On the Impact of Fallacy-based Schemata and Framing Techniques in Persuasive Technologies

Persuasive technologies can adopt several strategies to change the attitudes and behaviors of their users. In this work we present some empirical results stemming from the hypothesis - firstly formulated in [3] - that there is a strong connection between some well known cognitive biases reducible to fallacious argumentative schemata and some of the most common persuasion strategies adopted within digital technologies. In particular, we will report how both framing and fallacious-reducible mechanisms are nowadays used to design web and mobile technologies in domains ranging from e-commerce [4] and news recommendations [1] to the jihadist propaganda. We will also show how and to what extent such persuasive strategies have an impact on nudging the choices of the users in digital environments

Using the critical design approach for rethinking citizens’ emotional bond with urban spaces

This paper focuses on the use of the critical design approach to analyze and understand the connection between human beings and urban spaces. Taking inspiration from the value that place and space have for people (e.g. for the construction of their individual identities) and from previous works concerning memories in the urban space experienced while cycling, we propose to undertake a design research where ambiguous and cognitively dissonant messages are delivered through a wearable device to encourage individuals to rethink and revalue their relations with space, consequently reshaping their personal identity

Influencing the Others’ Minds: an Experimental Evaluation of the Use and Efficacy of Fallacious-reducible Arguments in Web and Mobile Technologies

The research in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has nowadays extended its attention to the study of persuasive technologies. Following this line of research, in this paper we focus on websites and mobile applications in the e-commerce domain. In particular, we take them as an evident example of persuasive technologies. Starting from the hypothesis that there is a strong connection between logical fallacies, i.e., forms of reasoning which are logically invalid but psychologically persuasive, and some common persuasion strategies adopted within these technological artifacts, we carried out a survey on a sample of 175 websites and 101 mobile applications. This survey was aimed at empirically evaluating the significance of this connection by detecting the use of persuasion techniques, based on logical fallacies, in existing websites and mobile apps. In addition, with the goal of assessing the effectiveness of different fallacy-based persuasion techniques, we performed an empirical evaluation where participants interacted with a persuasive (fallacy-based) and with a non-persuasive version of an e-commerce website. Our results show that fallacy-based persuasion strategies are extensively used in existing digital artifacts, and that they are actually effective in influencing users’ behavior, with strategies based on visual salience manipulation (accent fallacy) being both the most popular and the most effective ones

From psychological traits to safety warnings: three studies on recommendations in a smart home environment

In this paper, we report on three experiments we have carried out in the context of the EMPATHY project, with the aim of helping users make better configuration choices in a smart home environment, and discuss our results. We found that there are psychological traits, such as Need for Cognition, which influence the way individuals tend to use recommendations, that there are non obvious relationships between the perceived usefulness of recommendations in different domains and individuals' ability to exploit suggestions on configuration choices, and that detailed, easy-to-understand security explanations are more persuasive than simple security warnings, when it comes to make decisions on the applicability of rules which might cause privacy and security risks