What's the Secret Recipe for Persuasive Message Content Success?

Kara Masick

Advisor: Patrick E McKnight, PhD, Department of Psychology

Committee Members: Tyler H. Shaw, Jeffrey B. Stuewig

Online Location, Online
April 05, 2024, 12:00 PM to 02:00 PM

Abstract:

This study both uncovers a factor structure underlying persuasive message content and reveals the qualities contributing to the variation in persuasion outcomes in one real-world dataset. Persuasion has been studied since ancient times, and the scholarship on message content is “expansive and exasperating”. (Druckman, 2021, p.2.8) This study is one uniquely modern attempt to cut through the noise and discern which qualities truly do influence message effectiveness. I identified factors (over 800 ‘ingredients’) from academia and industry, performed an empirically informed reduction of those factors into 15 latent factors (a consolidated ‘shopping list’), and generated a measurement model (a ‘recipe’) derived from real-world persuasive outcomes within a social media dataset. Confirmatory testing is needed to have confidence in the model, but it may still be a useful tool for persuasion researchers, practitioners, and evaluators.