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For citation: Alkış, N., & Temizel, T. T. (2015). The impact of individual differences on influence strategies. Personality and
Individual Differences, 87, 147-152.
The Impact of Individual Differences on Influence Strategies
Abstract
Persuasion and its applications aim at positively changing human behavior and they work the
best when they are tailored to individuals. Recent studies show that individuals could give different
responses to the same persuasion strategies which leads to personalization of persuasion strategies for
better effectiveness. This study investigates what persuasion strategies are more effective for whom.
More specifically, the relationship between the Big Five Personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism,
agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness) and six persuasion strategies (authority, reciprocation,
scarcity, liking, commitment and consensus) is explored. This study was conducted with 381 university
students. A structured questionnaire comprising the Big Five Inventory Personality Trait scale and the
Susceptibility to Persuasion Strategies scale was used to collect data. The Bayesian estimation was
employed to reveal causal relationships. The results show that there are significant relations between
personality traits and influence strategies.
Keywords: Big Five, Personality Traits, Bayesian SEM, Influence Principles, Persuasion
2
1. Introduction
Persuasion is a key element in behavior and attitude change and different strategies have been
proposed in the literature; such as Fogg’s 40 strategies (Fogg, 2002) and Rhoads’ principles (Rhoads,
2007). Cialdini (2001) distinguished six persuasion strategies which can be applied to change behavior
of people. These strategies have been used to change human behavior in different contexts; such as in
online commerce, fund-raising, advertisements, and health information systems (Cialdini, 1993, 2001;
Cialdini & Goldstein, 2002; Kaptein, Markopoulos, de Ruyter, & Aarts, 2009).
The effectiveness of these persuasion strategies varies among individuals since each individual can
give different responses to the same influence strategies. The relationship between the susceptibility of
users to persuasion strategies and their compliance to requests was studied by Kaptein et al. (2009).
They conducted an experiment where cued and non-cued persuasive requests were sent to the individuals
to assess their compliance with these requests. They concluded that individuals’ compliance increases
when a persuasive cue is incorporated into a request. Later, Kaptein (2012) proposed a structured scale
to measure the susceptibility of people to Cialdini’s six strategies. It was validated against actual
behavior change and it was shown to measure a distinct trait successfully based on self-reported data.
Although the designed scale had no specific context, it has been particularly utilized in the analysis of
persuasive system designs (Kaptein, Ruyter, Markopoulos & Aarts, 2012). Also Kaptein, Lacroix &
Saini (2010) showed that the responses of people to persuasive messages differ with their persuadability
level.
Foreknowledge of personality is important in implementing effective influence strategies. Hirsh,
Kang, & Bodenhausen (2012) discussed that persuasive messages are more effective when the message
is framed according to the personality traits of people. Halko and Kientz (2010) explored the relationship
between Big Five Personality (BFP) traits and persuasive technologies in the context of health-mobile
applications. Participants of the surveys were asked about their perceptions about storyboards
incorporating authoritative (instruction style), cooperative and competitive (social feedback), extrinsic
and intrinsic (motivation type), positive and negative reinforcement persuasive strategies. Their results
3
showed that personality traits have different impacts on the effectiveness of the persuasive technology
strategies. They concluded that personality types could be used to adapt persuasive strategies to meet
the needs of users. Kaptein et al. (2015) stated that trait differences affect responses to persuasion
principles.
The main contribution of this study is to identify which personality traits are significant in
determining individuals’ susceptibilities to influence strategies of Cialdini (Cialdini, 1993). There are
limited studies that have investigated the relation between persuasion strategies and personality traits
(Halko & Kientz, 2010; Hirsh et al., 2012). However none of them were focused on Cialdini’s principles
and they were designed for a specific application domain. The following hypotheses were formulated
based on the findings obtained from the current literature.
Authority strategy implies the inclination to comply more with a statement or request made by a
legitimate authority. Agreeable people are altruistic, sympathetic, and eager to help others (Costa &
McCrae, 1992). These people have cooperative values and exhibit positive interpersonal relationship
skills (Zhao & Seibert, 2006). A person who are high on agreeableness trait is also bound to fear from
not complying with the laws, policy and procedure defined by the authority as incompliance will result
in prosecution and being punished. Negligence of laws and procedure generally portrays low end of
agreeableness (Karim, Zamzuri, & Nor, 2009). Conscientious people also show responsibility for
themselves and other people. They are organized, disciplined, responsible and achievement-oriented.
Individuals high on this trait confirm to rules and regulations (Karim et al., 2009). Halko and Kientz
(2010) found a negative relation between openness and authoritative persuasion type. Openness is
reflected in a higher degree of intellectuality, imagination, and independent-mindedness (John &
Srivastava, 1999; McCrae & Costa, 1987). Thus,
Hypothesis 1a: Individuals who are high on the agreeableness, and conscientiousness traits are inclined
to authority strategy.
Hypothesis 1b: Individuals who are low on the openness trait are inclined to authority persuasion
strategy.
4
Reciprocation strategy suggests that people might feel obliged to return a favor. Even they had never
asked for, they can reciprocate to favors (Cialdini, 2003; James & Bolstein, 1990). Gouldner (1960)
defines reciprocity as the universal belief that people should help those who helped them in the past.
Dohmen, Falk, Huffman, & Sunde (2008) investigated the determinants of trust and reciprocal
inclinations (positive and negative) relating survey measures of social preferences to the measures of
BFP using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study. They found that all big five personality
traits have a significant and positive impact in the regressions for the positive reciprocity. So,
Hypothesis 2: Individuals high on the agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion and
openness traits are all inclined to reciprocation strategy.
Scarcity is related to valuing more of scarce things. For example, some people may feel obliged to
buy last items in an e-shopping web site. Neuroticism trait is characterized by anxiety, fear, frustration
and loneliness (Thompson, 2008). In a study conducted on phishing scam e-mails, the users were sent
e-mails promising a product to the first users to click the link (Scarcity), it was observed that the neurotic
users clicked more than others (Halevi, Lewis, & Memon, 2013). In addition, in e-commerce setting, a
purchasing event created with a time-limited option or discounted offer can result in a form of stress
associated with a desire for the product due to its scarcity (Sundström, Balkow, Florhed, Tjernström, &
Wadenfors, 2013). This fear of losing the limited option may affect neurotic people’s behavior. The
scarcity related questions of STPS scale based on Cialdini’s principles are mainly about giving value to
rare products. Shopping motives are defined as individuals’ motives such as pleasure in bargaining, self-
gratification and sensory stimulation to induce consumers to shop and they were found as significantly
related with big five traits in the literature (Guido, 2006). Researchers found that there is a significant
relationship between extraversion trait and value shopping (Guido, 2006; Karl, Peluchette, & Harland,
2007) which is about the enjoyment for seeking special discounts. Extravert individuals are known as
being outgoing, energetic, and social. Therefore,
Hypothesis 3 Individuals high on the neuroticism and extraversion traits are more inclined to scarcity
strategy than others.
5
Commitment and consistency denote people’s tendency to align with their earlier clear
commitments. People inclined to this strategy tend to follow through their appointments whenever they
commit to them. Individuals high in conscientiousness trait tend to be more goal oriented (Barrick,
Mount, & Strauss, 1993), organized, hardworking and self-regulated (Jensen-Campbell et al., 2002).
Self-regulated people tend to follow their promises. Consciousness and agreeable individuals were
shown to be related to all aspects of punctuality such that they have the ability and motivation to appear
on time in different situations. (Back, Schmukle, & Egloff, 2006). They stick to mutual agreements.
Thus,
Hypothesis 4: Individuals high on the conscientiousness and agreeableness personality traits are more
inclined to commitment strategy than others.
Social proof (consensus) is a principle signifying the propensity to follow the lead of similar others
and liking strategy encompasses the propensity to say ‘yes’ to people they like. In consensus strategy,
people observe others while making their decisions. Individuals tend to comply with a persuasive
message if they observe other people have also complied. This strategy is particularly effective in
situations of high uncertainty and ambiguity (Cialdini, 2001). Agreeable people were reported as good
team members (Peeters, Tuijl, Rutte, & Reymen, 2006) and cooperative and it is important for them to
fit in. On the other hand, closed individuals feel more comfortable with familiar and traditional
experiences (McCrae, & Sutin, 2009). These individuals may need the opinions of someone they trust
or like in unfamiliar settings. Liking strategy is about the tendency of being influenced by someone who
is similar or familiar to us. Agreeableness and extraversion traits were linked most consistently to
measures of likeability (Wortman & Wood, 2011). Thus,
Hypothesis 5: Individuals high on agreeableness and extraversion and low on openness traits are more
inclined to consensus and liking strategies than others.
2. Method
2.1. Participants and Procedure
6
All the participants were Turkish and undergraduate students of a well-known public university in
Turkey. The permissions were obtained from the university’s research center for applied ethics. An
online survey link was sent to the school email addresses of 658 students, 381 of which participated in
the study. 64 entries were eliminated due to incomplete surveys. Of the remaining participants, 186 were
female and 131 were male. The average age was 22.18.
2.2. Materials
The survey consisted of three sections to measure the variables of personality, susceptibility to
persuasion principles and demographic profile of the participants. To measure personality traits, Big
Five Inventory (BFI) was chosen, which includes 44 items (John & Srivastava, 1999). The items were
rated on a 5-point Likert scale from 1-Strongly disagree to 5-Strongly agree. The STPS scale was used
to measure the degree of propensity for being influenced by the six strategies (Kaptein, 2012). The items
were rated on a 7-point scale, from 1-completely disagree to 7- completely agree. STPS has been
validated in this study as it is a relatively new scale and its Turkish version has not been verified.
Therefore, its factor structure was validated using PCA with direct oblimin rotation and consequently,
one item from the liking, two items from the commitment and one item from the consensus strategy
were eliminated from the original scale (see Appendix A).
2.3. Data Analysis
Correlation analysis and Bayesian Structural Equation Modeling (BSEM) were used to analyze the
data. BSEM has many advantages over traditional SEM approaches, allowing missing data, nonlinearity,
and the use of numerous observed variable types. BSEM can be performed with a small sample size and
does not have normal distribution assumptions (Hoyle, 2012). As we used weakly informative priors,
the mean coefficient of each personality trait variable was set to a uniform distribution with the lower
and upper bounds of 1 and 5, respectively. The Gelman-Rubin convergence diagnostic statistics
(G.R.D.) was used (Gelman, Carlin, Stern, & Rubin, 2004) where 1.002 indicates model convergence.
BSEM model fit was assessed with the posterior predictive p value where 0.5 gives the best model fit.
BSEM was preferred to test the proposed hypotheses in the study as it can identify the causality
between variables, which cannot be performed by correlation analysis. In addition, multiple regression
7
analysis has assumptions of suitable specification of the model, linear relationship between variables,
and no multi-collinearity between predictor variables and normality (Alavifar, Karimimalayer, & Anuar,
2012).
3. Results
3.1. Preliminary Analysis
To examine the internal consistency of the scales, the Cronbach’s alpha scores were computed for
each subscale in the dataset (Table 1). All subscales of the questionnaire except for agreeableness trait
had a good internal consistency of α>0.7, however this factor was included in the further analysis since
the alpha score was slightly lower than the required value.
Table 1 Reliability Scores
Scale
Subscale
Cronbach’s
Alpha
Number of
items
Personality
Traits
Extraversion
0.819
8
Agreeableness
0.615
9
Conscientiousness
0.762
9
Neuroticism
0.810
8
Openness to Experience
0.792
10
Susceptibility
to Persuasion
Principles
Reciprocation
0.869
5
Scarcity
0.774
5
Authority
0.821
5
Consensus
0.776
4
Liking
0.760
4
Commitment
0.739
3
A composite score was computed for each personality trait and persuasion principle for the analyses.
Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics of the scores for all the variables. Our dataset is highly skewed
towards 7, particularly for reciprocation and commitment strategies. This is expected since those who
are more committed to a goal may be more inclined to attend the study than those who are not.
8
Table 2 Descriptive Statistics of Scores for Personality Traits and Influence Strategies
Variable
N
Minimum
Maximum
Mean
Std.
Deviation
Extraversion (EXT)
317
1.250
5.000
3.420
0.720
Agreeableness (AGR)
317
1.670
5.000
3.571
0.508
Conscientiousness (CONC)
317
1.220
5.000
3.196
0.603
Neuroticism (NEU)
317
1.000
5.000
2.991
0.738
Openness (OPN)
317
1.500
5.000
3.702
0.588
Reciprocation (REC)
317
1.000
7.000
5.296
1.173
Scarcity (SCAR)
317
1.000
7.000
4.623
1.336
Authority (AUTH)
317
1.600
7.000
4.678
1.119
Consensus (CONS)
317
1.000
7.000
3.896
1.253
Liking (LIKE)
317
1.000
7.000
4.868
1.101
Commitment (COM)
317
2.000
7.000
5.465
1.110
3.2. Correlation Analysis
In order to examine the interrelatedness of five personality traits and six influence strategies, zero-
order correlation coefficients were computed (see Table 3). Extraversion trait was weakly correlated to
reciprocation, scarcity and commitment strategies. Agreeableness trait was weakly correlated to
reciprocation, authority, liking and commitment strategies. Conscientiousness trait was weakly
correlated to reciprocation and authority strategies while it was moderately correlated to commitment
strategy. Neuroticism was not correlated to any of the strategies significantly. Openness trait was weakly
correlated to reciprocation, consensus and commitment strategies.
Table 3 Correlations between each parameter
AGR
CONC
NEU
OPN
REC
SCAR
AUTH
CONS
LIKE
COM
EXT
.171**
.303**
-.361**
.467**
.177**
.193**
0.004
-0.099
0.076
.212**
AGR
.172**
-.236**
.245**
.216**
0.04
.245**
0.049
.263**
.231**
CONC
-.269**
.226**
.186**
0.032
.235**
-0.045
-0.063
.363**
NEU
-.149**
-0.024
0.079
-0.022
0.072
-0.023
-0.108
OPN
.134*
0.082
-0.083
-.201**
-0.026
.234**
REC
.283**
.382**
0.088
.364**
.384**
SCAR
.312**
.246**
.267**
0.107
AUTH
.309**
.203**
.378**
CONS
.279**
0.02
LIKE
.224**
COM
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
3.3. Modeling the Relationship between Personality Traits and Influence Strategies with BSEM
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Figure 1 shows the models created in AMOS Graphics, where the nodes represent the variables and
the links represent the causal relationships between these variables (only the significant relations are
presented). The final parameters of the best-fitted models are given in Table 4 and 5. The standardized
direct effects are given in Table 6.
Figure 1 AMOS representation of the six models.
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Table 4 Model Statistics
Reciprocation
Scarcity
Authority
Consensus
Liking
Commitment
Posterior
Predictive p
0.49
0.50
0.48
0.50
0.48
0.47
Convergence
Statistics
1.0017
1.0014
1.0012
1.0014
1.0016
1.0014
R2
0.110
0.070
0.140
0.050
0.110
0.190
Table 5 The results of the Bayesian estimation for the prediction of each influence strategy
Parameter
Mean
Std. Error
95% Confidence Interval
Lower
Bound
Upper Bound
CommitmentConscientiousness
0.543
0.005
0.337
0.737
CommitmentAgreeableness
0.322
0.005
0.089
0.559
CommitmentOpenness
0.208
0.006
-0.002
0.419
Authority Openness
-0.374
0.004
-0.576
-0.176
Authority Conscientiousness
0.436
0.005
0.237
0.637
Authority Agreeableness
0.553
0.005
0.327
0.788
Consensus Agreeableness
0.250
0.006
-0.038
0.527
Consensus Openness
-0.174
0.005
-0.385
0.036
Liking Agreeableness
0.629
0.006
0.388
0.868
Liking Openness
-0.229
0.006
-0.467
-0.009
LikingExtraversion
0.185
0.005
0.004
0.378
LikingConscientiousness
-0.222
0.005
-0.433
-0.020
Reciprocation Agreeableness
0.458
0.005
0.209
0.719
Reciprocation Conscientiousness
0.271
0.005
0.048
0.493
Reciprocation Extraversion
0.227
0.004
0.046
0.411
Reciprocation Neuroticism
0.179
0.004
-0.016
0.375
Scarcity Neuroticism
0.301
0.005
0.090
0.508
Scarcity Extraversion
0.476
0.004
0.270
0.684
Table 6 Standardized direct effects of personality traits over influence strategies
Reciprocation
Scarcity
Authority
Consensus
Liking
Commitment
Extraversion
0.139
0.255
0.121
Agreeableness
0.197
0.252
0.101
0.289
0.147
Conscientiousness
0.139
0.234
-0.121
0.310
Neuroticism
0.112
0.166
Openness
-0.196
-0.222
-0.122
0.124
The analyses revealed that agreeableness, and conscientiousness positively contributed to
susceptibility to authority (R2=0.140) and openness negatively contributed (Hypothesis 1a and 1b were
11
supported). Extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism significantly contributed to
susceptibility to the reciprocation strategy (R2=0.11) (Hypothesis 2 was partially supported since
openness trait was not found as significant). Neuroticism's effect is the lowest. Extraversion and
neuroticism significantly contributed to susceptibility to the scarcity strategy (R2= 0.070) (Hypothesis 3
was supported). Openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness contributed to susceptibility to
commitment strategy (R2= 0.180) (Hypothesis 4 was supported but openness was found to be related
which were not hypothesized). Agreeableness, extraversion, and openness significantly contributed to
the liking strategy (R2= 0.110). An un-hypothesized relation was found between conscientiousness and
liking. Agreeableness, and openness contributed to the consensus strategy (R2=0.050) (Hypothesis 5
was partially supported). No relationship between extraversion and the consensus strategy was found.
4. Conclusion and Discussion
The current study investigated the relationship between personality and susceptibility to persuasion
strategies, identifying which personality traits are affected by which persuasion strategies for the first
time in the literature. The results indicate that personality is important in the influence strategy selection
process. Agreeableness is the most susceptible personality trait compared to the other traits. They are
significantly affected by the opinions of their peers and authority. Agreeable people are reported to have
negative feelings towards being penalized when they do not comply with the rules, authority and
regulations (Karim et al., 2009). These feelings may make them listen to the authority figures and obey
directions from their supervisors. Highly agreeable individuals are also cooperative and are reported to
have a higher level of empathy for others. Since agreeable people show empathy for others and care for
others’ feelings, they are inclined to be affected by their peers, hence they are more susceptible to the
liking strategy than others.
Conscientious people are inclined to authority principle but not consensus or liking principles. A
conscientious person is characterized as being organized, self-disciplined and following rules, and
therefore is more likely to follow authority, regulations and rules (Karim et al., 2009). These individuals
tend to appraise the ideas of authority rather than the ideas of their social circle. On the other hand,
extravert people are not inclined to consensus and authority strategies which can be attributed to their
12
caresome and dominant character. While their high level of social engagement make them liked by their
peers, their appreciation of the ideas of their social circle is poor.
Openness is described as the extent to which a person is independent and imaginative (Costa & McCrae,
1992). On the other hand, people strongly influenced by authority persuasion principle tend to cite
authoritative sources to support their ideas. A study (McCrae & Sutin, 2009) concluded that while
closed individuals follow authority without questioning, open individuals are reluctant to follow
opposing ideas and represents these to their social interactions and family life. In addition, closed
individuals have a high opinion of their friends and peers whereas open people tend to believe in the
superiority of their ideas and imaginations over other people. Closed people are those who need opinions
of others in an unfamiliar situation.
Except openness trait, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism traits were found
to be affected by reciprocation strategy. The reason of the findings can be attributed to altruism. Barrick
and Mount (1991) stated that people high in conscientiousness trait are aware of the constant back and
forth exchange of favors and plan for the next time they may need help. These people tend to be driven
by doing the “right thing” and in the context of social exchange, these people return favors not for
obligation but for feeling of indebted. Agreeable individuals are inherently altruistic and tend to be
sensitive to the needs and well-beings of other people. Extraversion and the agreeableness traits were
shown as significantly contributing to altruism (Oda et al., 2014). They stated that reciprocal altruism is
maintained in a prosocial environment and extravert individuals may prefer a social environment where
they engage in reciprocal helping behaviors. Neuroticism is weakly associated with reciprocation inline
with the study of Dohmen et al. (2008).
Extraversion and neuroticism were found to have positive relations with scarcity. Neurotic people may
worry or fear about missing the opportunities, thus may be affected by this strategy. Extravert people
seek out opportunities and excitement so they may find scarce items attractive to buy. Searching for
discounts give them excitement and they feel very special when they buy the last item.
13
Conscientiousness trait was found to be the most significant feature in the commitment strategy.
Conscientious and agreeable people are self-regulated and therefore they are more likely to follow their
promises in order to be consistent with their previous behaviour (Jensen-Campbell et al., 2002). Besides,
agreeable people prefer to commit to their promises in order to keep their interpersonal relationships
healthy. Commitment is an important strategy to be influential in a social enviroment. Breaking promises
or inconsistent behaviour and statements may depict a person as untrustable and individual’s social
status may be impaired. We speculate that individuals who are open to experiences prefer to be inline
with their previous statements that were made to their peers or friends to retain their relationships
healthy.
Persuasive requests should tailored to the individuals to increase compliance of individuals. The results
of our study can be useful for persuasive system designers to create effective personalized persuasive
systems. For example, a customized persuasion system including a platform where the social circle of
an individual is integrated, increases the compliance of agreeable people. Social circle plays a significant
role in positive reinforcement. People may make positive comments on individual’s progress on a task
and individuals receiving these comments are more likely to pursue their target behavior. We also note
that personality traits can also be successfully inferred based on individuals’ digital footprints left on the
web or their mobile phones (such as call data) (Butt& Phillips ,2008) even in a short period of time
and these data can be used to link personality traits and effective influence strategies we identified in
this study. To measure someone’s propensity to an influence strategy correctly, a persuasive system
designer needs to collect many cues by controlled experiments and the experiments should be carried
out without being noticed by the user. Because in a persuasive system, participants should not be aware
of the system or messages attempting to persuade themselves as otherwise the system may not be
effective at all. In addition, propensity to some of the strategies is hard to detect such as liking by tracking
individuals’ behavior online. However, the effective strategies identified based on personality traits will
ease this procedure without affecting the system’s overall credibility.
One of the limitations of this study is the limited age range of the participants. Future studies could use
a wider or different range of age groups. Although the correlation results reasonably overlap with the
14
BSEM results, there is a significant difference in liking strategy as there is no direct linear relationship
between liking and traits including conscientiousness, openness and extraversion but a nonlinear
relationship.
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Appendix A - STPS Scale
Persuasion
Principle
Items
Reciprocation
(REC)
When a family member does me a favor, I am very inclined to return this
favor.
I always pay back a favor.
If someone does something for me, I try to do something of similar value
to repay the favor.
When I receive a gift, I feel obliged to return a gift.
When someone helps me with my work, I try to pay them back.
Scarcity
(SCAR)
I believe rare products (scarce) are more valuable than mass products
When my favorite shop is about to close, I would visit it since it is my last
chance.
I would feel good if I was the last person to be able to buy something.
When my favorite shampoo is almost out of stock I buy two bottles
Products that are hard to get represent a special value.
Liking
(LIKE)
The opinions of friends are more important than the opinions of others.
If I am unsure, I will usually side with someone I like.
I accept advice from my social network.
When I like someone, I am more inclined to believe him or her.
Commitment
(COM)
Whenever I commit to an appointment I always follow through.
I try to do everything I have promised to do.
If I miss an appointment, I always make it up.
Consensus
(CONS)
When I am in a new situation I look at others to see what I should do.
I often rely on other people to know what I should do.
It is important to me to fit in.
I will do something as long as I know there are others doing it too.
Authority
(AUTH)
I always follow advice from my general practitioner
I am very inclined to listen to authority figures.
I always obey directions from my superiors
I am more inclined to listen to an authority figure than a peer.
When a professor tells me something I tend to believe it is true.
