Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: A, Harvard University (Harvard Business School), course: Psychology of Strategic Leadership, language: English, abstract: 1. Introduction Much has been written on which types of people have more influence, are more successful negotiators and the techniques related to persuasion. However, this assumes that most people have the ability to enter a situation and accurately judge their audiences and respond accordingly to cues and effectively use numerous appropriate persuasion techniques. The ongoing hypotheses in the literature is that all people are equal when it comes to persuasion, whereas in practice we may use how much somebody cares about when it is one friend and using social pressure on another friend depending on that friend’s characteristics. Very little research has been done on how the identity of the audience changes their responsiveness to different persuasion techniques. The authors of this paper examine how the responsiveness to Cialdini’s six persuasion techniques varies by gender, cultural background and personality type. Each of the techniques is briefly described in the table below. Our results show that there are indeed differences in responsiveness to techniques depending on demographic and personality differences. 2. Theoretical background 2.1 Personality and persuasion 2.1.1 Five-factor model of personality Fifty years ago, Tupes and Christal (1961) established a five-factor model of personal traits (often termed the Big Five) consisting of neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness.2 Today, this framework is widely used to describe the most important aspects of personalities.3 Several studies showed that the five traits are stable over time and can be applied across cultures.4 Table 2 lists the most representative attributes of the extremes for each of the five factors. 2.1.2 Personality and persuasibility Already before the five-factor personality model was created, Hovland et al. (1953) and Janis et al. (1959) studied personality factors related to persuasibility. In their Yale studies, the authors tested selected personal characteristics such as self esteem, richness of fantasy and interpersonal aggressiveness with regards to susceptibility to persuasion.7 These studies triggered further persuasion research which expanded to personal attributes such as anxiety, dogmatism and need for cognition.8 The following paragraphs summarize major findings regarding the five personality traits’ susceptibility to persuasion.

First Published in 2015. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.

Whether users are likely to accept the recommendations provided by a recommender system is of utmost importance to system designers and the marketers who implement them. By conceptualizing the advice seeking and giving relationship as a fundamentally social process, important avenues for understanding the persuasiveness of recommender systems open up. Specifically, research regarding influential factors in advice seeking relationships, which is abundant in the context of human-human relationships, can provide an important framework for identifying potential influence factors in recommender system context. This book reviews the existing literature on the factors in advice seeking relationships in the context of human-human, human-computer, and human-recommender system interactions. It concludes that many social cues that have been identified as influential in other contexts have yet to be implemented and tested with respect to recommender systems. Implications for recommender system research and design are discussed.

The Oxford Handbook of Social Influence restores this important field to its once preeminent position within social psychology. Editors Harkins, Williams, and Burger lead a team of leading scholars as they explore a variety of topics within social influence, seamlessly incorporating a range of analyses (including intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intragroup), and examine critical theories and the role of social influence in applied settings today.

Resistance and Persuasion is the first book to analyze the nature of resistance and demonstrate how it can be reduced, overcome, or used to promote persuasion. By examining resistance, and providing strategies for overcoming it, this new book generates insight into new facets of influence and persuasion. With contributions from the leaders in the field, this book presents original ideas and research that demonstrate how understanding resistance can improve persuasion, compliance, and social influence. Many of the authors present their research for the first time. Four faces of resistance are identified: reactance, distrust, scrutiny, and inertia. The concluding chapter summarizes the book's theoretical contributions and establishes a resistance-based research agenda for persuasion and attitude change. This new book helps to establish resistance as a legitimate sub-field of persuasion that is equal in force to influence. Resistance and Persuasion offers many new revelations about persuasion: *Acknowledging resistance helps to reduce it. *Raising reactance makes a strong message more persuasive. *Putting arguments into a narrative increases their influence. *Identifying illegitimate sources of information strengthens the influence of legitimate sources. *Looking ahead reduces resistance to persuasive attempts. This volume will appeal to researchers and students from a variety of disciplines including social, cognitive, and health psychology, communication, marketing, political science, journalism, and education.