Logical Fallacies & the Bandwagon Fallacy

Recently, students have been working on theories of ‘logic’ and completed work on ‘bandwagon fallacies’. In this article we explore what these fallacies are and share some of the contributions from students.

“A bandwagon fallacy is a logical fallacy in which a person reaches a conclusion only because it is a popular idea or belief and not for any logical reason related to the subject.”

The bandwagon fallacy assumes that the opinion of the majority is the valid, correct opinion. It is also known as an appeal to popularity or ‘Argumentum ad Populum’. It is important to be aware of the bandwagon fallacy, to try and avoid falling into the thinking trap, and becoming a mindless sheeple following along with the popular opinion, left unable to form opinions and thoughts of their own.

The Bandwagon Fallacy is regarded as a fallacy due to the use of this being illogical. As a fallacy is something that is deductively invalid, ignores relevant evidence or contains unjustified premise. The` bandwagon fallacy is illogical because it states something has a property so then it also must have another property.

Here are some examples of common statements you may have been exposed to of the Bandwagon Fallacy effect:

‘Everyone's already got the new iPhone, you don’t?’

‘If your friends all jumped off a cliff, would you?’

‘Everyone is going!’

‘It’s so popular right now!’

‘It’s fashionable!’

‘Everyone else was doing it!’

‘It’s in over 100 countries!’

‘It must be true if everyone’s talking about it!’

With this said, we hope you enjoy the posters students created to represent the different types of logical fallacies they were exploring. We have included work on ‘ad hominem’, ‘slothful induction’, ‘strawman’ and ‘no true Scotsman’.

Bob Pill

Philosophy and Legal Studies Teacher