Inducements: On the phrasing and logic of conditional promises,threats, and warnings

Summary This study examines the purposive-causal use of IF in inducements (conditional threats and promises). It is shown that subjects are sensitive to the relations obtaining among conditional threats and promises phrased in IF, AND, and OR, and to the inferences that may be drawn from conditional threats and promises. It is demonstrated that the relation between conditionals and disjunctives and between IF NOT and UNLESS statements is affected by the sign of the consequences, i.e., whether a threat or promise is involved, and that subjects are very prone in the context of inducements to accept the obverse of a proposition as following from it, thus committing the fallacy of the negated antecedent. An analysis is provided seeking to account for these effects in terms of pragmatic factors involved in the conversational use of the conditional in inducements.This study was supported in part by U.S. Public Health Service Grant 10006 from the National Institute of Mental Health.