Do emotional appeals make arguments seem stronger?

Abstract This study investigates the factors influencing perceived argument strength by examining the role of personal involvement, mood, and emotional appeals (pathos). Drawing on Douglas Walton’s exploration of emotional appeals in argumentation ( 1992 ), we use the methodology from the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) by Petty and Cacioppo (1981) to conduct psycholinguistic experiments with 395 student participants. Participants were exposed to arguments appealing to positive, neutral, or negative emotions, while their levels of personal involvement and mood were controlled. Our findings reveal that high personal involvement significantly enhances perceived argument strength (PAS; Zhao et al. 2011 ), while mood influences PAS in a more indirect manner. Arguments appealing to positive emotions were rated higher in PAS compared to negative and neutral ones. These results contribute to the empirical study of argument strength, integrating insights from work on emotional appeals, the ELM framework, and recent analysis of argument strength dimensions ( Zenker et al. 2020 ; Heyninck, Skiba, and Thimm 2023 ).