Women, the intellectually humble, and liberals write more persuasive political arguments

Abstract

If sincere attempts at political persuasion are central to the functioning of democracy, then what attributes of individuals make them more persuasive toward fellow citizens? To examine this we asked 594 Democrats and Republicans to write politically persuasive arguments on any topic of their choice, then gave those arguments to a US representative sample of 3,131 to rate on persuasiveness, totaling 54,686 judgments. We consistently found that arguments written by women, liberals, the intellectually humble, and those low on party identification were rated as more persuasive. These patterns were robust to controls for the demographics and partisanship of judges and persuaders, the topics written about, argument length, and the emotional sentiments of the arguments. Women’s arguments were longer and of a higher grade level than men’s, but these factors did not explain their superior persuasiveness. Intergroup dynamics also affected persuasiveness, as arguments written for in-party members were more persuasive than ones written for out-party members. These findings suggest that an individual's personal and psychological characteristics durably provide them with a persuasive advantage when they engage in sincere attempts at changing the hearts and minds of fellow citizens.

Modeling doubt: a speculative syllabus

“…Humility is particularly essential here because I do not consider myself a digital humanist. Still, I think -I hope -what is discussed here will prove relevant to the Digital Humanities, and, ideally, to scholars and practitioners in myriad fields (see Cole-Wright, 2019;'Intellectual Humility' [course] University of Edinburgh (nd); Lees et al, 2023;Lynch, 2017;Rushing, 2020). I would like to think that doubt is an epistemological, methodological, aesthetic, and ethical concern that pertains to everything from science and engineering, to law and logic, to the fine arts and literature.…”

Of mice and machines: The asymmetric dehumanization of immigrants as a function of perceived economic contribution

“…Triggered by feelings of threat and competition, this dehumanizing language leads to greater anti-immigrant attitudes and support for restrictive immigration policies (Esses et al, 2013(Esses et al, , 2021Marshall & Shapiro, 2018;Utych, 2018). To counter this rhetoric, people often highlight the positive impacts of immigration on the economy, and the hard-work and economic success of immigrants (Esses et al, 2022;Lees et al, 2021;Martinez et al, 2021;Resnick, 2017). However, thinking about immigrants in terms of economic contribution may not always lead to more positive attitudes (Palma & Esses, 2023), and may even lead to different forms of dehumanization.…”