Me Versus Them: Exploring the Perception of Susceptibility to Persuasion in Oneself and Others in Online Gambling

Perceived persuasiveness, an individual’s acknowledgement of the system’s influence on the self, may affect users’ response to persuasion attempts. Existing research mainly focused on systems where persuasion supports a desired behaviour, e.g., a healthy lifestyle. Studies have also considered how people perceive persuasion in themselves but not in others. In this paper, we conducted an online survey and explored users’ perception of susceptibility to persuasion in themselves and in others, taking online gambling as an example domain. We further examined how player attributes may influence their perception of susceptibility. A total of 250 participants (age range 18–75, 127 female) completed the online survey. Findings showed that susceptibility to the different persuasive design techniques differed significantly, with participants reporting the highest susceptibility to in-game rewards. Females were significantly more likely than males to report higher susceptibility to all of the persuasive design categories, and problem gamblers had higher susceptibility scores for all the persuasive design categories compared to other groups. There was a discrepancy between self-reported susceptibility scores and susceptibility scores that participants assigned to others. For each persuasive design category, participants assigned higher susceptibility scores to others compared to themselves. Moreover, the difference between self-reported susceptibility and susceptibility scores assigned to others was significantly higher for males and for all the persuasive design categories, non-problem gamblers exhibited a much greater discrepancy between the two compared to other groups. More research is required to determine whether the perception of susceptibility to persuasive design techniques is related to other individual or domain-specific factors.