Should Politicians Stop Using Analogies? Whether Analogical Arguments Are Better Than Their Factual Equivalents

In political argumentation, analogies are often used to convince an audience of one’s views. For example, in political debates leading up to the Iraq War, one such analogical argument was that Saddam Hussein was like Hitler and therefore Saddam should be forcibly ousted. But are all analogical arguments really convincing? In this paper we investigate whether analogical arguments are actually more convincing than factual arguments. In Experiment 1 we asked people to rate analogical and factual arguments for various propositions and found that people considered factual arguments more convincing. In Experiment 2, we asked people to think more explicitly about the analogical mappings but still found that people considered the analogical arguments less convincing than the factual ones. These findings suggest that people are not more easily convinced by an analogical argument then a straight factual one, suggesting that perhaps politicians should re-consider their rhetorical tactics after all.