Abstract
This study is set forth to explore whether the susceptibility to persuasion—as articulated by Cialdini’s persuasion strategies—could vary with culture and acculturation. We examined individuals from the Arabic culture and their susceptibility to persuasion, according to the following strategies: reciprocity, commitment, liking, scarcity, consensus, and authority. The study involved 1,315 Arab Muslims between 18 and 60 years old (Mean = 34.65, SD = 9.16). The respondents were recruited from among residents of the Arab region (n = 507), immigrant Arabs in non-Arabic Muslim countries (n = 361), immigrant Arabs in East Asian countries (n = 85), and immigrant Arabs in Western countries (n = 362). Respondents completed an online Qualtrics survey. Controlling for socio-demographic variables (age, gender, income, education, and length of residence), our results indicated that susceptibility to the strategies differed significantly among Arab Muslims in the Arab region, with reciprocity being the highest and authority the lowest prevailing strategies. The same pattern of susceptibility emerged among immigrant Arab Muslims, regardless of their host country and the acculturation mode (integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalization) they endorse. These findings suggest that there is a consistent persuasion susceptibility pattern in the Arabic Muslim culture that does not seem to be modified by immigration and acculturation modes. Our findings are contrasted with the scarce research on cross-cultural differences in susceptibility to Cialdini’s persuasion strategies.
Highlights
Persuasion, which has a long-standing in social psychology, denotes a process that targets a desirable change in one’s behavior, attitude, and thoughts (Smith and Mackie, 2015)
In addition to studying Arab Muslims in their own native cultural context, we propose that immigration and acculturation of people play a role in their susceptibility to persuasion
To further determine that the same pattern of susceptibility found among Arab residents in the Arab region exists among Arab Muslim residents of nonArabic Muslim countries, East Asian host countries, and Western host countries, we performed a series of post hoc RM-ANCOVAs on susceptibility to persuasion for each of these three regions followed by pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons
Summary
Persuasion, which has a long-standing in social psychology, denotes a process that targets a desirable change in one’s behavior, attitude, and thoughts (Smith and Mackie, 2015). Six persuasion strategies, acting as the guide of “Social Influence” and underlying most persuasion attempts were defined, namely reciprocity, commitment, liking, scarcity, consensus, and authority (Cialdini, 2007). To take these in turn, Reciprocity means that people generally feel obliged to reciprocate favors, aid, and gifts. They tend to be influenced by others who share with them important traits such as physical attractiveness and similar values (Burger et al, 2004; Smith and Mackie, 2015); Scarcity rests on the idea that people generally tend to assign more value to things that are considered “scarce,” and they show a clear desire to possessing and preserving those items; Consensus is derived from the Social Conformity Theory (Asch, 1951a,b) and means that people generally tend to conform and comply to the values, opinions, and attitudes of others, and they do that by seeking peer acceptance or security, especially in ambiguous conditions (Cialdini, 2007; Smith and Mackie, 2015); and lastly, Authority indicates that people have a higher likelihood to be influenced by someone who is perceived as an authority due to, for instance, the knowledge, power, or wisdom they possess (Dillard and Shen, 2013)
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