Fallacy
Appeal to Emotion
Use fear, pity, or outrage to win agreement instead of evidence.
The actual facts of the caseHow the story makes you feel
Use fear, pity, or outrage to win agreement instead of evidence.
Example
"Think of the children, we have to pass this law right now, there's no time for debate."
An appeal to emotion replaces evidence with a feeling, usually fear, pity, or urgency, strong enough that stopping to check the facts feels almost inappropriate.
Emotion isn’t automatically dishonest. A genuinely urgent situation is still urgent. The fallacy is using the emotional pressure itself as the reason to skip scrutiny, rather than as a reason to look closer.
If a claim needs to be accepted “right now, no time to check,” that urgency is doing the arguing, not the evidence.