How do you choose to argue? Educators frequently lament weaknesses in students’ oral and w...

How do you choose to argue? Educators frequently lament weaknesses in students’ oral and written arguments. In Thinking and Reasoning (April 2007), researchers at Columbia University conducted a series of studies to assess the cognitive skills required for successful arguments. One study focused on whether students would choose to argue by weakening the opposing position or by strengthening the favored position. (For example, suppose you are told you would do better at basketball than soccer, but you like soccer. An argument that weakens the opposing position is “You need to be tall to play basketball.” An argument that strengthens the favored position is “With practice, I can become really good at soccer.”) A sample of 52 graduate students in psychology was equally divided into two groups. Group 1 was presented with 10 items such that the argument always attempts to strengthens the favored position. Group 2 was presented with the same 10 items, but in this case the argument always attempts to weaken the nonfavored position. Each student then rated the 10 arguments on a five-point scale from very weak (1) to very strong (5). The variable of interest was the sum of the 10 item scores, called the total rating . Summary statistics for the data are shown in the accompanying table. Use the methodology of this chapter to compare the mean total ratings for the two groups at α = .05 . Give a practical interpretation of the results in the words of the problem.

Based on Kuhn, D., and Udell, W. “Coordinating own and other perspectives in argument.” Thinking and Reasoning , October 2006.