Summary
Suppose that you are an advocate in a two-person, two-round debate, where you and the opposing advocate each try to persuade the listener to take a favourable action by presenting supportive evidence. Would you present first or second? Behavioural theories provide arguments which could go either way: presenting first might set the agenda, forcing your rival to respond on your terms; while it’s valuable to present second if the listener only remembers the last word. In contrast to these arguments, the authors address this question in a game-theoretic setting, where the Receiver is not cognitively limited.
The answer turns on whether the two advocates are known to share the same available evidence. If so then advocates cannot prefer to present first but may, under some circumstances, prefer to present second. This unequivocal answer does not carry over to circumstances in which advocates are known to have access to different evidence, as the authors show by means of a series of examples in which advocates could prefer to present first. All of these examples share a particular property. The follower can typically do better if they could commit to the response to the leader’s argument; and, in the examples, presenting first replicates the effect of this commitment.
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Authors
Elena D'Agostino and Daniel J. Seidmann
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Posted on Thursday 12th October 2017