Ad Hominem

A personal attack meant to discredit one’s opponent

• Ad Hominem

• Appeal to Nature

• Bandwagon

• Circular Reasoning

• Guilt by Association

A logical fallacy that attacks the character of a person rather than his or her opinions or arguments.

• Straw man

• Ad hominem

• Moral equivalence

Answer explanation

Ad hominem is also known as "namecalling" on the Keystone exams.

You never even finished law school, so why should I trust you to watch my children?

• Ad Hominem

• Appeal to Nature

• Bandwagon

• Circular Reasoning

• Guilt by Association

My opponent is an untrustworthy liar and an idiot. Therefore, you should believe me.

• Hasty Generalization

• Circular Reasoning

• Cherry-picking the evidence

• Ad Hominem

My opponent says he cares about the environment, but he littered when he was in middle school.

• Ad Hominem

• Hasty Generalization

• Bandwagon

• Slippery Slope

A mother says that she does not trust her pediatrician because he has never been a mother.

• Ad Hominem

• Slippery Slope

• False Dilemma

• Bandwagon

We cannot listen to John’s opinion on global warming because he is a tree hugger.

• ad hominem

• circular reasoning

• straw man

• red herring

An argument based on a personal attack on someone's character.

• appeal to nature

• ad hominem

• non sequitur

• bandwagon fallacy

Person 1:

"I am for raising the minimum wage in our state."

Person 2:

"She is for raising the minimum wage, but she is not smart enough to even run a business."

• Hasty Generalization: Conclusion based on a small sample size, rather than looking at statistics that are much more in line with the typical or average situation.

• Ad hominem: attacking the person making the argument, rather than the argument itself

• Red Herring: redirecting the argument to another issue to which the person doing the redirecting can better respond. The deliberate diversion of attention with the intention of trying to abandon the original argument.

• Post hoc: Claiming that because event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X, without properly establishing what really caused event Y.

A mother says that she does not trust her pediatrician because she can't even style her hair nicely.

• Over-generalization

• Ad Hominem

• Slippery Slope

• Either/Or