Appeal to emotion

Biological Parallel

Infant distress calls trigger immediate maternal response in mammals, bypassing deliberative cognition through direct amygdala activation. This emotional override evolved because threats to offspring require split-second action, not analysis—a crying baby might be dying, and deliberation kills. Appeals to emotion hijack this ancient circuit: they feel more urgent than logic because, ancestrally, emotional signals (fear, disgust, attachment) correlated with survival-critical information that demanded immediate response.