Abstract

SANTOS, Clara Maria Melo dos. "What do I think? When? How?": The effect of pragmatic interpretations on the production of argumentative texts. Temas psicol. [online]. 1999, vol.7, n.1, pp.37-49. ISSN 1413-389X.

The idea that people's belief in the nature of well thinking affects their argumentative reasoning has been suggested by various authors (Perkins, 1989; Baron, 1995). It has been thought that a good argument means an argument that emphasizes only one side of the problem and therefore people are myside-biased when producing or evaluating an argument. The study reported here has shown that other situational factors affect the frequency of support and counter-arguments in people's argumentation. In this study, college-students have been asked to write their opinion on abortion as completely as possible. They have also been asked to write a list of arguments about on the same topic as if they were making notes in preparation for a class discussion. The results have showed that most subjects have mentioned counter-arguments in their argumentative texts, but not in their notes. This finding has suggested that myside bias is associated with the pragmatic interpretations of the context in which argumentation occur.

Keywords : Argumentation; argumentative reasoning; informal reasoning; everyday reasoning.

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