--- title: Appeal to emotion url: https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/ description: 'Appeal to emotion uses pity, pride, guilt, anger or hope in place of evidence. Cases: Lumley''s 1915 poster, Nayirah 1990, Morning in America.' section: Techniques --- ![Illustration: a contemporary investigator's evidence wall of printed social-media posts, network diagrams and a pinned world map, in the same dossier style as the rest of the archive.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-contemporary-evidence-wall.jpg) Techniques · Classical # Appeal to emotion 1. [Home](https://propagandaarchive.org/) 2. [Techniques](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/) 3. Appeal to emotion In brief Appeal to emotion is a propaganda technique that uses pity, pride, anger, guilt or hope to win assent that the evidence alone would not; the tell is an emotional image carrying the call to action while the factual claim is thin or missing, unlike emotion attached to a well-sourced claim. ![Illustration: a hand pulling strings attached to a large red heart, with a small unused scale of reasoning to one side and a crowd on the other.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/technique-cards/appeal-to-emotion.jpg) Illustration, not an archive object On this page - [History and effect of Appeal to emotion propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/#history-and-effect-of-appeal-to-emotion-propaganda) - [How Appeal to emotion propaganda works](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/#how-appeal-to-emotion-propaganda-works) - [Why Appeal to emotion propaganda works](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/#why-appeal-to-emotion-propaganda-works) - [Appeal to emotion propaganda examples across eras and sides](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/#appeal-to-emotion-propaganda-examples-across-eras-and-sides) - [How to spot Appeal to emotion propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/#how-to-spot-appeal-to-emotion-propaganda) - [Where Appeal to emotion propaganda ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/#where-appeal-to-emotion-propaganda-ends-edge-cases-and-legitimate-persuasion) - [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/#sources) - [The science](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/appeal-to-emotion/#the-science) Related techniques [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/) [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/) [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) Also called Pathos, Argumentum ad passiones, Emotional appeal, Sob story Use pity, pride, anger, guilt or hope to win assent that the evidence alone would not. ## How to spot Appeal to emotion: the tell The emotional image carries the call to action; the factual claim is thin or missing. ## What Appeal to emotion is not Emotion attached to a well-sourced claim whose evidence stands on its own. On this page ## History and effect of Appeal to emotion propaganda Aristotle treated emotion as one of three means of persuasion in the *Rhetoric* (fourth century BCE): the speaker's character, "putting the audience into a certain frame of mind", and the argument itself. In Book II he defines the emotions as "all those feelings that so change men as to affect their judgements", and lists "anger, pity, fear and the like, with their opposites". He did not call this a trick. Appeals to feeling are a normal part of speech, and the technique starts only where the feeling replaces the evidence. Explain moreShow less **How this differs from [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/).** Fear is one emotion on Aristotle's list, and fear-appeal is the technique that stages imminent harm and offers one protection. This page covers the others: pity (for a child, a victim), pride (in a nation, a past), guilt (what you will have failed to do), anger (at an enemy or injustice) and hope (a better morning). The two overlap on many posters, where fear and anger or pity sit in one image, and several objects below are tagged with both. When the staged harm to the audience is the main lever, use [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/). When the lever is a feeling about someone else, about oneself or about the future, use this page. Lineage: Aristotle's pathos; informal logic (argumentum ad passiones) ## How Appeal to emotion propaganda works 1. **Choose the feeling** that points toward the action wanted: pity for giving, guilt for enlisting, pride for sacrifice, anger for revenge or vigilance, hope for voting. 2. **Make it concrete.** One child, one mother, one dawn. The single face does the work that a statistic cannot. 3. **Name the action** in the same frame: "Enlist", "Subscribe", "Give", "Vote". 4. **Leave the evidence out or keep it vague.** The claim behind the image is not tested, or it is stated in round numbers with no source. ## Why Appeal to emotion propaganda works Strong feeling narrows attention to the object that caused it and makes the remedy on offer look obvious. A single named victim moves people more than a large number does, which is the pattern researchers call the identifiable victim effect ([Identifiable victim effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/identifiable-victim-effect/)). Shared feeling spreads through a crowd or a page ([Emotional contagion](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/emotional-contagion/)), and a good or bad feeling about a thing can stand in for a judgement about it ([Affect heuristic](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/affect-heuristic/)). None of this makes the appeal false. It makes the appeal effective whether the claim is true or not, which is why the tell looks at the claim. ![Illustration: an empty speaker's podium with a cluster of vintage microphones and rows of empty chairs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/graphics/empty-podium.jpg) Illustration, not an archive object ## Appeal to emotion propaganda examples across eras and sides - **Ancient Greece, fourth century BCE.** Aristotle, *Rhetoric*, Book I part 2 and Book II part 1 (translation by W. Rhys Roberts): the founding statement, quoted above. It is a description of how speakers move audiences, not an endorsement of any one use. - **United Kingdom, 1915 (guilt).** The Parliamentary Recruiting Committee published Savile Lumley's *Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?*: a father in an armchair is asked the title question by his daughter while his son plays with toy soldiers. There is no enemy and no fact on the sheet. The harm is future shame in front of one's children, and the single remedy is to enlist. - **United States, 1915 (grief and anger).** After the sinking of the *Lusitania* in May 1915, the Boston Public Safety Committee issued Fred Spear's *Enlist*, a mother and infant sinking in dark water under one word. The sinking was real. The poster names no enemy and gives no figures; the image carries the whole argument. Show all 7Show fewer - **United States, 1917 to 1918 (pity).** The American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, founded in 1915 and renamed in 1918, issued *You Won't Let Me Starve, Will You?* (1918), a photograph of a child that gives a named girl, Shushan from Armenia, a scale of 17 cents a day, and no source for the need. The need was real: the committee, later Near East Relief, administered about $117 million in assistance between 1915 and 1930 and cared for about 132,000 orphans (Armenian National Institute). The appeal and the record are separate: the poster shows only the child and the price. - **Soviet Union, 1941 (pride, duty and anger).** In July 1941, after the German invasion, Irakli Toidze drew *The Motherland Is Calling!*, a woman holding out the text of the military oath to the viewer. It was posted across the Soviet Union and came to stand for a mother calling her sons to defend the homeland. The poster carries no claim about the war at all; the feeling does the recruiting. The archive holds a later Toidze poster of 1943 with the same device. Soviet posters of the period also appealed to anger by showing atrocities, see [Dehumanization](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/dehumanization/). - **Kuwait and the United States, 1990 (pity and anger).** On 10 October 1990 a witness identified only as "Nayirah" told a House human rights caucus session that Iraqi soldiers "They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor." She was the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, and the appearance was arranged within a campaign paid for by the Kuwaiti government. Middle East Watch said in February 1992 that there was "no truth to the charge" as told, and Amnesty International corrected its own earlier report in April 1991. Kuwaiti hospitals did lose patients when staff left or fled. The case is in [The Nayirah testimony: a Kuwaiti government PR campaign at a House human rights caucus](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/nayirah-testimony-1990/). The appeal used pity for infants while the claim was unchecked. - **United States, 1984 (hope and pride).** The Reagan-Bush campaign's ad *Prouder, Stronger, Better*, first aired on 17 September 1984, says "It's morning again in America" over scenes of work and weddings, and closes with "Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?" The ad does include three checkable figures (jobs, interest rates, inflation), but its tagline and closing question are feeling, not measure. The archive's case study sets it beside the Obama campaign's 2008 "Hope" imagery. See [Mood over argument: "Morning in America" (Reagan-Bush 1984) and "Hope" / "Yes We Can" (Obama 2008)](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/us-optimism-campaigns-1984-2008/). ![Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War? British recruiting poster, 1915](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/daddy-what-did-you-do-1915.jpg) ![Enlist, Lusitania poster by Fred Spear, Boston, 1915](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/enlist-lusitania-1915.jpg) ![You Won't Let Me Starve, Will You? Armenian and Syrian Relief poster, 1918](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/you-wont-let-me-starve-will-you-armenian-syrian-relief-1918.jpg) ![For the Motherland's Sake, Go Forward, Heroes! Soviet poster by Irakli Toidze, 1943](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/soviet-for-the-motherlands-sake-go-forward-heroes-toidze-1943.jpg) ![I want my daddy back, buy bonds, U.S. Treasury poster, 1944](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/i-want-my-daddy-back-buy-bonds-1944.jpg) Explain moreShow less *[Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/daddy-what-did-you-do-1915/): "Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?", Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (United Kingdom), artist Savile Lumley, 1915. Library of Congress (LC-USZC4-10923). Public domain in the U.S.* *[Enlist](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/enlist-lusitania-1915/): "Enlist", Boston Public Safety Committee, artist Fred Spear, 1915. Library of Congress (LC-DIG-ppmsca-50552). Public domain in the U.S.* *["You Won't Let Me Starve, Will You?" (Little Shushan from Armenia)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/you-wont-let-me-starve-will-you-armenian-syrian-relief-1918/): "You Won't Let Me Starve, Will You?", American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, 1918. U.S. National Archives (4-P-305, NAID 512439). NARA unrestricted.* *[Во имя Родины вперед богатыри! \[For the Motherland's Sake, Go Forward, Heroes!\]](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/soviet-for-the-motherlands-sake-go-forward-heroes-toidze-1943/): "For the Motherland's Sake, Go Forward, Heroes!", artist Irakli Toidze, c. 1943-1945. U.S. National Archives, Record Group 44. Public domain in the U.S.* *["I want my daddy back" Buy bonds "Remember Pearl Harbor!"](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/i-want-my-daddy-back-buy-bonds-1944/): "I want my daddy back — Buy bonds", U.S. Treasury War Finance Division, artist Pfc. Laurence Brinkman, USMCR, 1944. U.S. National Archives (44-PA-1040, NAID 514566). Public domain (U.S. government work).* ## How to spot Appeal to emotion propaganda - **Find the claim.** State, in one sentence, what the page says is true. If you cannot, the feeling is the whole message. - **Find the number and its source.** A round figure with no author or date ("two and a half million starving") is a feeling with a figure attached. - **Find the single remedy.** One action named in the same frame as the feeling, with no alternative, marks the technique. Show all 5Show fewer - **Name the feeling and ask who gains.** If the answer to "what do they want me to do?" is clear before the answer to "what happened?", the order is the tell. - **Ask whether the claim survives without the picture.** Remove the child, the flag, the dawn; see what is left. ## Where Appeal to emotion propaganda ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion 5 items · Documented need. A charity that shows a child and also publishes audited figures is… - **Documented need.** A charity that shows a child and also publishes audited figures is attaching emotion to a sourced claim. The Armenian relief effort above is both: a real catastrophe, an appeal that showed only a face. - **Testimony of a victim.** A survivor's account is evidence, not an appeal, when it can be checked. Nayirah's could not be and was arranged. - **Moral language in argument.** Saying an act was cruel or unjust, with the facts given, is argument. - **Hope with a plan.** A speech that names a policy and its cost and also expresses optimism is not this technique. The test is whether the feeling replaces the content. - **Pride and grief in memorial.** A remembrance that asks for no action is not persuasion. The same wording used to recruit is. Sources and further reading ## Sources 9 items · Aristotle. Rhetoric , Book I part 2 and Book II part 1, trans. W. Rhys Roberts. MIT… - Aristotle. *Rhetoric*, Book I part 2 and Book II part 1, trans. W. Rhys Roberts. MIT Internet Classics Archive. https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.1.i.html and https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.2.ii.html - Armenian National Institute. "Near East Relief and the Armenian Genocide". https://www.armenian-genocide.org/ner.html - Agenda.ge. "'The Motherland Is Calling Us!': What's behind famous WW II poster?", 16 October 2015. https://agenda.ge/en/news/2015/1016 ; Library of Congress record, "[The motherland is calling you]". https://www.loc.gov/item/95503600/ - MacArthur, John R. "Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait?" *The New York Times*, 6 January 1992. https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/06/opinion/remember-nayirah-witness-for-kuwait.html - Middle East Watch. *Kuwait's "Stolen" Incubators: The Widespread Repercussions of a Murky Incident*. Human Rights Watch, 6 February 1992. https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/k/kuwait/kuwait922.pdf - Stauber, John, and Sheldon Rampton. "How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf", from *Toxic Sludge Is Good for You*, 1995. https://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html - *Christian Science Monitor*. "When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators", 6 September 2002. https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html - Wikipedia. "Morning in America" (ad script and creators: Hal Riney, writer and narrator). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_in_America - Object details for the posters come from the archive entries listed below (Library of Congress and U.S. National Archives records). *Sourcing note: the Nayirah details are taken from the archive's case study, which cites MacArthur (1992), Middle East Watch (1992) and Amnesty International's April 1991 correction; this page's author could not open the New York Times or Amnesty pages directly. The Toidze date and the 17 September 1984 air date come from Agenda.ge and the archive's case study. The Lumley and Spear poster descriptions are from the archive entries.* **Gaps.** No sourced contemporary case from China or the Global South is on this page yet. A recent social-media example of anger-led content is better handled under [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/). ## The science Research on the psychology this technique relies on, from the Learn library: Research on the psychology this technique relies on, from the [Learn](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/) library: - [Affect heuristic](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/affect-heuristic/) — Affect heuristic - [Identifiable victim effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/identifiable-victim-effect/) — Identifiable victim effect - [Emotional contagion](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/emotional-contagion/) — Emotional contagion - [Moral outrage](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/moral-outrage/) — Moral outrage - [Hope appeals](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/hope/) — Hope - [Fear messaging](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/fear-messaging/) — Fear messaging ## Appeal to emotion propaganda examples in the collection [All 9 appeal to emotion examples](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/technique/appeal-to-emotion/) - [Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/daddy-what-did-you-do-1915/) (United Kingdom · 1915 · Fear appeal, Appeal to emotion) - [Enlist](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/enlist-lusitania-1915/) (United States · 1915 · Fear appeal, Appeal to emotion). Content note: A mother and infant drowning in the Lusitania sinking. - [Remember Belgium — Enlist To-Day](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/remember-belgium-1915/) (United Kingdom · 1915 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating, Transfer, Appeal to emotion) - [Your Bit Saves a Life: 2 1/2 Million Women and Children Now Starving to Death](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/your-bit-saves-a-life-armenian-syrian-relief-1917/) (United States · 1917 · Fear appeal, Appeal to emotion) - [Pvt. Treptow's Pledge: Fourth Liberty Loan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pvt-treptows-pledge-fourth-liberty-loan-1918/) (United States · 1918 · Testimonial, Transfer, Appeal to emotion). Content note: A sketch of a dead American soldier lying beside a broken fence post, as issued. - ["You Won't Let Me Starve, Will You?" (Little Shushan from Armenia)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/you-wont-let-me-starve-will-you-armenian-syrian-relief-1918/) (United States · 1918 · Fear appeal, Testimonial, Appeal to emotion) - [Don't kill her daddy with careless talk](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/dont-kill-her-daddy-careless-talk-1944/) (United States · 1944 · Fear appeal, Transfer, Appeal to emotion) - ["I want my daddy back" Buy bonds "Remember Pearl Harbor!"](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/i-want-my-daddy-back-buy-bonds-1944/) (United States · 1944 · Fear appeal, Appeal to emotion) ## Propaganda techniques related to Appeal to emotion [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/) [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/) [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/)