The impact of normative argument quality variations on claim acceptance: empirical evidence from the US and the UK

Abstract

In the examination of what makes for a strong argument, a stream of research has used normative criteria from argumentation theory to compare high-quality with low-quality arguments. While a larger body of research on argument quality and persuasion has involved US and UK samples, no study with these samples has reported on the impact of argument quality manipulated with normative criteria. Therefore, an experiment was conducted in which American (N = 237) and British (N = 231) participants assessed several claims supported by arguments varying in quality. Results show that high-quality arguments lead to higher claim acceptance than low-quality arguments for British but not for Americans. The results are discussed in the context of a meta-analysis of similar studies.