Common Fallacies in
Advertising
Ad Hominem, Appeal to Emotions, False
Dilemma, Appeal to the People, Scare
Tactic, False Cause, Hasty Generalization,
Red Herring, and Traditional Wisdom
What is a Fallacy?
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According to Webster’s Dictionary, a
fallacy is an error in reasoning or a
flawed argument.
It’s an argument that does not
conform to the rules of logic, but
appears to be sound.
Prevalence of Fallacies in Advertising
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Fallacies are all around you…
Advertisements in magazines, on
T.V., on billboards all contain
fallacies!
Can you think of a place where
there are NO advertisements?
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Probably not! That’s because
advertising is impossible to escape and
ad-free zones rarely exist.
Impact of Fallacies
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What might be the impact of being
told that we are not pretty,
handsome, rich, clean, or good
enough?
What does the casual acceptance of
surrounding ourselves with fallacies
say about us?
Types of Fallacies: Ad Hominem
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Ad Hominem (meaning “against the
person”) attacks the person and not the
issue
The major difficulty with labeling a piece
of reasoning as an ad hominem fallacy is
deciding whether the personal attack is
relevant.
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For examples, attacks on a person for their
immoral sexual conduct are irrelevant to the
quality of their mathematical reasoning, but
they are relevant to arguments promoting the
person for a leadership position in the church.
Types of Fallacies: Appeal to Emotions
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Appeal to emotions manipulates people’s
emotions in order to get their attention
away from an important issue.
You commit the fallacy of appeal to
emotions when someone’s appeal to you
to accept their claim is accepted merely
because the appeal arouses your feelings
or anger, fear, grief, love, outrage, pity,
pride, sexuality, sympathy, relief, and so
forth.
Types of Fallacies: Bandwagon
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Bandwagon creates the impression
that everybody is doing it and so
should you.
If you suggest that someone’s claim
is correct simply because it’s what
most everyone is coming to believe,
then you’re committing the
bandwagon fallacy.
Types of Fallacies: False Dilemma
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False dilemma limits the possible
choices to avoid consideration of
another choice.
A person who unfairly presents too
few choices and then implies that a
choice must be made among this
short menu of choices commits the
false dilemma fallacy.
Types of Fallacies: Appeal to the
People
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Appeal to the people uses the views of
the majority as a persuasive device.
If you suggest too strongly that
someone’s claim or argument is correct
simply because it’s what most everyone
believes, then you’ve committed the
fallacy of appeal to the people.
Similarly, if you suggest too strongly that
someone’s claim or argument is mistaken
simply because it’s not what most
everyone believes, then you’ve also
committed the fallacy.
Types of Fallacies: Scare Tactic
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Scare tactic creates fear in people
as evidence to support a claim.
If you suppose that terrorizing your
opponent is giving him a reason for
believing that you are correct, you
are using a scare tactic and
reasoning fallaciously.
Types of Fallacies: False Cause
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False Cause wrongly assumes a cause
and effect relationship.
Improperly concluding that one thing is a
cause of another
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Example: My psychic adviser says to expect
bad things when Mars is aligned with Jupiter.
Tomorrow Mars will be aligned with Jupiter.
So, if a dog were to bite me tomorrow, it
would be because of the alignment of Mars
with Jupiter.
Types of Fallacies: Hasty
Generalization
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Hasty generalization (or jumping to
conclusions) draws a conclusion
about a population based on a small
sample.
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Example: I’ve met two people in
Nicaragua so far, and they were both
nice to me. So, all people I will meet
in Nicaragua will be nice to me.
Types of Fallacies: Red Herring
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Red herring presents an irrelevant topic
to divert attention away from the original
issue.
A Red Herring is actually a smelly fish
that would distract even a bloodhound, so
in the case of advertisements…it causes
the viewer to become so distracted that
they forget about the true issue at hand.
Types of Fallacies: Traditional
Wisdom
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Traditional Wisdom uses the logic
that the way things used to be is
better than they are now, ignoring
any problems of the past.
If you say or imply that a practice
must be okay today simply because
it has been the apparently wise
practice in the past, you commit the
fallacy of traditional wisdom.
Applying What You Learned:
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You will now be working in small groups
to identify the types of fallacies used in
several different advertisements.
As a group, you will need to come to an
agreement as to which type of fallacy is
being used in each advertisement.
You will write your answers on the
“Finding the Fallacies that Surround You”
Hand-out
Works Cited
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Information taken from:
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http://www.readwritethink.org
The Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy: Fallacies