The extent to which people take inconsistent opinions of an expert and groups of laypeople into account when forming their opinion.
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2018-06-08
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
Abstract
In this paper, the persuasiveness of two types of arguments and their relationship to each other were examined: one of the ad verecundiam (appeal to authority) arguments: the expert argument, and the ad populum argument. A lack of knowledge exists on what people take into account when forming their opinion, which is why this study’s aim was to see whether people take level of expertise and group size into account when forming an opinion based on incongruent opinions from an expert and a group of laypeople. This was done by measuring the attitude of 240 participants on a certain claim after having read a version of the manipulated material. No main effect was found for group size or level of expertise. However, an interesting significant interaction effect was found indicating that people were mostly persuaded by an expert presenting the pro-argument and the group of laypeople presenting the counter argument. This indicates that people might have certain expectations as to what role a certain source should represent in an argument. Further research needs to be conducted to fully understand the magnitude of this possible expectation concerning roles of different sources with incongruent arguments.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Letteren