware of this
strategy, so they may accept arguments that are
unfounded, manipulative, or both. Political leaders
who use the emotional strategy in speaking to crowds are
called demagogues. Calling a leader a demagogue is no
compliment since it means that he or she relies on prej-
udice and passion rather than clear thinking to per-
suade people of his or her position. Sound reasoning
requires that you are able to look beyond emotional
appeals to determine if there is any logic behind them.
While it is true that an appeal to emotions can
help strengthen an argument based in logic, an argu-
ment cannot be valid if it is based solely on emotional
appeal.