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Appeal to Popularity Fallacy

Evan Lu

Appeal to Popularity

Appeal to Popularity

Question:

Is the following an example of Appeal to Popularity? Why or why not?

“People seem to love the movie Parasite. In fact, it is currently rated #1 on Rotten Tomatoes, based on viewers ratings.”

Appeal to Popularity

Explanation:

While it may seem like most people are in favour of the new iPhone 11 Pro, there is no fact providing evidence explaining how this is the best smartphone in the market, other than its popularity.

A person will fall for this fallacy, assuming that since “everyone” is using this smartphone, it must be the best smartphone in the market. He/she will most likely not question the claim or research to see if it’s true. This fallacy is useful for Apple company as it gains another consumer through the fallacy.

Appeal to Popularity

This is popular amongst politics and marketing advertisements as they use this technique to sell their message, product or service to the audience who are consumers. The more consumers they have believing that X is true because majority of the population is in favour of X, the more votes of their team, users of their product/services they will receive in return.

1. Everyone is in favour of X.

2. Therefore, X must be true.

Example:

“Everyone is using the new iPhone 11 Pro, it’s the best smartphone in the market.”

References

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments. (n.d.). pg 40. Retrieved July 20, 2020 from https://bookofbadarguments.com/

Appeal to Popularity

It’s not rational to accept the claim to be true only based on the premise that most people are in favour of it, however, it can be easy for a person to fall for this fallacy.

Since a person is likely to conform to majority in a crowd, it becomes easy to use appeal to popularity fallacy to convince the person that X is true.

Appeal to Popularity can also be known as Appeal to Bandwagon.

This fallacy is using the popularity of the premise as evidence for a claim to be true.

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