The Influence of Age, Gender, and Cognitive Ability on the Susceptibility to Persuasive Strategies

Abstract

The fact that individuals may react differently toward persuasive strategies gave birth to a shift in persuasive technology (PT) design from the one-size-fits-all traditional approach to the individualized approach which conforms to individuals’ preferences. Given that learners’ gender, age, and cognitive level can affect their response to different learning instructions, it is given primacy of place in persuasive educational technology (PET) design. However, the effect of gender, age, and cognitive ability on learners’ susceptibility to persuasive strategies did not receive the right attention in the extant literature. To close this gap, we carried out an empirical study among 461 participants to investigate whether learners’ gender, age, and cognitive ability significantly affect learners’ susceptibility to three key persuasive strategies (social learning, reward, and trustworthiness) in PETs. The results of a repeated measure analysis of variance (RM-ANOVA) revealed that people with high cognitive level are more likely to be susceptible to social learning, while people with low cognitive level are more likely to be susceptible to trustworthiness. Comparatively, our results revealed that males are more likely to be susceptible to social learning, while females are more likely to be susceptible to reward and trustworthiness. Furthermore, our results revealed that younger adults are more likely to be susceptible to social learning and reward, while older adults are more likely to be susceptible to trustworthiness. Our findings reveal potential persuasive strategies which designers can employ to personalize PTs to individual users in higher learning based on their susceptibility profile determined by age, gender, and cognitive level.

Gender, Age and Subjective Well-Being: Towards Personalized Persuasive Health Interventions

“…Therefore, health interventions that promote the individual components of the SWB will impact positively on people's overall physical health and well-being. There are several social strategies for persuasion (e.g., Reward, Competition, Social Comparison, Social Learning, Trustworthiness and Cooperation) and their effect in behavior change have been identified [9][10][11][12][13][14]. Given its value, PT has seen wide research application in domain such as health [13,14] and education [9,10].…”

The Relationship between Perceived Health Message Motivation and Social Cognitive Beliefs in Persuasive Health Communication

“…Moreover, Oyibo et al [39] found that males are more persuadable by competition and reward than females, especially in collectivist cultures. Similarly, in the education domain, Abdullahi et al [40] found that males are more persuadable by social learning and reward than females, while females are more persuadable by trustworthiness than males. Finally, in path modeling research, Oyibo and Vassileva [41] found that the relationship between reward and competition is stronger for males than females, while the relationship between reward and social learning is stronger for females than males.…”

The Impact of Fear and Rational Appeal Scam Techniques on Individual Susceptibility

“…Research has however shown that individuals can vary in their sensitivity to different PT strategies. This realization prompted a shift in PT design from the conventional one-sizefits-all approach to a customized approach that adapts to individual preferences (29). In this study, ten susceptibility factors introduced by Modic, Anderson and Palomäki (30) were selected because believe these factors are relevant in scam context and easily acceptable and understood by our respondents, which will promote a consistent interpretation of their responses.…”