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EFFECTIVE PERSUASION
Author(s) -
Chen Ying,
Olszewski Wojciech
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
international economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.658
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1468-2354
pISSN - 0020-6598
DOI - 10.1111/iere.12051
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , persuasion , mathematical economics , economics , positive economics , psychology , social psychology , biochemistry , chemistry
Do elementary statistics or equilibrium theory deliver any insight regarding how we should argue in debates? We provide an answer in a model in which each discussant wants to convince the audience that a specific state holds. If the discussants' payoffs in the audience's posterior are concave above and convex below the prior and exhibit loss aversion, then the leading discussant should give precedence to the weaker argument, and the follower should respond to a weak argument weakly and to a strong argument strongly. Such characterizations are also obtained for the case of choosing between independent and correlated arguments.