Boosting Analogical Arguments: The Effects of Goodness & Complexity on Everyday Arguments

The use of analogical arguments is most often associated with political argumentation. However, our previous studies have found that analogical arguments are not as convincing as factual arguments. Should politicians rethink their rhetorical techniques ? In this paper, several possible criticisms of previous findings are considered, to determine whether analogical arguments might be considered more convincing than factual arguments. Two experiments that further investigate the use of analogies as arguments are reported. In Experiment 1, we replicate previous analogical/factual comparisons but use user-generated arguments for the materials, that are varied in terms of their pre-tested goodness. Experiment 2 investigates whether the complexity of the argument (i.e., the amount of information given in the arguments) might favor analogical over factual arguments. Finally, we outline a computational model of analogical arguments, which attempts to capture the effects found in these and previous experiments.