Lay People's Intuition and Perceived Argument Strength as Predictors of Claim Acceptance.

Abstract

Argumentation is an effective tool in communication and cooperation. There have been many publications on argument quality but little research has been conducted on lay people’s perceived argument strength. This study experimentally investigated lay people’s judgement on arguments by perceived argument strength and intuition. Dutch participants (N = 122) evaluated 24 arguments, manipulated on both desirability and probability, to measure to what extent claim acceptance could be predicted by the Perceived Argument Strength scale and Intuitive evaluation task. The sensibility of these methods to argument quality was also tested. The results showed that claim acceptance could be predicted by the use of both methods and that strong arguments were more persuasive than weak arguments. The used measuring methods were sensitive to differences in argument quality. Future research is needed to further explore the relationship between perceived persuasiveness and actual persuasiveness.