Wishful thinking in the context of "Feelings"

According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations, thoughts, or images evoking them". The term feeling is closely related to, but not the same as, emotion. Feeling may, for instance, refer to the conscious subjective experience of emotions. The study of subjective experiences is called phenomenology. Psychotherapy generally involves a therapist helping a client understand, articulate, and learn to effectively regulate the client's own feelings, and ultimately to take responsibility for the client's experience of the world. Feelings are sometimes held to be characteristic of embodied consciousness.

The English noun feelings may generally refer to any degree of subjectivity in perception or sensation. However, feelings often refer to an individual sense of well-being (perhaps of wholeness, safety, or being loved). Feelings have a semantic field extending from the individual and spiritual to the social and political. The word feeling may refer to any of a number of psychological characteristics of experience, or even to reflect the entire inner life of the individual (see mood). As self-contained phenomenal experiences, evoked by sensations and perceptions, feelings can strongly influence the character of a person's subjective reality. Feelings can sometimes harbor bias or otherwise distort veridical perception, in particular through projection, wishful thinking, among many other such effects.

Appeal to emotion or argumentum ad passiones (meaning the same in Latin) is an informal fallacy characterized by the manipulation of the recipient's emotions in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual evidence. This kind of appeal to emotion is irrelevant to or distracting from the facts of the argument (a so-called "red herring") and encompasses several logical fallacies, including appeal to consequences, appeal to fear, appeal to flattery, appeal to pity, appeal to ridicule, appeal to spite, and wishful thinking.

Appeal to emotion is an application of social psychology. It is only fallacious when the emotions that are elicited are irrelevant to evaluating the truth of the conclusion and serve to distract from rational consideration of relevant premises or information. For instance, if a student says "If I get a failing grade for this paper I will lose my scholarship. It's not plagiarized." the emotions elicited by the first statement are not relevant to establishing whether the paper was plagiarized.

The Loch Ness Monster (Scottish Gaelic: Uilebheist Loch Nis), known affectionately as Nessie, is a mythical creature in Scottish folklore that is said to inhabit Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. It is often described as large, long-necked, and with one or more humps protruding from the water. Popular interest and belief in the creature has varied since it was brought to worldwide attention in 1933. Evidence of its existence is anecdotal, with a number of disputed photographs and sonar readings.

The scientific community explains alleged sightings of the Loch Ness Monster as hoaxes, wishful thinking, and the misidentification of mundane objects. The pseudoscience and subculture of cryptozoology has placed particular emphasis on the creature.