Persuade

Appendix AA Study of Decision Makers' Decision Making

Methods and Analysis

Sample and Instrument

The primary sample for this study consisted of decision makers recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Participants in our study were asked to complete a 60-item survey in exchange for a nominal reward. A screening was employed at the beginning of the survey to confirm that participants practiced decision making within their professional role, requiring a true or false answer to the question, “I am responsible for substantive decision making as part of my occupation.”

The survey collected responses regarding various aspects of influence and persuasion to test key suppositions surrounding decision making, including credibility, storytelling, statements against self-interest, the role of emotions in decision making, framing, providing rationale for propositions and requests, anchoring, the value of providing a safety net, the ideal and overwhelming number of choices, and the influence of getting a small yes.

First, the survey data were manually examined and cleaned. Second, responses were examined for completeness and clarity. In total, 939 participants began the survey; however, 90 participants were disqualified for failing one of the two attention checks, and 2 participants did not affirm they answered the survey truthfully. Finally, the data were also examined for random responses, where we found 20 additional participants who were believed to be responding randomly and were ...