Summary of Persuasion & Disagreement

Persuasion & Disagreement

Masters course (2022)

Course code: 880644-M-6

Tilburg University



Course summary including;

 Learning Goals

 Key terms, theories, and models.



Learning Goals...............................................................................................................................2

Lecture 1......................................................................................................................................2

Lecture 2......................................................................................................................................6

Lecture 3....................................................................................................................................10

Lecture 5....................................................................................................................................22

Lecture 6....................................................................................................................................27

Linguistic Style Matching..........................................................................................................35

Key terms, Models, Theories.......................................................................................................35

Lecture 1: interpersonal communication...................................................................................35

Lecture 2: interpersonal communication...................................................................................38

Lecture 3: application of CAT....................................................................................................39

Lecture 4: Interpersonal Persuasion...........................................................................................39

Lecture 5: deception in Communication and CAT....................................................................40

Lecture 6: interpersonal (dis)agreement....................................................................................41

, Learning Goals
General learning goal 1: Evaluate the successfulness of interpersonal communication in

terms of pragmatics and accommodation principles (e.g., cooperative principle,

accommodation theory, egocentrism) in a given conversation, in a given situation.



Lecture 1

Why interpersonal communication is both successful and error-prone.

 Communication as a transaction: intention to change something in the cognition of the

receiver with message content (that can consist of

information/beliefs/values/attitudes/emotions).  transactional process! Intention-directed

 Theory of mind (ToM): develops over the years, when growing up. Realizing that

perceptions can differ between individuals. Predicting how someone behaves by assessing

their mental state. Mental state = representation



By using the following concept & theories to motivate your answer

1. Common (= information available; shared/salient)- and privileged (= information not

available for others, feelings, thoughts, interpretations) ground

 Things that we both know we know (Clarks grounding theory: mutual shared knowledge).

a. Joint attention / perceptual co-presence (ToM)

b. Core common ground: mutual knowledge of how the world works

c. Emergent common ground: current sense & shared sense. Things enhanced in

communication. Depends on the context! (Shared experiences from the past)

 use of linguistic signals to predisposition triggers that contribute to building common

ground.

, Helps to direct attention, and helps to communicate social intention.



2. Cooperative principle & Audience Design (pragmatic  Grice)

Is believed that focus is constantly enhancing common ground. Utterances are formulated in such

a way that others can understand it/comprehend it.

a. Regulated by four maxims; quantity (informative), quality (honest), relation (relevant),

manner (clear)  guidelines for constructing inferences.

b. Violations: not adhering to maxims (not being cooperative). Violations allow/guide

inferences (of what is meant).

i. Conversational implicature; (a difference between) what is said and what is

intended to be understood.

ii. Maybe even on purpose (recognizing the difference between what is said and

what needs to be understood), thus implying something else  flouting.



CP = the more common ground is present, the less extra information needs to be expressed.

Often violated  common ground constrains language processing; also due to salience, clutter,

and cognitive load. Over specification can

a. influence comprehension

b. could require more processing effort.

c. Trigger (unintended) implicatures

d. On the contrary: it can also facilitate (the visual efficiency hypothesis)

Curse of knowledge  another reason why people might not always be cooperative. Saliences

can bias us. Own knowledge is hard to inhibit (theory of ironic processing).

, 3. Egocentric Anchoring, Monitoring, and Adjustment (cognitive  Keysar)

we have shown that the basic egocentric tendency persists through adulthood (Keysar)



We found that the initial process of interpretation (automatic default; is the first gaze of object

interpretation) is identical for children and adults. Children were much less effective in this

recovery than adults (Keysar)

people have an egocentric tendency to both thinking about other’s beliefs and in interpreting

what they say

Though adults perform better than children, they still show a surprising disregard for the

perspective of the other.



There are at least two reasons for this phenomenon: (1) one’s own perspective is dominant and

provides a compelling interpretation of what others say (privileged ground first), (2) and the

consideration of other’s beliefs is not automatic  it is effortful and required cognitive

resources; time pressure & cognitive load increase this bias!



It is the first thing that is affected by the lack of mental resources. In contrast, egocentric

interpretations are robust and less vulnerable to fluctuations in working memory and resources.

The assumption of cooperativeness in comprehension depends on assessing the mental state of

the speaker.