The loaded question

Grain of Salt teaches how a claim is tested. The questions used as illustrations here are invented ones about shops, museums and building work, and none of them is aimed at anybody.

What a loaded question is

A loaded question presupposes something contested and then asks about a detail of it. The presupposition is not asserted, which is the point: an assertion can be denied, but a presupposition has to be dug out of the sentence before it can be denied, and most conversations move faster than that. "Have you stopped overcharging your customers?" has two answers available, yes and no, and both of them concede that overcharging happened.

What separates the loaded question from the rest of the logical fallacies is that it is not, strictly, an argument. It has no premises and no conclusion. It is a rhetorical device that manufactures a premise, and the fallacy proper is committed a moment later, when the answer is treated as though the responder had volunteered the assumption.

The device in one sentence, and the two parts it always has

Every loaded question has two parts: a presupposition that is doing the real work, and a surface question about something else entirely. The surface question is usually harmless, which is why it is there. It gives the exchange somewhere to go.

A gallery hands out a feedback card asking "How much did the poor lighting spoil your visit?" with a 5 point scale from a little to completely. The visible question is about degree. The invisible claim is that the lighting was poor and that it spoiled the visit, and every one of the 5 available answers signs off on both. A visitor who thought the lighting was fine has no box to tick, so that visitor's view will not appear in the results at all.

The four forms the loaded question takes

The device takes 4 forms, and only the first is usually recognized as loaded.

• The presupposition question. A single question containing a contested claim as its background: the overcharging example above.
• The complex question. Two separate questions welded into one, so that a single answer covers both: "Do you agree the roof and the drainage both need replacing?"
• The loaded alternative. A choice between two options that share the assumption: "Should we fix the noise problem this quarter or next?"
• The leading question. A question whose wording supplies the answer it wants: "You saw the blue van, didn't you?"

Form four has been measured. The psychologists Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer reported in 1974 that people who watched the same film of a collision gave higher speed estimates when asked how fast the cars were going when they smashed into each other than when the verb was hit or contacted. The event was identical in every showing. The verb was not, and the verb moved the answers.

A worked example, and the repair

Here is the raw version, from a residents' meeting: "When are the contractors going to admit the delay was caused by their own poor planning?" The presupposition is that poor planning caused the delay. The question is only about timing, so a contractor who answers at all, even to say never, has been drawn into a conversation whose first premise is already settled against them.

The repair is always the same operation: lift the presupposition out and make it a separate question, asked first. If it survives, the original question can be asked honestly. If it does not, the original question has dissolved, which is the outcome the loading was designed to prevent.

What a loaded question is confused with

3 things get called loaded questions and only one of them reliably is.

• A leading question suggests an answer without necessarily assuming a disputed fact. All loaded questions lead, but a question can lead while presupposing nothing contested at all.
• A hard question is uncomfortable rather than loaded. "Why did the costs rise by a third?" assumes only what the accounts already show, and calling it loaded is a way of avoiding it.
• A rhetorical question expects no answer. It can carry a presupposition, but its fault, if it has one, is usually a non sequitur rather than a smuggled premise.

A loaded question can also carry an ad hominem inside it. "Why do you always cut corners on the finish?" presupposes a fact and attacks the person in eight words, and answering the question at all concedes both halves. Confirmation bias is what makes loaded questions so effective on the person asking them, quite apart from the person answering. A question written to confirm a suspicion returns data shaped like the suspicion, and the answers then feel like independent support for the belief that wrote the question.

When a presupposition is not a fault

Presupposition is not a fallacy. Nearly every question contains one, and language would be unusable without them: "Where did you park?" presupposes that you parked, and asking it is entirely fair when you arrived by car and everyone knows it.

A presupposition is legitimate under two conditions. It has to be already established, by agreement or by evidence already in front of the room, and it has to be one the answerer is free to reject without looking evasive. Cross-examination and audit work this way by design: a question that assumes a fact already entered into the record is not loaded, because the record is where the assumption came from. The same question asked before that fact was established would be.

The test to run on the next question you are asked

Ask 4 questions of any question that feels like a trap.

1. Ask what a yes and a no would each commit you to, and look for anything both answers share.
2. Ask which claim the question would need to be true, and whether anyone has actually shown it.
3. Ask whether there is a possible answer for someone who disagrees with the premise, and treat the absence of one as the tell.
4. Ask the presupposition out loud as its own question, and see whether the person asking is willing to answer that one first.

Refusing a loaded question, and the party game that shares its name

Refusing well takes 3 moves and about 8 seconds. Name the assumption, in neutral words. Say plainly that you are not answering the question as put, and why. Then offer the unloaded version and answer that. What you must not do is answer with a bare no, because a bare no leaves the presupposition standing and the record will show that it went unchallenged.

One note for searchers, since the phrase is ambiguous outside logic. Loaded Questions is also the name of a party card game in which players guess who wrote which answer, sold in adult and general editions. It is a good game and it has nothing to do with the fallacy: the questions in the box are open ones, and the fun is in the guessing rather than in any premise being smuggled past a player. This page is about the argumentative device, which is older than the game by several centuries.

Where to go next

FALLACIESLogical fallaciesWhat they are, with examplesFALLACIESAd hominemAttacking the person, not the argumentFALLACIESNon sequiturThe conclusion that does not followBIASESConfirmation biasDefinition and examples