Appeal to pity

An appeal to pity (also called argumentum ad misericordiam, the sob story, or the Galileo argument)[1][2] is a fallacy in which someone tries to win support for an argument or idea by exploiting his or her opponent's feelings of pity or guilt. It is a specific kind of appeal to emotion. The name "Galileo argument" refers to the scientist's suffering as a result of his house arrest by the Inquisition.

Examples
  • "You must have graded my exam incorrectly. I studied very hard for weeks specifically because I knew my career depended on getting a good grade. If you give me a failing grade I'm ruined!"
  • "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, look at this miserable man, in a wheelchair, unable to use his legs. Could such a man really be guilty of embezzlement?"


gollark: I mean, they're possibly things which would have worked better at propagating humans' genes or whatever in the "ancestral environment" where we evolved than... the alternative.
gollark: Or, er, "optimize for these goals".
gollark: Well, you can convert that to a single goal of "do these goals in priority order".
gollark: "Rational" implies we have some sort of clear goal and are trying to optimize for that.
gollark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

See also

Notes
  1. "Appeal to Pity". changingminds.org.
  2. "Appeal to Pity (the Galileo Argument)". Archived from the original on 29 November 2013. Retrieved 6 October 2012.
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