IIRC, there is a book called "Blink" and I believe it is based on research which basically determined that, statistically, the initial "gut reaction"/first impression is actually the most reliable. That initial reaction apparently sums up quite a lot of info quickly which tons of analysis often fails to top. In my experience, a combination of "gut feeling" and analysis is a superior decision-making model but not easy to achieve. You basically have to be willing to do a form of self-therapy and question what your negative emotional reactions are based on and whether those biases really apply in this situation or not. Most folks are not comfortable with that. And I think individuals probably get burned repeatedly in a similar manner because of something inherent to themselves (like if you have bad eyesight, some things just won't work well for you no matter how hard you try -- it becomes a more efficient decision-making model to "just not like it" than to logically analyze that it probably won't work well because of your eyesight issues).

But if you are not the consumer, if you are the seller, then designing your sales effort to key in to that quicker, more efficient decision-making process (aka "emotional appeal") is going to be a more effective sales tool. If the emotional appeal you make is not a lie, if it is based on genuine, meaningful information (like testimonials), then there is nothing inherently wrong with it. It is just a means to go with the most efficient way to transmit data about the value the product has.

For me, understanding this aspect of human decision making is empowering (so I shared it in hopes of helping it make logical sense to folks who seem to generally think logic is superior to emotion). For example, it helped me and my sons deal effectively with my dad who has Alzheimer's. If someone doesn't have good conscious memory, then they base a lot of their decisions on how they feel about you. Yelling at them and such, like other family members did, makes them not trust you because they have a bad feeling about you, even though they can't say what you did that made them dislike you. My dad trusted me while I lived there, even though he wandered around the house with my mail and ask me to my face "Have you seen <my first name>? I have her mail." He couldn't put my name and face together but he would eat what I cooked and things like that, something which astonished the rest of the family because he has always been a paranoid SOB and won't eat food cooked by just anybody. He liked me and trusted me -- his emotional memory system was still functional even though other types of memory were failing -- and I also worked with his routines, rather than against them, which are another type of memory.