Argument Strength is in the Eye of the Beholder: Audience Effects in Persuasion

TL;DR

This study investigates how audience personality traits influence the persuasiveness of different argument styles on social media, revealing that emotional arguments are more effective for certain personality types.

Contribution

It provides large-scale experimental evidence on the interaction between personality and argument style in persuasion, an under-explored area in natural language processing.

Findings

Belief change varies with personality traits.

Emotional arguments resonate more with conscientious, open, and agreeable individuals.

Audience effects significantly influence argument persuasiveness.

Abstract

Americans spend about a third of their time online, with many participating in online conversations on social and political issues. We hypothesize that social media arguments on such issues may be more engaging and persuasive than traditional media summaries, and that particular types of people may be more or less convinced by particular styles of argument, e.g. emotional arguments may resonate with some personalities while factual arguments resonate with others. We report a set of experiments testing at large scale how audience variables interact with argument style to affect the persuasiveness of an argument, an under-researched topic within natural language processing. We show that belief change is affected by personality factors, with conscientious, open and agreeable people being more convinced by emotional arguments.