Loaded questions are a sort of query that’s designed to be biased or main, and to elicit a selected response from the individual being questioned. They’re typically utilized in persuasive contexts, equivalent to promoting or political debate, the place the purpose is to affect the opinion of the viewers.
Loaded questions may be constructed in quite a lot of methods, however they usually share some widespread traits. First, they typically include assumptions or presuppositions that aren’t explicitly said, however that are more likely to be accepted by the individual being questioned. For instance, the query “Have you ever stopped beating your spouse?” presupposes that the individual being questioned has in some unspecified time in the future crushed their spouse. Second, loaded questions typically use emotionally charged language that’s designed to evoke a selected response. For instance, the query “How are you going to assist a candidate who desires to destroy our nation?” is more likely to elicit a damaging response from somebody who helps the candidate in query.
