The Dangers and Benefits of Using Emotional Appeals in Communication

My personal belief is that logic trumps all emotion in most, if not every aspect of life. When emotional appeals are used, they are used to elicit similar responses from the listener. The same is true about displays of emotion; they are meant to invoke the identical response. Human beings are emotional creatures, so every aspect of communication will have some emotion attached to it. Emotions also heavily sway our ideas, and thoughts of right and wrong. This is why speakers use your emotions to their advantage. As the text states, skilled persuaders can appeal to your emotions, effectively “...preventing you from hearing the entire message or from logically assessing the value of the message.” (254) While emotional appeals can  be very effective, people can easily use our own emotions to manipulate you into thinking something you may not agree with if you were thinking logically.  

Cults are a very good example of people using emotional appeals to harm people. Would the Jonestown Massacre have had a death toll of 918 people (Rosenberg, p.1)  if Jim Jones had attempted this without first establishing his People’s Temple? Of course not. He had to develop emotional connections with people, and before that he needed to appeal to their emotions. As stated by PsychologyToday, among the many reasons people join cults,  “What do all groups (cult and non-cult) offer a potential recruit? Answer: friendship, identity, respect, and security. (Furnham, p. 11) Nobody would join a cult if they were told up front they were going to do so. “Hey, my name’s Charles and I’m going to get you to murder people after living on my ranch!” Isn’t really a great sales pitch. Instead, what people believe they are doing when they join a cult is joining a new, interesting group that promises to fulfill their needs. Those needs are usually what I mentioned previously, friendship, identity, respect, and security. Leaders know this, so they have people that are close to whomever they’re attempting to recruit do the recruiting. Friends, neighbors, teachers, family members, or highly trained recruiters. They don’t recruit by having public demonstrations, they recruit in places they consider “home bases” for their potential members. Schools, coffee houses, one’s own home, can all be places where someone lets their guard down, and one can start thinking emotionally, rather than logically. This means those people are much more easily manipulated.

While many people are able to use emotional appeals to manipulate us, there are still different times in which emotion can be more credible than logic. These situations are usually relational, for example, a rough point in a relationship or marriage. Logic says that you should not stay with someone who upsets you, but your emotions remind you why you wanted to be with someone in the first place, encouraging you to work through your issues rather than leave them be. Another example of emotion dominating logic would be when someone lies to preserve another person’s feelings. Suppose your friend worked incredibly hard to make you dinner, they spent hours slaving in the kitchen to make your meal, but it tasted awful. You weren’t exactly sure what you even ate, it could have been chicken, but it also may have been some sort of vegetable. At the end of the meal, when your friend looks at you with eager, excited eyes as they ask what you thought of it, it’s doubtful many people would say that it was awful. They would make a vague comment about how they liked it and appreciated the work their friend put into the meal. Logic states that relationships need to be based on honesty and trust, but when you see the look in your friend’s eyes as they ask you how your meal tasted, your emotions make you feel obliged to lie to them. Additionally, the idea of having children is a great case of emotion being more powerful than logic. The world is at over 7 billion inhabitants currently, with over 132 million orphaned children in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, according to UNICEF. (Orphans, p.1) This isn’t even mentioning the 415,129 children in American Foster Care, (Statistics on Foster Care, p.4) either. Logic states it would make much more sense to adopt a child, already on this planet, who is in need of a home. Despite this fact, many people decide to have children of their own instead of adopt, or become foster parents. Many people have their own individual reasons why they don’t want to adopt, but it is a prime example of people thinking emotionally, rather than logically. Finally, the concept of death and loss is one that can be thought of in this perspective. If you lose someone, you are going to be upset. You are going to go through the stages of grief, but then you’ll move on. Right? Well, that’s what logic states. Though, looking at real life examples, it’s easy to see this isn’t always the case. After my sister passed away at the age of two, my mother, obviously was deeply saddened. Even though she properly was able to grieve her loss, the feelings of sadness that she felt still lingered. She knew being sad about losing her wouldn’t bring her back, but that didn’t stop her from feeling upset. When put in an extremely stressful situation, such as losing a loved one, your emotions are often much too strong for you to comprehend them logically.