Is Personality Key? Persuasive Effects of Prior Attitudes and Personality in Political Microtargeting

Messages that are designed to match a recipient’s personality, as enabled by microtargeting, have been found influence political reasoning and even voting intentions. We extended these findings adding prior attitudes microtargeting setting. Specifically, we examined what role different approaches play in conducting an online experiment with 2 (extraverted vs. introverted communication) × (attitude-congruent attitude-incongruent statement) between-subject design (<em>N</em> = 368). In line the assumptions of theory motivated reasoning, attitude position matching emerged effective strategy, strength moderated effect congruency on recipients’ evaluations ads. While extraverted messages had no direct effect, was unrelated congruency, level extraversion communication their evaluation ad. Interestingly, intention vote significantly higher when statement phrased rather than manner, suggesting information challenges might be more persuasive it is delivered temperate way. sum, study indicates message personality alone not most approach within democratic societies.