The article discusses the relationship between emotions and rationality in everyday communication, where an emotional argument becomes a means of effective persuasion. Communicators exploit a person’s ability to feel, perceive, and react emotionally, so that emotions constitute powerful and predictable drivers of social regulation. The effectiveness of emotional arguments depends on the personal influence potential of each participant in the dialogue. With a high level of partner’s empathy, an emotional argument turns into a means of manipulation - skillfully playing on the emotions of anger, resentment, joy, fear, the manipulator can put the partner in a dependent position and make him act in his own interests. How much an emotional argument affects the common sense and logic of the partner depends on the interaction between the cognitive and motivational mechanisms triggered by each emotion. However, the conclusion is obvious that in everyday communication, the emotional determines the rational: emotional “pre-meanings” trigger cognitive-rational mechanisms for the formation of personal beliefs.