---
abstract: 'Americans spend about a third of their time online, with many participating in online conversations on social and political issues. We hypothesize that social media arguments on such issues may be more engaging and persuasive than traditional media summaries, and that particular types of people may be more or less convinced by particular styles of argument, e.g. emotional arguments may resonate with some personalities while factual arguments resonate with others. We report a set of experiments testing at large scale how audience variables interact with argument style to affect the persuasiveness of an argument, an under-researched topic within natural language processing. We show that belief change is affected by personality factors, with conscientious, open and agreeable people being more convinced by emotional arguments.'
author:
- |
    Stephanie Lukin, Pranav Anand, Marilyn Walker and Steve Whittaker\
    Computer Science, Linguistics and Psychology Depts.\
    University of California, Santa Cruz\
    Santa Cruz, Ca. 95064\
    [slukin,panand,mawalker,swhittak@ucsc.edu]{}
title: |
    Argument Strength is in the Eye of the Beholder:\
    Audience Effects in Persuasion
---

Introduction {#intro-sec}
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Americans spend a third of their online time on social media, with many participating in online conversations about education, public policy, or other social and political issues. Our 