EFFECTIVE PERSUASION

Do elementary statistics or equilibrium theory deliver any insight regarding how we should argue in debates? We provide an answer in a model in which each discussant wants to convince the audience that a specific state holds. If the discussants' payoffs in the audience's posterior are concave above and convex below the prior and exhibit loss aversion, then the leading discussant should give precedence to the weaker argument, and the follower should respond to a weak argument weakly and to a strong argument strongly. Such characterizations are also obtained for the case of choosing between independent and correlated arguments.