Source Personality and Persuasiveness: Big Five Predispositions to Being Persuasive and the Role of Message Involvement

Who one is, whom one knows? Evaluating the importance of personal and social characteristics of influential people in social networks

Purpose

This study examines opinion leadership's personal and social characteristics to see which one is more effective in opinion leadership in four different industries: fashion, travel and tourism, wellness and book and literature. The specific subject of this investigation is how largely openness, exhibitionism and competence in interpersonal relationships and status and attitude homophily affect the opinion leadership and the decision-making of opinion leaders' followers.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed model was tested with the questionnaire shared via stories featured on Instagram among followers of four micro-influencers in different industries. For the purpose of testing the offered hypotheses of this study, the partial least squares method was used.

Findings

The findings show that openness, exhibitionism and competence in interpersonal relationships have a substantial effect on opinion leadership. It was also evident that status and attitude homophily impact opinion leadership. The model supports the effect of both personal and social characteristics on opinion leadership; however, based on the results, the effect of personal characteristics on opinion leadership is more remarkable, both in a direct relationship and through the mediating role of para-social interaction.

Originality/value

This study is novel in categorizing opinion leaders' attributes in two different extents of personal and social characteristics. The authors defined a model of the effectiveness of each personal and social characteristic on opinion leaders. The model investigates whether the personal or social characteristics have the most effect on opinion leadership, particularly with the mediating role of para-social interaction.

Westerveld M. Properties of Spoken Persuasive Language Samples From Typically Developing Adolescents

Purpose

Persuasive communication skills are vital for achieving success in school, at work, and in social relationships. To facilitate assessment of persuasive discourse, we developed a clinically feasible persuasive speaking protocol and used it to compile a database of language samples. This database allowed us to describe the properties of adolescents' persuasive speaking skills.

Method

We collected spoken language samples from 179 typically developing students in Grades 8–12, recruited from the United States and Australia. Participants were asked to persuade an authority figure to make a change in a rule or policy.

Results

Language performance data reflecting both microstructural and macrostructural properties of spoken language were summarized and broken down by grade. We completed a factor analysis that documented three latent variables (syntax, discourse difficulties, and content). To test the validity of the persuasive measures, a subset of the participants completed an additional battery of assessments, which revealed weak to moderate relationships between the persuasive measures, general language ability, and working memory. There was no significant relationship between the persuasive language measures and an assessment of personality.

Conclusion

Our persuasive language sampling protocol facilitated the collection of valid language performance data. The summary data can be used as benchmarks for clinical evaluations of adolescents suspected of having language difficulties.

Persuasive Robots Acceptance Model (PRAM): Roles of Social Responses Within the Acceptance Model of Persuasive Robots

In the last years, there have been rapid developments in social robotics, which bring about the prospect of their application as persuasive robots to support behavior change. In order to guide related developments and pave the way for their adoption, it is important to understand the factors that influence the acceptance of social robots as persuasive agents. This study extends the technology acceptance model by including measures of social responses. The social responses include trusting belief, compliance, liking, and psychological reactance. Using the Wizard of Oz method, a laboratory experiment was conducted to evaluate user acceptance and social responses towards a social robot called SociBot. This robot was used as a persuasive agent in making decisions in donating to charities. Using partial least squares method, results showed that trusting beliefs and liking towards the robot significantly add the predictive power of the acceptance model of persuasive robots. However, due to the limitations of the study design, psychological reactance and compliance were not found to contribute to the prediction of persuasive robots’ acceptance. Implications for the development of persuasive robots are discussed.

Role of Personality Characteristics and Sexual Orientation in the Risk for Sexual Addiction Among Israeli Men: Validation of a Hebrew Sex Addiction Scale

Men having sex with men are known to exhibit heightened sexual activity. This raises the conjecture that different sexual orientations exhibit different levels of sex addiction risk, which is also affected by personality. The present study examined the prevalence of the sex addiction risk within the context of sexual orientation and personality in Israeli men while also validating the Hebrew Bergen-Yale Sex Addiction Scale (HBYSAS). Results based on 177 participants showed that the HBYSAS is appropriate for assessing the risk for sex addiction in Israeli men. Furthermore, results showed that sex addiction risk varied with individuals’ sexual orientation while being modestly associated with higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness.

The Role of the Face Itself in the Face Effect: Sensitivity, Expressiveness, and Anticipated Feedback in Individual Compliance

Face-to-face interactions are central to many individual choices and decision-making issues, such as customer services, sales, promotions, and negotiations. While the face effect, that is, face-to-face interactions are more effective in inducing compliance than other forms of interactions, has been noted in the literature, its mechanism has rarely been explored. This research helps to fill the theoretical void and provides new insights into the face effect with two lab experiments and one field experiment. Study 1, a field experiment conducted in a beauty salon, and Study 2, a lab experiment, show that the face effect is largely attributable to anticipated facial feedback and that the face effect is stronger when individuals are sensitive to face and when the requester's face is expressive. Study 3, using video-simulated face-to-face interactions, demonstrates that anticipated facial feedback, not necessarily actual feedback, is enough to drive the face effect. In so doing, this research furthers our understanding of factors that affect individual compliance in face-to-face interactions in both the "sending" and "receiving" stages. We discuss the theoretical and empirical implications, limitations, and future avenues of research.