hot button
An emotional trigger; something that arouses strong emotion or opinions.
Etymology timeline
Born ~1956 · 1 year of recorded useDefinitions
An emotional trigger; something that arouses strong emotion or opinions.
So one way of producing conviction is to “find the hot button”— something the other person is currently interested in—and show him how your idea can help him get that.
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A central issue, concern or characteristic, especially one that motivates people to make a choice; sometimes also one that people seek to delay taking sides on.
That issue was mostly solved in the modern forces, but it was still a hot button for every student of modern military history.
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(marketing, originally, US) The principal desire that a salesman needs to "hit" in order to make a sale.
Jack Lacey, a top rating salesman, says that sales are made by touching off a “hot button” within the prospect’s mind.’
“AI is way more of a hot button issue so it makes sense for a content creator to steer clear of it just as a PR move. By comparison, gacha games are normalised. Most people in weeb circles don't really care about the negative effects of gacha games if they even are aware of them.”
— Bluesky· May 2026
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