You are trying to convince someone — your friend, a client, your spouse — to take some action or change their belief, and you have lots of supporting arguments to make. Should you simply pile on all of the arguments in favor of your position? Or, would the other person think that you were “trying too hard” and be turned off by all of your arguments?
More traditional research suggests that having more arguments makes you more persuasive. A very recent study, however, suggests that it’s more complicated than that. While using more arguments in a persuasion attempt may make you look more like an expert, presenting a lot of arguments may also make the target person skeptical about your intentions. They may wonder, does this person have ulterior motives and is just trying to “sell” me on this?
A series of recent studies (Bergman et al., 2025) explored these factors and has contested the general belief that more arguments are more persuasive. In these experiments, people were given varying numbers of arguments (1, 3, 6, or 9 supporting arguments) from a persuasive individual, and then measures were taken of whether they were actually persuaded.
While more arguments did lead to perceptions that the persuader had more expertise, it also increased people’s skepticism and concern that the persuader had ulterior motives, or what the researchers termed “persuasive intent.”
The bottom line is this: If you are trying to be persuasive, you need to consider the other person — the target of your persuasion attempt — and that person’s perspective. Is the person focused on determining if you have expertise (that you actually know what you are arguing for, and you have supporting evidence/arguments), or are they wary that you have ulterior motives in your persuasion attempt? That should affect the number (and type) of arguments you present. As the researchers conclude, their results suggest “that situational constraints can dictate when it is better to advocate using more or fewer arguments.”
In another interesting study (Wallace, et al., 2024), researchers found that persons who are members of disadvantaged groups who are arguing for their rights can be seen as informed “experts” on the issue (e.g., discrimination against the disadvantaged group), but they also may be less persuasive if their targeted audience views them as having a vested interest (i.e., when, borrowing liberally from William Shakespeare, the persuader “doth argue too much”).
Again, it depends on who is being persuaded. The researchers, in summary, say: “When expertise is prioritized, providing more arguments is more persuasive, but when persuasive intent is prioritized, providing fewer arguments might be a better strategy.”
