Summary: In logic, an argumentum ad populum (Latin: “appeal to the people”) is a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true because many or all people believe it; it alleges: “If many believe so, it is so.”

This type of argument is known by several names, including appeal to the masses, appeal to belief, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people, argument by consensus, authority of the many, and bandwagon fallacy, and in Latin by the names argumentum ad populum (“appeal to the people”), argumentum ad numerum (“appeal to the number”), and consensus gentium (“agreement of the clans”). It is also the basis of a number of social phenomena, including communal reinforcement and the bandwagon effect, the spreading of various religious beliefs, and of the Chinese proverb “three men make a tiger”.

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This fallacy occurs any time the sheer numbers of people who agree to something is used as a reason to get you to agree to it and takes the general form:

1. When most people agree on a claim about subject S, the claim is true (normally an unstated premise). Claim X is one which most people agree on. Therefore, X is true.

This fallacy can take on the direct approach, where a speaker is addressing a crowd and makes a deliberate attempt to excite their emotions and passions in an attempt to get them to accept what he is saying. What we see here is the development of a sort of “mob mentality” — people go along with what they hear because they experience others also going along with it. This is, obviously enough, a common tactic in political speeches.

This fallacy can also take on an indirect approach, where the speaker is, or seems to be, addressing a single person while focusing on some relationship that individual has to larger groups or crowds.

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The name “bandwagon fallacy” comes from the phrase “jump on the bandwagon” or “climb on the bandwagon”, a bandwagon being a wagon big enough to hold a band of musicians. In past political campaigns, candidates would ride a bandwagon through town, and people would show support for the candidate by climbing aboard the wagon. The phrase has come to refer to joining a cause because of its popularity.

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