Edinburgh Napier University

  There is increasing evidence that indicates how personalising persuasive strategies may increase the effectiveness of persuasive technologies and behaviour change interventions. This has led to a wide range of studies exploring self reported, perceived susceptibility to persuasion, which highlight the role of individual differences. Conducting such studies, while accounting for individual differences can be challenging, particularly where persuasive strategies may be considered similar due to their underlying components. In this paper, we present a study exploring perceived susceptibility to Cialdini's principles of persuasion, with a focus on how we can distinguish perceived susceptibility measures between the most recently identified Unity principle and Social proof. This study was conducted using an online survey incorporating perceived susceptibility measures to all seven Cialdini principles and a measure of the actual effectiveness of seven corresponding persuasive strategies. Our results indicate that while we are able to distinguish perceived susceptibility measures between Unity and Social proof, together with Commitment, Scarcity and Reciprocity, we were unable to obtain these measures for Liking and Authority.