Argument Strength is in the Eye of the Beholder: Audience Effects in Persuasion
Table 6: Means and σ for belief change for neutral and entrenched participants presented with mono, fact, or emot argument types. Neutrals show more belief change, and all argument types significantly affect beliefs
['[EMPTY]', '[BOLD] N', '[BOLD] Mean change', '[ITALIC] σ [BOLD]  change']
Our first question is whether our method changed participant’s beliefs. Belief change occurred for all argument types: and the change was statistically significant as measured by paired t-tests (t(5184) = 38.31, p <0.0001). This confirms our hypothesis that social media can be mined for persuasive materials. In addition, all three types of arguments independently led to significant changes in belief. We defined people as having more entrenched initial beliefs if their response to the initial stance question was within 0.5 points of the two ends of the scale, i.e. (1.0-1.5) or (4.5-5.0), indicating an extreme initial view. We wanted to test whether the engaging, socially interesting, dialogic materials of emot and fact might promote more belief change than balanced curated monologic summaries. We tested the differences between argument types, finding a main effect for argument type (F(2,5179)=31.59, p <0.0001), with Tukey post-hoc tests showing mono led to more belief change than both emot and fact (both p <0.0001), but no differences between emot and fact overall across all subjects Finally there was no interaction between Initial Belief and Argument Type (F(2,5179)=1.25, p >0.05): so although neutrals show more belief change overall, this susceptibility does not vary by argument type.