Emotional appeals, ethical or not?

According to our book (Business Communication Essentials by Courtland Bovee and John Thill, pg 227) an emotional appeal “calls on feelings or audience sympathies”.

So, for an example, it would be like having the parents of babies that died due to drop side crib accidents tell their tragic stories in an effort to get that crib type banned. While that is an extreme case you can also use one of the examples from the book on page 228, “being separated during the day is stressful for both parents and children”.

These examples are both used to pull at the “sympathies” or emotional state of the audience, just as the definition states.

When it comes to the question of whether or not these types of emotional appeals are ethical or not there is no clear cut, yes or no answer.

I had this question asked to me in a different class that I took over the summer (public speaking), and while the classes were different I’m finding that my answer hasn’t really changed much, I just have a different text book to look at.

When it comes to these appeals (persuasive) there are to approaches, emotional and logical. Since I’ve already said what an emotional appeal is, then all that’s left is the logical. Which to me seems pretty self-explanatory, relying on logical facts for which to base your opinion/case on.

In our book it basically says that very few persuasive appeals are one or the other, instead mostly they are a combined usage of emotional and logical thinking. When used in this manner to balance and support each other, then the emotional appeals are much less likely to be seen as unethical, because they are being presented with logical facts.

I can see where in cases where only emotional appeals are used, it could become unethical for the simple reason that there are no hard, real facts there, only relying on pulling at the heart strings of the audience.