Language is not only used for neutral information; we often seek to persuade by arguing in favor of a particular view. Persuasion raises a number of challenges for classical accounts of belief updating, as information cannot be taken at face value. How should listeners account for a speaker’s “hidden agenda” when incorporating new information? Here, we extend recent probabilistic models of recursive social reasoning to allow for persuasive goals and show that our model provides a pragmatic account for why weakly favorable arguments may backfire, a phenomenon known as the weak evidence effect. Critically, this model predicts a systematic relationship between belief updates and expectations about the information source: weak evidence should only backfire when speakers are expected to act under persuasive goals and prefer the strongest evidence. We introduce a simple experimental paradigm called the Stick Contest to measure the extent to which the weak evidence effect depends on speaker expectations, and show that a pragmatic listener model accounts for the empirical data better than alternative models. Our findings suggest further avenues for rational models of social reasoning to illuminate classical decision-making phenomena.
with the other big towns of the kingdom. In I896 only two towns, Bradford and West Ham, show a lower death-rate, only one a lower zymotic rate (Bradford), and again only one lower fever death-rate (Cardiff), and one a lower diarrhoea rate (Nottingham) and one a lower infantile rate (Edinburgh).
Language is not only used to inform. We often seek to persuade by arguing in favor of a particular view. Persuasion raises a number of challenges for classical accounts of belief updating, as information cannot be taken at face value. How should listeners account for a speaker's "hidden agenda" when incorporating new information? Here, we extend recent probabilistic models of recursive social reasoning to allow for persuasive goals and show that our model provides a new pragmatic explanation for why weakly favorable arguments may backfire, a phenomenon known as the weak evidence effect. Critically, our model predicts a relationship between belief updating and speaker expectations: weak evidence should only backfire when speakers are expected to act under persuasive goals, implying the absence of stronger evidence. We introduce a simple experimental paradigm called the Stick Contest to measure the extent to which the weak evidence effect depends on speaker expectations, and show that a pragmatic listener model accounts for the empirical data better than alternative models. Our findings suggest potential avenues for rational models of social reasoning to further illuminate decision-making phenomena.
THE BRITISH MEDICAL 7OURNAL. 837 Table B is constructed from Table A, the results being based on the assumption that the average age-at which medical officers take their first legal qualification is twenty-two. The tables, however, being once constructed, it is only necessary to add to, or subtract from, the final results to arrive at the truth, should twenty-two be considered too high or too low. The average age of the seven hundred and six officers enumerated is 39.89 years-a very important fact, which deserves to be known and appreciated. The average age of the surgeons-general is 59.5, and of the deputy surgeons-general 54.5.-Yours faithfully,
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