Persuasive evidence in India

Research on persuasive evidence types has been limited to Western cultures. Because Western systems of thought are claimed to be fundamentally different from Eastern systems of thought, the persuasiveness of evidence types was explored in one Eastern culture. Indians (N = 183) judged claims supported by different evidence types.  Statistical, expert, and causal evidence were found to be equally persuasive as support for claims.  Indians also appeared sensitive to evidence quality that was manipulated according to Western norms for reasonable argumentation: normatively strong evidence was more persuasive than normatively weak evidence.  Findings are compared to results from studies conducted in Western cultures.

  • Hornikx, J. & Best, J. de (2011). Persuasive evidence in India: An investigation of the impact of evidence types and evidence quality. Argumentation and Advocacy, 47 (4), 246-257. [pdf]

Boekbespreking: drogredenen en redelijkheidsoordelen

Drogredenen – vaak beschouwd als argumenten die valide of deugdelijk lijken maar het niet zijn – zijn een klassiek object van studie in de argumentatieleer. In de kennis die is opgedaan sinds Aristoteles, Locke en Hamblin ontbrak lang het perspectief van ontvangers van drogredenen. Hoe kijken gewone taalgebruikers naar drogredenen? Zien zij drogredenen ook als onredelijke argumenten? Deze laatste vraag heeft Frans van Eemeren, Bart Garssen en Bert Meuffels zo’n tien jaar beziggehouden. Tien jaar van empirisch onderzoek bij meer dan 1900 proefpersonen, verdeeld over meer dan 50 experimenten. Na publicaties over enkele van deze experimenten, waaronder uiteraard ook in Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, was het wachten op een overzicht. Met “Fallacies and judgments of reasonableness” wordt dat wachten beloond. In een compacte en heldere stijl schetsen de drie auteurs de achtergrond van het onderzoeksprogramma, beschrijven ze de kenmerken van de studies en vatten ze de bevindingen kernachtig samen.

  • Hornikx, J. (2011). Bespreking van: Frans H. van Eemeren, Bart Garssen en Bert Meuffels (2009). Fallacies and judgments of reasonableness: Empirical research concerning the pragma-dialectical discussion rules. Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, 33 (2), 193-195. [pdf]

Variations of standpoint explicitness in advertising

Empirical research has demonstrated that variation in standpoint explicitness matters. In several research reports, explicit articulations of a standpoint or conclusion have been compared to more implicit articulations. Meta-analyses of such reports (Cruz, 1998; O’Keefe, 1997, 2002) have shown that messages with explicitly stated standpoints are more persuasive than messages without such standpoints. Such effects were not found for advertising messages, for which the conclusion – buy this product – seems relatively straightforward, regardless of the articulation of the conclusion (Cruz, 1998). There are different ways in which explicit conclusions may be articulated, one of which is the use of probability markers. Advertising research has compared hedges (which mark a standpoint as moderately probable) and pledges (which mark a standpoint as very probable). In this study, it was investigated whether the reputation of the brand affects the persuasiveness of hedges and pledges. Based on a study conducted by Goldberg and Hartwick (1990), it was expected that hedges would be more persuasive for low-reputation brands, whereas pledges would be more persuasive for high-reputation brands. This expectation was put to a test in an experiment.

  • Hornikx, J. (2011). Variations of standpoint explicitness in advertising: An experimental study on probability markers. In F. H. van Eemeren, B. Garssen, D. Godden, & G. Mitchell (Eds.), Proceedings of the seventh conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 824-830). Amsterdam: Sic Sat. [pdf]

Epistemic authority of professors and researchers

Teachers and researchers are considered epistemic authorities that provide reliable information if that information is relevant to their discipline. Students differentiate between relevant and irrelevant disciplines when assessing teachers’ expertise. In this paper, it is investigated whether students’ cultural-educational background plays a role in this differentiation between relevant and irrelevant disciplines. In large power distance cultures such as France, students learn to respect and obey their teacher, whereas in smaller power distance cultures such as the Netherlands, the relationships between students and teachers are more informal. Therefore, French students may be less sensitive to the actual discipline when assessing a source’s expertise. In an experiment, it was empirically tested whether French students perceived smaller differences than Dutch students between fictitious professors and researchers who put forward information that is or is not related to their own discipline. Results showed that the French participants indeed differentiated to a much lesser degree between professors and researchers with a relevant and an irrelevant discipline than the Dutch participants. Further analyses indicated that students’ obedience partially mediated this effect of nationality on the difference between relevant and irrelevant disciplines. This study underlines the role that cultural-educational background can play in the assessments of epistemic authorities.

  • Hornikx, J. (2011). Epistemic authority of professors and researchers: Differential perceptions by students from two cultural-educational systems. Social Psychology of Education, 14 (2), 169-183.

Conducting research on international advertising

International research teams that are knowledgeable about the cultures under investigation are considered a prerequisite for sound research. By virtue of a meta-analytic review, this study empirically compared international and national research teams that have conducted experiments on the effectiveness of cultural value adaptation in advertising. Results show that, although the composition of research teams does not make for dependable differences in the outcomes of these experiments, international research teams may be more capable than national teams of designing pairs of culturally-adapted-versus-unadapted advertisements. It may not matter much, however, whether the international team includes a representative of the audience’s culture.

  • Hornikx, J., & O’Keefe, D. J. (2011). Conducting research on international advertising: The roles of cultural knowledge and international research teams. Journal of Global Marketing, 24 (2), 152-166. [link]

Tijdschriftreclame uit de kleedkamer van de redactie

Advertorials zijn reclameboodschappen die zijn vermomd als journalistieke bijdragen (editorials), maar die wel degelijk van een merk afkomstig zijn om tot koop aan te zetten. Het ligt voor de hand dat advertorials daarom een commerciëler karakter hebben dan editorials die informatiever zouden moeten zijn. Herkennen lezers advertorials als commerciële, en editorials als informatieve berichten?

  • Hornikx, J., & Estourgie, V. (2010). Tijdschriftreclame uit de kleedkamer van de redactie. Tekstblad, 16 (5/6), 18-21. [pdf]

Review of “Fallacies and judgments of reasonableness: Empirical research concerning the pragma-dialectical discussion rules”

One of the core concepts in argumentation theory are fallacies, often considered to be arguments that seem valid but that are invalid. Argumentation scholars and philosophers, such as Aristotle, Locke and Hamblin, have approached fallacies from a theoretical and non-empirical perspective. Such an approach has enabled the field of argumentation theory to intensively reflect on the concept of fallacies. A disadvantage of such an approach, however, is that it is naturally limited to the views and knowledge of argumentation theorists themselves. How would ordinary language users respond to fallacies? Would these laymen also consider fallacies to be unreasonable? Frans van Eemeren, Bart Garssen and Bert Meuffels have addressed this question by conducting an impressive set of experiments in the course of 10 years, involving more than 1900 participants. In Fallacies and judgments of reasonableness, they introduce these studies, present their results, and conclude that laymen’s conceptions of reasonableness are very similar to the theoretical conceptions of reasonableness in their own pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation.

  • Hornikx, J. (2010). Review of “Fallacies and judgments of reasonableness: Empirical research concerning the pragma-dialectical discussion rules” by Frans H. van Eemeren, Bart Garssen and Bert Meuffels. Information Design Journal, 18 (2), 175-177. [pdf]

Is het aanpassen van advertenties aan culturele waarden in West-Europa zinvol?

Een prominente lijn van onderzoek naar cultuur en reclame wordt gevormd door experimenten waarin advertenties met cultureel aangepaste waardeappels worden vergeleken met advertenties met cultureel onaangepaste waardeappels. Uit een eerdere meta-analyse van bestaande experimenten bleek dat aangepaste advertenties overtuigender zijn en meer gewaardeerd worden dan onaangepaste advertenties, maar dat dit effect niet optrad voor West-Europese proefpersonen (Hornikx & O’Keefe, 2009). Een oorzaak hiervoor ligt mogelijkerwijs in de gebruikte waardedimensies: in studies met Europese proefpersonen werden waardeappels nauwelijks aangepast aan individualisme – collectivisme, terwijl andere studies met deze waardedimensie juist aanpassingseffecten vonden. In een nieuwe serie experimenten werd daarom nagegaan of advertenties met een aangepast individualistisch waardeappel in West-Europese landen effectiever waren dan advertenties met een onaangepast collectivistisch waardeappel. Een meta-analyse van deze experimenten laat zien dat ook aanpassing aan individualisme – collectivisme geen voordeel oplevert in advertenties voor West-Europese proefpersonen.

  • Hornikx, J., Groot, E. de, Timmermans, E., Mariëns, J., & Verckens, J. P. (2010). Is het aanpassen van advertenties aan culturele waarden in West-Europa zinvol? Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, 32 (2), 114-127. [pdf]

English or a local language in advertising?

Studies have demonstrated frequent use of English in international advertising, but little is known about people’s preference for English versus local languages. This paper empirically investigated the difficulty of the English language as a possible determinant of people’s preference for English or the local language. In an experiment, Dutch participants judged a number of car ads with English slogans that were pre-tested as easy or difficult to understand. They were subsequently asked to express a preference for either the English slogan or the Dutch equivalent. Results showed that easy-to-understand English slogans were appreciated better than difficult-to-understand English slogans. Moreover, the degree of difficulty in comprehension of the English slogans affected participants’ preference for English. English was preferred to Dutch when it was easy to understand; when it was difficult to understand, English was appreciated as much as the Dutch equivalent. In conclusion, the experiment provides empirical support for the role of comprehension in the preference for and appreciation of English in international advertising.

  • Hornikx, J., Meurs, F. van, & Boer, A. de (2010). English or a local language in advertising? The appreciation of easy and difficult English slogans in the Netherlands. Journal of Business Communication, 47 (2), 169-188. [pdf]