The top 10 most read articles in 2021

Provocative girls, silent employees, the bittersweet aftertaste of oil, and understanding people who spend millions on digital assets. Here are the articles our readers were most deeply engaged with this year.

Before we wrap up another year in the name of COVID, we went back and looked at what stories you, our dear readers, were most captivated by in 2021.

In what is becoming to look like a Christmas tradition, our most popular article of the year is once again Christine Myrvang and her in-depth look at the provocative girls’ era of the 1920s. If you have not already, make sure you check out this six-year-old article on a 100-year-old phenomenon.  

1) How flappers rebelled through feminism and consumerism

“A new female figure appeared in the 1920s. Young girls with their hair shaved short, heavy makeup and donning bolder dresses. They rode bikes and drove cars, chain-smoked cigarettes, drank like men, flirted outrageously, and plunged into wild jazz dances like charleston and black bottom.”

Have you ever noticed something wrong at work, yet decided to stay quiet? Sut I Wong and her study of why employees do not speak up obviously hit a nerve for many of us.

2) Cultures of silence

“In assertive cultures, the tendency of having higher levels of confrontation in the workplace can also create a threatening work context if voicing out can come with a cost. This can lead employees to think twice about whether challenging the status quo is worth the hassle.”

Rounding out the top three is philosopher Øyvind Kvalnes and his 2020 article on social media dilemmas.

3) Ethical dilemmas of social media – and how to navigate them

“Increased activities in social media and rapid publication create a range of dilemmas for decisions-makers within organizations, where they must prioritize conflicting ethical considerations.”

Fittingly enough, in fourth place we find an article, first published in 2020, on why the four biggest international auditing firms dominate the global market, written by Ole-Kristian Hope , John Christian Langli and Limei Che .

4) Why the big four provide higher quality audits

“EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC give the best audits. Here's why.”

While many of us are tired of living in the middle of a global pandemic, we are still interested in reading about living in the middle of a global pandemic. Readers flocked to Ragnhild Silkoset and this 2020 piece on changing people’s behaviour in the age of COVID.

5) Covid-19: The dysfunctional effect of coercive power to control the pandemic

“We see that the expectation of quick solutions and active action often leads to ill-considered strategies to influence people, companies and organizations. The use of intrusive coercive force may lead to counteractive power, loss of trust and increasing conflict in a society.”

Next on the list is another article diving into the tantalizing theme of Covid-19 and human behaviour, from our Swedish colleague Anders Gustafsson .

6) 7 ways life in lockdown is changing our behaviour

“The corona outbreak is a disaster for our society, but it is also an interesting time to reflect on how we treat ourselves and others. When the crisis is over, however, we should let certain behaviours die in peace.”

Readers cannot seem to get enough of articles on good (or bad) leadership practices. Find out why Øyvind Lund Martinsen and his article on leader personalities still attract huge interest, even almost eight years after it was first published.

7) Personality for leadership

“The best leaders are in the public sector and female leaders are better suited for leadership than men, indicates a study of nearly 3000 managers.”

How will Equinor’s U.S. scandal change corporate governance in state-owned Norwegian companies? Check out this piece from January, signed BI’s PhD candidate Jenni Maria Nossum .

8) The bittersweet aftertaste of oil

“Owning an oil company is not without financial and environmental risk. Does the State as a shareholder have greater legal duties than a private shareholder does?”

Most companies never expand outside their home markets. So, what drives the ones that do? This question clearly interested a lot of readers. Anyway, nice of Gabriel R.G. Benito , Irina Surdu and Henrich R. Greve to provide us with an answer!

9) Why companies internationalize

“Success in entering a foreign market depends on a company’s ability to unpack the lessons learned from its own past experiences and the experiences of peer companies and developing them into routines.”

Last, but not least: What makes so many people interested in buying digital assets like NFTs – and why are they willing to pay millions for them? Carlos Velasco and colleagues Maria Pombo and Francisco Barbosa-Escobar investigate.

10) Value in the age of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)

“The CEO of Twitter sold his first tweet as a NFT for over 2.9 million USD. CryptoPunks, a well-known NFT project that consists of 10,000 collectible characters, has also drawn much attention. Today, the lowest price you can pay for one of them is about 85 ETH. That is about 360,000 USD for a collectible picture on the internet, which can be downloaded by anyone.”

Published 22. December 2021

persuasive article 2021

  • SUGGESTED TOPICS
  • The Magazine
  • Newsletters
  • Managing Yourself
  • Managing Teams
  • Work-life Balance
  • The Big Idea
  • Data & Visuals
  • Reading Lists
  • Case Selections
  • HBR Learning
  • Topic Feeds
  • Account Settings
  • Email Preferences

The Art of Persuasion: Our Favorite Reads

  • Paige Cohen

persuasive article 2021

Yes, you can change someone’s mind.

Ascend logo

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

When I first began working at HBR around four years ago, one of the first articles I edited — and one of my favorite pieces we’ve published to date — was a piece written by Carmine Gallo about how the art of persuasion hasn’t changed in 2000 years.

persuasive article 2021

  • PC Paige Cohen (they/them) is a senior editor at Ascend.

Partner Center

Articles on Persuasion

Displaying 1 - 20 of 25 articles.

persuasive article 2021

Friday essay: how women writers helped me find my voice after divorce

Jane Gleeson-White , UNSW Sydney

persuasive article 2021

Trump’s classified-documents indictment does more than allege crimes − it tells a compelling story

Derek H. Kiernan-Johnson , University of Colorado Boulder

persuasive article 2021

To have better disagreements, change your words – here are 4 ways to make your counterpart feel heard and keep the conversation going

Julia Minson , Harvard Kennedy School

persuasive article 2021

‘Rhetoric’ doesn’t need to be such an ugly word – it has a lot to teach echo-chambered America

Ryan Leack , USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

persuasive article 2021

Respectful persuasion is a relay race, not a solo sprint – 3 keys to putting it in practice

Colin Marshall , University of Washington

persuasive article 2021

Persuasion: why the Netflix adaptation is actually worth a watch, according to a romantic literature expert

Richard Marggraf-Turley , Aberystwyth University

persuasive article 2021

Exes, alcohol and loose historical licence: why Netflix’s Persuasion is Jane Austen via Fleabag

Jodi McAlister , Deakin University

persuasive article 2021

Using gaming tactics in apps raises new legal issues

Doug Sarro , University of Toronto

persuasive article 2021

What is ‘legitimate political discourse,’ and does it include the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol?

Jennifer Mercieca , Texas A&M University and Timothy J. Shaffer , Kansas State University

persuasive article 2021

4 reasons why you should never say ‘do your research’ to win the argument

Luke Zaphir , The University of Queensland

persuasive article 2021

Here’s why misinformation is a smaller problem than you think

Paul Kenny , Australian Catholic University

persuasive article 2021

A direct recommendation from a doctor may be the final push someone needs to get vaccinated

Kathleen Mazor , UMass Chan Medical School and Kimberly Fisher , UMass Chan Medical School

persuasive article 2021

Why using fear to promote COVID-19 vaccination and mask wearing could backfire

Amy Lauren Fairchild , The Ohio State University and Ronald Bayer , Columbia University

persuasive article 2021

Gaslighting: from partners to politicians – how to avoid becoming a victim

Stephan Lewandowsky , University of Bristol

persuasive article 2021

From ‘Pretty Little Liars’ to ‘The OC,’ television producers need to stop encouraging teen drinking – here’s how they can

Cristel Antonia Russell , American University Kogod School of Business

persuasive article 2021

Persuasive politics: why emotional beats rational for connecting with voters

Steve McKevitt , Leeds Beckett University

persuasive article 2021

How the power of persuasion goes way beyond mere advertising

persuasive article 2021

Facebook is a persuasion platform that’s changing the advertising rulebook

Saleem Alhabash , Michigan State University

persuasive article 2021

Five psychological reasons why people fall for scams – and how to avoid them

Paul Seager , University of Central Lancashire

persuasive article 2021

‘Persuasion:’ Jane Austen’s greatest novel turns 200

Robert Morrison , Queen's University, Ontario

Related Topics

  • Advertising
  • Donald Trump
  • Intellectual humility
  • Jane Austen
  • Manipulation

Top contributors

persuasive article 2021

Visiting Professor of Brand Communication, Leeds Beckett University

persuasive article 2021

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Education; Curriculum Director, UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland

persuasive article 2021

Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture, Deakin University

persuasive article 2021

Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Central Lancashire

persuasive article 2021

Researcher, UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland

persuasive article 2021

Postdoctoral Researcher in Cognitive Neurosciences, The University of Queensland

persuasive article 2021

Professor of Communication and Journalism, Texas A&M University

persuasive article 2021

Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of East London

persuasive article 2021

Associate professor, Kansas State University

persuasive article 2021

Associate Professor of Law, University of Oregon

persuasive article 2021

Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, University of East London

persuasive article 2021

Dean and Professor of Public Health, The Ohio State University

persuasive article 2021

Knight Chair in Interactive Media; Associate Professor of Communication, University of Miami

persuasive article 2021

Professor Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University

persuasive article 2021

British Academy Global Professor, Queen's University, Ontario

  • X (Twitter)
  • Unfollow topic Follow topic

Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions

Affiliations.

  • 1 Yale Institute for Global Health, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
  • 2 Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Center for the Study of American Politics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
  • 3 Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Center for the Study of American Politics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
  • 4 Yale Institute for Global Health, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Infectious Diseases, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA; Yale School of Nursing, West Haven, CT, USA.
  • 5 Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Center for the Study of American Politics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. Electronic address: [email protected].
  • PMID: 34774363
  • PMCID: PMC8531257
  • DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.10.039

Widespread vaccination remains the best option for controlling the spread of COVID-19 and ending the pandemic. Despite the considerable disruption the virus has caused to people's lives, many people are still hesitant to receive a vaccine. Without high rates of uptake, however, the pandemic is likely to be prolonged. Here we use two survey experiments to study how persuasive messaging affects COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions. In the first experiment, we test a large number of treatment messages. One subgroup of messages draws on the idea that mass vaccination is a collective action problem and highlighting the prosocial benefit of vaccination or the reputational costs that one might incur if one chooses not to vaccinate. Another subgroup of messages built on contemporary concerns about the pandemic, like issues of restricting personal freedom or economic security. We find that persuasive messaging that invokes prosocial vaccination and social image concerns is effective at increasing intended uptake and also the willingness to persuade others and judgments of non-vaccinators. We replicate this result on a nationally representative sample of Americans and observe that prosocial messaging is robust across subgroups, including those who are most hesitant about vaccines generally. The experiments demonstrate how persuasive messaging can induce individuals to be more likely to vaccinate and also create spillover effects to persuade others to do so as well. The first experiment in this study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov and can be found under the ID number NCT04460703 . This study was registered at Open Science Framework (OSF) at: https://osf.io/qu8nb/?view_only=82f06ecad77f4e54b02e8581a65047d7.

Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • COVID-19 Vaccines*
  • United States
  • Vaccination
  • COVID-19 Vaccines

Associated data

  • ClinicalTrials.gov/NCT04460703

Grants and funding

  • UL1 TR001863/TR/NCATS NIH HHS/United States

U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

  • Publications
  • Account settings
  • Advanced Search
  • Journal List
  • Springer Nature - PMC COVID-19 Collection

Logo of phenaturepg

An inclusive, real-world investigation of persuasion in language and verbal behavior

Vivian p. ta.

1 Department of Psychology, Lake Forest College, 555 N. Sheridan Road, Lake Forest, IL 60045 USA

Ryan L. Boyd

2 Department of Psychology, Data Science Institute, Security Lancaster, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

Sarah Seraj

3 Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX USA

Anne Keller

Caroline griffith.

4 Department of Counselor Education and Human Services, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH USA

Alexia Loggarakis

5 School of Social Work, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL USA

Lael Medema

Linguistic features of a message necessarily shape its persuasive appeal. However, studies have largely examined the effect of linguistic features on persuasion in isolation and do not incorporate properties of language that are often involved in real-world persuasion. As such, little is known about the key verbal dimensions of persuasion or the relative impact of linguistic features on a message’s persuasive appeal in real-world social interactions. We collected large-scale data of online social interactions from a social media website in which users engage in debates in an attempt to change each other’s views on any topic. Messages that successfully changed a user’s views are explicitly marked by the user themselves. We simultaneously examined linguistic features that have been previously linked with message persuasiveness between persuasive and non-persuasive messages. Linguistic features that drive persuasion fell along three central dimensions: structural complexity, negative emotionality, and positive emotionality. Word count, lexical diversity, reading difficulty, analytical language, and self-references emerged as most essential to a message’s persuasive appeal: messages that were longer, more analytic, less anecdotal, more difficult to read, and less lexically varied had significantly greater odds of being persuasive. These results provide a more parsimonious understanding of the social psychological pathways to persuasion as it operates in the real world through verbal behavior. Our results inform theories that address the role of language in persuasion, and provide insight into effective persuasion in digital environments.

Introduction

Understanding persuasion —how people can fundamentally alter the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others—is a cornerstone of social psychology. Historically, social influence has been outstandingly difficult to study in the real-world, requiring researchers to piece together society-level puzzles either in the abstract [ 1 ] or through carefully-crafted field studies [ 2 ]. In recent years, technology has driven interest in studying social influence as digital traces make it possible to study how the behaviors of one individual or group cascade to change others’ behaviors [ 3 , 4 ]. Nevertheless, most social processes are complex, to the point where they are very difficult to study as they operate outside of the lab. However, the availability of digital data and computational techniques provide a ripe opportunity to begin understanding the precise mechanisms by which people influence the thoughts and feelings of others.

Today, persuasion is often transacted—partially or wholly—through verbal interactions that take place on the internet [ 5 ]: a message is transmitted from one person to another through the use of language, altering the recipient’s attitude. As such, researchers have sought to identify linguistic features 1 that are linked to a message’s persuasive appeal. A relatively sizable number of linguistic features that are important in message persuasiveness have emerged from this body of research and include features that indicate what a message conveys as well as how it was conveyed (Table ​ (Table1). 1 ). Models of persuasion, such as the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) [ 6 ], have been used to identify these linguistic features and explain how they affect message persuasiveness.

Summary of linguistic features and predictions

Despite the impressive corpus of studies to date, the existing literature has several limitations. Studies have largely examined the effect of linguistic features on persuasion in isolation by only focusing on a small number of linguistic features (i.e., one or two) at a time. While this body of literature has collectively identified a relatively sizable number of linguistic features that are linked to message persuasiveness, it remains unclear how these links, taken together, inform the social aspects of verbal behavior in persuasion. In other words, what do the linguistic features connected with message persuasiveness reveal about the key verbal behaviors involved in persuasion? As language provides “a rich stream of ongoing social processes” [ 7 ], synthesizing these findings can provide a more complete understanding of the social psychological pathways to persuasion.

In the same vein, real-world messages are constructed using a varied combination of linguistic features to transmit complex thoughts, emotions, and information to others. Nevertheless, studies tend to examine how a single linguistic feature (or a small set of features) correlate with persuasion without taking into account other potentially important linguistic features within a given message [ 8 , 9 ]. The meaning of a given word or feature in any text is dependent on the context by which it was used which can be inferred by the words and features that surround it [ 10 , 11 ]. As such, the effect of any particular linguistic feature on message persuasiveness can be attenuated by the presence of other features in the message. As they are typically studied in isolation, little is known about the relative impact of linguistic features on a message’s persuasive appeal.

Furthermore, studies that examine the effect of linguistic features on persuasion tend to focus on persuasion in terms of engaging in specific behaviors [ 3 , 12 – 14 ] rather than changing attitudes in general. Persuading people to engage in a specific behavior is conceptually distinct from changing people’s attitude on a topic. Although changes in behavior can facilitate changes in attitude, changes in behavior can also be dependent on attitude change (e.g., an individual may not engage in behavior change unless they believe that the behavior will result in a desirable outcome). Although changes in behavior can facilitate changes in attitude, changes in behavior does not always indicate that attitude change has occurred (e.g., an individual may decide to ultimately receive the COVID-19 vaccine because their employer requires it and not because their views regarding vaccines have changed) [ 15 ].

Finally, many studies that investigate the effect of linguistic features on persuasion are conducted in controlled lab settings [ 16 , 17 ] due to the sheer difficulty of studying persuasion as it unfolds in the real-world. Given that persuasion often takes place through online social interactions [ 5 ], there is a need to study persuasion in this setting. Doing so also enables researchers to better understand how digital environments influence the process of persuasion, especially as digital environments are now progressively constructed to persuade the attitudes and behaviors of users [ 18 ] and there is “little consensus on how to persuade effectively within the digital realm” [ 19 ].

We sought to address these limitations in the current study. Specifically, we collected large-scale data from r/ChangeMyView , an online public forum on the social media website Reddit where users engage in debates in an attempt to change each other’s views on any topic. Most importantly, messages that successfully changed a user’s views are explicitly marked by the user themselves. That is, individuals are exposed to several messages and explicitly identified the message(s) that actually changed their views. We simultaneously examined linguistic features that have been previously linked with message persuasiveness (Table ​ (Table1) 1 ) between persuasive and non-persuasive messages to test the following research questions:

  • What are the key linguistic dimensions of persuasion? Given that a relatively sizable number of linguistic features have been linked with persuasion, we first sought to determine whether these features could be meaningfully reduced to a smaller number of dimensions representing the key verbal processes of persuasion. We then assessed whether these dimensions were uniquely predictive of persuasion when controlling for the effects of the remaining dimensions.
  • Which individual linguistic features, when assessed simultaneously, are the most essential and relevant to a message’s persuasive appeal? We then simultaneously assessed all linguistic features that have been linked with message persuasiveness in a single model to examine the relative impact of the features on a message’s persuasive appeal to identify features that were most crucial to message persuasiveness.

While theory-driven predictions can be made regarding how each linguistic feature relates to persuasion, there has been a considerable amount of variability across studies in terms of which features positively or negatively relate to persuasion, as well as studies that show mixed or inconclusive results pertaining to the effect of a given linguistic feature on persuasion (see Table ​ Table1). 1 ). Given that our primary goal was to obtain a more unified understanding of the social psychological pathways to persuasion via language, the current study is guided by a jointly data-driven and exploratory approach, with results informing our understanding of the directional relationship between the linguistic features and message persuasiveness. Overall, assessing the interplay between important linguistic features on persuasion using large-scale, real-world data help inform theories, such as ELM, that address how linguistic features influence persuasion to provide a parsimonious and ecologically-valid understanding of the social psychological processes that shape persuasion.

Although some previous studies have used r/ChangeMyView data to investigate the effect of linguistic features on persuasion, they differ from the current investigation in important ways. The types and combinations of linguistic features that have been examined vary across studies and typically feature a mix of linguistic features that have and have not been linked to persuasion. For example, Tan et al. [ 21 ] examined how some persuasion-linked linguistic features (including arousal, valence, reading difficulty, and hedges), some non-persuasion-linked features (e.g., formatting features such as use of italics and boldface), and interaction dynamics (e.g., the time a replier enters a debate) were associated with successful persuasion. Wei et al. [ 22 ] investigated how surface text features (e.g., reply length, punctuation), social interaction features (e.g., the number of replies stemming from a root comment), and argumentation-related features (e.g., argument relevance and originality) related to persuasion. Musi et al. [ 23 ] assessed the distribution of argumentative concessions in persuasive versus non-persuasive comments, and Priniski and Horne [ 24 ] examined persuasion through the presentation of evidence only in sociomoral topics. Moreover, studies tend to have greater emphasis on model building to accurately detect persuasive content online rather than interpretability and a more unified understanding of the social psychological pathways to persuasion via language. For instance, Khazaei et al. [ 20 ] assessed how all LIWC-based features varied across persuasive and non-persuasive replies and used this information to train a machine learning model to identify persuasive responses.

Data collection

We used data from the Reddit sub-community (i.e., “subreddit”) r/ChangeMyView , a forum in which users post their own views (referred to as “original posters”, or “OPs”) on any topic and invite others to debate them. Those who debate the OP (referred to as “repliers”) reply to the OP’s post in an attempt to change the OP’s view. The OP will award a delta (∆) to particular replies that changed their original views.

Using data from r/ChangeMyView presents several advantages. All replies in r/ChangeMyView are written with the purpose of persuasion. The replies that successfully change an OP’s view are explicitly marked by the OP themselves, allowing for a sample of persuasive and non-persuasive replies. All OPs and repliers must adhere to the official policies 2 of r/ChangeMyView . For instance, OPs are required to explain at a reasonable length (using 500 characters or more) why they hold their views and to interact with repliers within a reasonable time frame. Replies must be substantial, adequate, and on-topic. Because these policies are enforced by moderators, the resulting interactions are high in quality [ 21 ] and are conducted under similar conditions with similar expectations. OPs can also post their view on any topic, allowing for an examination of persuasion across a wide variety of topics.

All top-level replies (direct replies to the OP’s original statement of views) posted between January 2013 and October 2018 were initially collected from the Pushshift database [ 25 ]. We focused only on the top-level replies and omitted any additional replies that were in response to a direct reply (i.e., a direct reply’s “children”). This ensured that replies that were deemed persuasive were due to its contents and not due to any resulting “back-and-forth” interactions given that deltas can also be awarded to downstream replies. We also omitted any top-level replies that were made by a post’s OP and any replies that received a delta in which the delta was not awarded by the OP. Because the data contained a substantially greater number of non-persuasive replies (99.39%) than persuasive ones, analyses were conducted on a balanced subsample that included all top-level replies that were awarded a delta and a random subsample of top-level replies that were not awarded a delta that came from the original posts in which at least one delta was awarded. This allowed us to compare the persuasive and non-persuasive replies from the same original post while bypassing issues associated with class imbalances [ 26 ].

As an example, consider a parent post that garnered two top-level replies that were awarded a delta, and three top-level replies that were not awarded a delta. In this case, the two top-level replies that were awarded a delta were included in the subsample and two out of the three top-level replies that were not awarded a delta would be randomly selected for inclusion in the subsample. Using the random number generator in Microsoft Excel, the 3 top-level replies that were not awarded a delta were assigned a random number between 1 and 100. Replies with the lowest two values were then selected for inclusion in the subsample. Parent posts almost always contained a greater number of top-level replies that were not awarded a delta than top-level replies that were awarded a delta. However, for the very few instances in which a parent post contained a greater number of top-level replies that were awarded a delta than top-level replies that were not awarded a delta, we included all top-level replies in the subsample ( N  = 9020 top-level replies; n  = 4515 top-level replies that were awarded a delta; n  = 4505 top-level replies that were not awarded a delta). Example persuasive and non-persuasive replies can be found in Table ​ Table2 2 .

Example replies

Note : All example replies were derived from different parent posts

To gain an initial understanding of the types of topics that were raised for debate in the subreddit, we randomly selected 100 replies from the final dataset and manually coded their content. Six overarching topics emerged: legal and politics; race, culture, and gender; business and work; science and technology; behavior, attitudes, and relationships; and recreation. More information regarding debated topics can be found in the supplementary materials. 3 .

Linguistic features

Prior to extracting linguistic features from our data, we conducted a cursory search of the psychological literature to identify prominent linguistic features reported to have a significant relationship with message persuasiveness in at least one published study. These linguistic features are listed in Table ​ Table1. 1 . Each reply in the r/ChangeMyView dataset was analyzed separately using Language Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) [ 27 ] which calculates the percentage-use of words belonging to psychologically or linguistically meaningful categories. We used LIWC to quantify word count, analytic thinking (analytical thinking formula = articles + prepositions—personal pronouns—impersonal pronouns—auxiliary verbs—conjunctions—adverbs—negations; relative frequencies are normalized within LIWC2015 to a 0-to-100 scale, with higher scores reflecting more analytical language and lower scores reflecting more informal and narrative-like language), the percentage-use of self-references (i.e., first-person singular pronouns, or “i-words”), and the percentage-use of certainty terms in each reply within our corpus. Dictionaries of terms that have been rated on emotionality 4 (i.e., valence, arousal, and dominance) from [ 28 ] were imported into LIWC to measure the percentage-use of language that scored high and low on valence, arousal, and dominance. A dictionary of hedges from [ 29 ] was also imported into LIWC to measure the percentage-use of hedges. Following [ 21 ], the use of examples was measured by occurrences of “for example”, “for instance”, and “e.g.”. Language abstraction/concreteness was measured using the linguistic category model, with higher scores indicating higher levels of language abstraction and lower scores indicating lower levels of language abstraction (i.e., greater language concreteness; formula for calculation = [(Descriptive Action Verbs × 1) + (Interpretative Action Verb × 2) + (State Verb × 3) + (Adjectives × 4)]/(Descriptive Action Verbs + Interpretative Action Verbs + State Verbs + Adjectives)) [ 30 ]. Type-token ratio, the ratio between the number of unique words in a message and the total number of words in the given message [ 31 ], was used to measure lexical diversity with higher scores indicating greater lexical diversity (type-token ratio formula = number of unique lexical terms/total number of words). Last, reading difficulty was measured via the SMOG Index which estimates the years of education the average person needs to completely comprehend a piece of text (SMOG Index formula = 1.0430 [√number of polysyllables × (30/number of sentences)] + 3.1291). Because a higher SMOG score indicates that higher education is needed to comprehend a piece of text, higher reading difficulty scores represent text that is more difficult to read and lower scores represent text that is easier to read [ 32 ]. More information about these linguistic features and example replies that scored high and low on each linguistic feature are reported in the supplementary.

Given that a relatively sizable number of linguistic features have been linked with persuasion, we first determined whether these features could be meaningfully reduced to a smaller number of dimensions representing the key verbal processes of persuasion. Second, we determined whether these dimensions were each uniquely predictive of persuasion when controlling for the effects of the remaining dimensions. Third, we simultaneously assessed all linguistic features that have been linked with message persuasiveness in a single model to understand how linguistic features interact with one another to influence a message’s persuasive appeal and identify features most crucial to message persuasiveness. All data and analytic code can be found in the supplementary. Descriptive statistics, zero-order correlations between all variables, and complete analytic outputs for all analyses are presented in the supplementary.

To identify the key linguistic dimensions of persuasion (RQ 1), we submitted all linguistic features into a principal components analysis (PCA) with a varimax rotation. Bartlett’s Sphericity Test ( p  < 0.001) and the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin metric (KMO = 0.55) suggested that our data were suitable for analysis. Features with factor loadings greater than the absolute value of 0.50 were retained and used to quantify principal components. Three principal components were extracted that collectively accounted for 36.28% of the total variance: structural complexity, negative emotionality, and positive emotionality (see Table ​ Table3). 3 ). Structural complexity had high loadings in the direction of lower lexical diversity, higher word count, and greater reading difficulty. Negative emotionality had high loadings in the direction of greater percentage-use of terms that scored low on valence and low on dominance. Positive emotionality had high loadings in the direction of greater percentage-use of terms that scored high on dominance, high on valence, and hedges.

Results of PCA with Varimax Rotation

To assess if all three dimensions were uniquely important to message persuasiveness, we entered each component into a multilevel logistic regression analysis using lme4 [ 33 ]. This procedure corrects for non-independence of replies (i.e., replies to the same parent post) on the dependent variable: persuasion (delta awarded = 1, no delta awarded = 0). We include random intercepts for replies nested within parent posts and replies nested within repliers (i.e., some repliers provided replies to multiple original posts). All three components emerged as significant predictors of persuasion. For a one-unit increase in structural complexity, the odds of receiving a delta increase by a factor of 2.25, 95% CI [2.11, 2.39]. For a one-unit increase in negative emotionality, the odds of receiving a delta decrease by a factor of 0.89, 95% CI [0.85, 0.94]. For a one-unit increase in positive emotionality, the odds of receiving a delta also decrease by a factor of 0.92, 95% CI [0.88, 0.97]. Post-hoc power analyses conducted using the simr package in R (Version 1.0.5) [ 34 ] revealed that we had at least 96% power to detect a small effect (i.e., 0.15) for each of these factors on persuasion.

Next, the individual linguistic features were assessed simultaneously to identify those that were the most essential and relevant to a message’s persuasive appeal (RQ 2). A logistic least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression was performed using glmmLasso [ 35 ]. A LASSO regression is a penalized regression analysis that performs variable selection to prevent overfitting by adding a penalty ( λ ) to the cost function (i.e., the sum of squared errors) equal to the sum of the absolute value of the coefficients. This penalty results in sparse models with few coefficients. In other words, this method selects a parsimonious set of variables that best predict the outcome variable and has many advantages over other feature selection methods [ 36 ]. All linguistic features were entered into the LASSO regression model. A grid search was performed to identify the most optimal shrinkage parameter based on BIC. Five features emerged with nonzero coefficients: word count, lexical diversity, reading difficulty, analytical thinking, and self-references (Table ​ (Table4 4 ).

Results of LASSO regression

*** p  < 0.001; ** p  < 0.01; λ = 62

These variables were subsequently entered into a multilevel logistic regression. Again, persuasion was entered as the dependent variable and we included random intercepts for replies nested within parent posts and replies nested within repliers. All five predictors emerged as significant predictors of persuasion. Specifically, for a one-unit increase in word count, the odds of receiving a delta increase by a factor of 1.23, 95% CI [1.13, 1.35]. For a one-unit increase in reading difficulty scores (i.e., greater difficulty in reading comprehension), the odds of receiving a delta increase by a factor of 1.10, 95% CI [1.04, 1.16]. For a one-unit increase in analytical thinking, the odds of receiving a delta increase by a factor of 1.10, 95% CI [1.05, 1.17]. For a one-unit increase in self-references, the odds of receiving a delta decrease by a factor of 0.92, 95% CI [0.87, 0.98]. Last, for a one-unit increase in lexical diversity, the odds of receiving a delta decrease by a factor of 0.54, 95% CI [0.50, 0.59]. Post-hoc power analyses conducted using the simr [ 34 ] revealed that we had at least 96% power to detect a small effect (i.e., 0.15) for each of these predictors on persuasion.

Previous studies have largely examined the effect of linguistic features on persuasion in isolation and do not incorporate properties of language that are often involved in real-world persuasion. As such, little is known about the key verbal dimensions of persuasion or the relative impact of linguistic features on a message’s persuasive appeal in real-world social interactions. To address these limitations, we collected large-scale data of online social interactions from a public forum in which users engage in debates in an attempt to change each other’s views on any topic. Messages that successfully changed a user’s views are explicitly marked by the user themselves. We simultaneously examined linguistic features that have been previously linked with message persuasiveness between persuasive and non-persuasive messages. Our findings provide a parsimonious and ecologically-valid understanding of the social psychological pathways to persuasion as it operates in the real world through verbal behavior.

Three linguistic dimensions appeared to underlie the tested features: structural complexity, negative emotionality, and positive emotionality. Each dimension uniquely predicted persuasion when the effects of the remaining dimensions were statistically controlled, with greater structural complexity exhibiting the highest odds of persuasion. Interestingly, messages marked with less emotionality had higher odds of persuasion than messages marked with more emotionality, regardless of whether it was positive or negative. Emotionality can help persuasion in specific contexts [ 37 , 38 ], but emotional appeals can also backfire when audiences prefer cognitive appeals [ 39 ]. Given that OPs were publicly inviting others to debate them, it is plausible that they preferred cognitively-appealing responses—ones that include an abundance of clear and valid reasons to support an argument—rather than emotionally-appealing responses.

The linguistic features that made a message longer, more analytic, less anecdotal, more difficult to read, and less lexically diverse were most essential to a message’s persuasive appeal and uniquely predictive of persuasion. Longer messages provide more context and likely contain more arguments than shorter messages. Presenting more arguments can be more persuasive even if the arguments themselves are not compelling [ 40 ]. Longer messages likely provided more opportunities for the OP to engage with material that could potentially change their mind, thus increasing the likelihood of persuasion.

Although more readable content is easier to understand and less aversive than less readable content [ 41 ], greater reading difficulty and comprehension can engender more interest, attention, and engagement [ 42 , 43 ]. It can also facilitate deeper cognitive processing that leads to greater learning and long-term retention [ 44 , 45 ]. This is especially true for individuals intrinsically motivated or capable of engaging in complex and novel tasks [ 46 ]. OPs were likely capable of and intrinsically motivated to engage in content that challenged their beliefs considering they were inviting others to debate them. The interpretation of users being intrinsically motivated to challenge their beliefs is also in line with the link that emerged between greater usage of analytical language and persuasion. Similarly, messages that focused less on one’s own personal experiences may have provided more objective evidence to support a particular argument, facilitating persuasion.

Last, while greater lexical repetitions may be perceived as less interesting [ 31 , 47 ], it facilitated persuasion in this context. Lexical repetitions provide effective ways for speakers to communicate complex topics as it keeps “lexical strings relatively simple, while complex lexical relations are constructed around them” [ 48 ]. Lexical repetitions are advantageous for navigating through the order and logic of an argument, providing “textual markers” that help readers connect important aspects of an argument together [ 49 ]. Lower lexical diversity, then, appeared to be beneficial for building arguments that are more cohesive, more coherent, and thus, more persuasive.

Altogether, our findings reveal that the linguistic features linked to persuasion fall along three dimensions pertaining to structural complexity, negative emotionality, and positive emotionality. Our findings also highlight the importance of linguistic features related to a message’s structural complexity, particularly the verbal behaviors that provide a greater amount of factual evidence in a way that enables readers to connect important aspects of the information in an appropriately stimulating manner. Although the other linguistic features that were examined in this study may contribute to message persuasiveness to some degree, our results indicate that they are relatively less important after word count, lexical diversity, reading difficulty, analytical thinking, and self-references are taken into account. These findings also seem to reflect r/ChangeMyView’s digital environment. A central feature of r/ChangeMyView is ensuring that all posts and replies meaningfully contribute to the conversations. As such, OPs and repliers must adhere to all moderator-enforced policies of interaction. In addition, users who post on r/ChangeMyView are likely individuals who are open to attitude change given that they are publicly inviting others to debate them on a topic they already have an opinion on. This suggests that, in digital environments that underscore meaningful contributions to conversations, the ability to convey more objective information while fostering engagement and a holistic understanding of an argument are most vital to the alteration of established attitudes among open-minded individuals.

Our findings also have implications for the process by which persuasion research via language is conducted. Assessing the relative importance of a linguistic feature on message persuasiveness allowed us to understand its interconnections with other linguistic features and its link to persuasion, yielding a more comprehensive and well-rounded understanding of the feature’s role in message persuasiveness. Consider word count , for example: without assessing word count’s relative importance on message persuasiveness in the current study, we would not have been able to ascertain its link to message persuasiveness via a message’s structural complexity and the importance of providing more content in a way that enables readers to connect important aspects of the information in an appropriately stimulating manner. Because the meaning of a word or linguistic feature in any text is dependent on the context by which it is used, understanding the social psychological pathways to persuasion via language requires researchers to account for the presence of multiple linguistic features within a given message when assessing a linguistic feature’s link to message persuasiveness. This holistic approach may also help reconcile conflicting results from previous research on language and persuasion.

Our findings also inform theories, such as ELM, that address how linguistic features influence persuasion and provide a more precise understanding of the social psychological pathways to persuasion. For example, ELM states that here are two main routes to persuasion: the central route, which focuses on the message quality on persuasion, and the peripheral route, which uses heuristics and peripheral cues to help influence individual decisions regarding a topic [ 6 ]. Individuals are more likely persuaded via the central route if they have the ability and motivation to process the information. On the other hand, individuals are more likely persuaded via the peripheral route if involvement is low and information processing capability is diminished. OPs likely have the ability and motivation to process arguments from repliers and are thus likely persuaded via the central route given that they are publicly inviting others to debate them. Supplying more information to support a conclusion may be more likely to persuade via the central route, but this information also needs to be organized in a way that helps readers connect important aspects of the information together. A wealth of information that is structured in an incoherent manner would undoubtedly hinder comprehension, and thus, persuasion.

Strengths and limitations

Our dataset contained a large sample of replies that spanned a wide variety of topics, and provided high ecological validity given that it captured the process of persuasion as it occurred naturally without elicitation. The enforcement of rules on r/ChangeMyView yielded interactions that were conducted under similar conditions and expectations. This helped to minimize interaction variance without interfering with the naturalistic nature of the data. However, OPs can award deltas to responses within subtrees (the “children” of direct replies) typically as the result of “back-and-forth” interactions with repliers. These were not included in the current study as we only examined top-level responses. Our results could also differ by topic, recency of the post, and post length, and it is possible non-linguistic features such as the popularity of a post, the number of “upvotes” (i.e., the number of instances other users have registered agreement with a particular post or reply) a reply receives, and the number of deltas a replier has ever received may also impact message persuasiveness. Future studies should determine if these variables moderate the findings, and doing so would also address the relative importance of linguistic versus non-linguistic features on message persuasiveness.

Although it is a policy on r/ChangeMyView that OPs must post a non-neutral opinion (i.e., their post must take a non-neutral stance on a topic), and posts that violate this rule are removed by moderators, it is possible that an OP’s post did not accurately reflect their true attitude or attitude strength. Given the nature of the data, this study cannot address whether the resulting attitude changes were long-lasting, nor if the OP’s attitude strength moderated their attitude change. Longitudinal studies can assess these points. Because there were substantially more non-persuasive replies (99.39%) than persuasive ones, we constructed a balanced subsample and conducted our analyses on this balanced subsample. While this strategy limited biased outcomes stemming from a large class imbalance, it also limits the generalizability of results to posts in which no persuasion occurred. Further examinations of the class imbalance are needed to address this issue. For example, it is possible that posts in which no persuasion occurred are systematically different from posts in which persuasion occurred. Or, perhaps the class imbalance simply reflects the rigid nature of attitudes. In addition, our results may only reflect a particular population given that Reddit users tend to skew younger and male [ 50 ]. Since we did not have access to subjects’ demographic information, we cannot assert the representativeness of our sample. Future research should investigate persuasion that takes place on other debate-style forums and websites to incorporate more diverse subjects, interaction modes, and digital environments.

Acknowledgements

We thank Haley Bader, Carolynn Boatfield, Maria Civitello, Katie Kauth, and Xinyu Wang for their assistance in data cleaning, Arthur Bousquet and Leonardo Carrico for their assistance in data analysis, and David Johnson for his helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. Preparation of this manuscript was funded, in part, by grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation (#196255) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (15F06718R0006603). The views, opinions, and findings contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be construed as position, policy, or decision of the aforementioned agencies, unless so designated by other documents.

Author contributions

VT developed the concept of the study, conducted data analysis, and wrote the manuscript. RL Boyd collected the data, assisted with study development, natural language and statistical analyses and provided critical revisions. SS assisted with data preparation and analyses and provided critical revisions. AK, CG, AL, and LM assisted with data cleaning and literature review.

Not applicable.

Declarations

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

https://osf.io/4rj26/?view_only=5556b511084b4e75bc14808e47d15dce .

Approval granted by Lancaster University’s ethics committee (Reference #FST19067).

Not applicable; data was non-identifiable and publicly available.

1 We define linguistic feature as a characteristic used to classify a word or corpus of text based on their linguistic properties. Examples include reading difficulty, words denoting high or low emotionality, hedges, etc.

2 For all of r/ChangeMyView’s policies, visit https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_a .

3 Supplementary materials can be found here: https://osf.io/4rj26/?view_only=5556b511084b4e75bc14808e47d15dce

4 We adopted the Valence-Arousal-Dominance circumplex model of emotion (Bradley & Lang, 1994; Russell, 1980) and the PAD emotion state model (Mehrabian, 1980; Bales, 2001) and conceptualize valence, arousal, and dominance as the dimensions of emotion. All three dimensions have been linked to message persuasiveness (see Table ​ Table1 1 ).

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

  • All Publications
  • Priorities Magazine Spring 2018
  • The Next Plague and How Science Will Stop It
  • Priorities Magazine Winter 2018
  • Priorities Magazine Fall 2017
  • Little Black Book of Junk Science
  • Priorities Magazine Winter 2017
  • Should You Worry About Artificial Flavors Or Colors?
  • Should You Worry About Artificial Sweeteners?
  • Summer Health and Safety Tips
  • How Toxic Terrorists Scare You With Science Terms
  • Adult Immunization: The Need for Enhanced Utilization
  • Should You Worry About Salt?
  • Priorities Magazine Spring 2016
  • IARC Diesel Exhaust & Lung Cancer: An Analysis
  • Teflon and Human Health: Do the Charges Stick?
  • Helping Smokers Quit: The Science Behind Tobacco Harm Reduction
  • Irradiated Foods
  • Foods Are Not Cigarettes: Why Tobacco Lawsuits Are Not a Model for Obesity Lawsuits
  • The Prevention and Treatment of Osteoporosis: A Review
  • Are "Low Dose" Health Effects of Chemicals Real?
  • The Effects of Nicotine on Human Health
  • Traditional Holiday Dinner Replete with Natural Carcinogens - Even Organic Thanksgiving Dinners
  • A Primer On Dental Care: Quality and Quackery
  • Nuclear Energy and Health And the Benefits of Low-Dose Radiation Hormesis
  • Priorities in Caring for Your Children: A Primer for Parents
  • Endocrine Disrupters: A Scientific Perspective
  • Good Stories, Bad Science: A Guide for Journalists to the Health Claims of "Consumer Activist" Groups
  • A Comparison of the Health Effects of Alcohol Consumption and Tobacco Use in America
  • Moderate Alcohol Consumption and Health
  • Irradiated Foods Fifth Edition
  • Media/Contact
  • Write For Us

What Makes an Article or Review Persuasive?

Related articles.

persuasive article 2021

As I have been arguing of late, the gist, the information, and the emotional components all play a role. A new study looks at the helpfulness of consumer reviews in guiding choice. The emotion they chose to consider – anger – is, unfortunately, around us 24/7/365.

persuasive article 2021

The study design was simple, asking participants to consider various reviews of consumer products or stores. In each case, the information was unchanged; they only changed the article's tone, with a control and two levels of anger. Nothing complex – in one instance saying, “I am a little bit angry,” in others, “Let me tell you: I’m very angry!” (For the sharp-eyed, exclamation marks and ALL CAPS, do make a difference)

As the researchers write,

“Individuals become angry when they perceive that an undesirable, personally relevant event is obstructing their goals and believe that the event was caused by another party rather than by themselves or the circumstances. After becoming angry, individuals are motivated to actively oppose or harm the causal party.”

Any of us who have ever been angry can relate to that. And any of us who have heard or read an angry rant might reasonably infer and then discount what is being said as “blowing off steam.” But, being the social creatures we are as a species, our mirror neurons might also mimic that emotion, even just a little – so we might be affectively influenced in the same direction.

So, the researchers considered two hypotheses, that anger diminishes the perception of helpfulness in a review and counter-intuitively enhances the adverse impact of that review. Their subjects were undergraduates or recruits from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk who were presented with differing reviews and asked to rank their helpfulness and view towards the product or retailer. [1] The findings I am about to report were all statistically significant, but as with much social science, or even biologic science research, a little cautious uncertainty is in order.

  • High levels of anger were indeed associated with a review being considered less helpful, and they were more influential in persuading the reader. The low level of anger and control reviews did not differ in helpfulness or persuasion and were felt to be more helpful but were not as persuasive.
  • In one version of their experiment, the control group chose a store 63% of the time, but those reading the same information , now bracketed by “I feel so mad!!!” and “I’m very angry!!!,” chose the store 36% of the time. And those results were obtained by only one angry review out of three presented; the other two were positive. Our emotional response to words is very powerful!
  • In subsequent variations in the experiment, the researchers found that angry reviews were considered less helpful because the review seemed less rational; the reviewer was “out of their minds,” as it were, ranting and, as I suggested, “blowing off steam.” They did not find that affective component. The participants did not mimic the angry feelings; there was no, to use the researchers’ term, “emotional contagion.”
  • Finally, the researchers sought to look at the role of attention, giving participants a one- or seven- number digit to remember before reading reviews. As you might expect, attention did play a role. When participants were distracted simply by being asked to recall a seven-digit number, anger did not reduce the review's helpfulness. Still, it increased the anger at the subject of the review.

In sum, the emotional tone of anger in a review is persuasive, especially when we may be distracted. As the researchers write,

“The consistent impact of anger in our studies suggests that manufacturers, marketers, and retailers should take any word of mouth expressing anger seriously, even if it is seemingly ‘trivial.’”

They suggest that pointing to the irrationality of the review and unambiguously emphasizing the positive attributes of the product or service might counteract the angry press.

Gedankenexperiment

That is a German word, evidently coined or chosen by Einstein, to describe a thought experiment. You might call it speculation, but it did result in the Theory of Relativity. Here is the thought experiment I want you to consider. Can the findings of this research be generalized from reviews of products and services to, say, articles on vaccines and mandates, or ivermectin and emergency use authorization, or the Governors of Florida, Texas, New York, or California?

I think the answer is yes. The attention economy of the Internet loves anger; it gets eyes-on-ads. The endless scrolling, the estimated 55 seconds we spend reading an article, even less if there is a “like” button, certainly demonstrates our distraction. As a result, we share the anger of emotion far more than the underlying information. And having written thousands of words in the last year, I can suggest that emphasizing the irrationality of those who disagree with me or noting the positive qualities or effects that I champion barely moves the needle—just saying.

[1] They used various scales of helpfulness and subsequent attitude.

Source: Anger In Consumer Reviews: Unhelpful But Persuasive? MIS (Management Information Systems) Quarterly DOI: 10.25300/MISQ/2021/15363

View the discussion thread.

persuasive article 2021

By Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA

Director of Medicine

Dr. Charles Dinerstein, M.D., MBA, FACS is Director of Medicine at the American Council on Science and Health. He has over 25 years of experience as a vascular surgeon.

Latest from Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA :

shopify analytics tool

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • View all journals
  • My Account Login
  • Explore content
  • About the journal
  • Publish with us
  • Sign up for alerts
  • Open access
  • Published: 02 January 2024

The persuasive power of social media influencers in brand credibility and purchase intention

  • Xiao Liu 1 &
  • Xiaoyong Zheng   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4899-4599 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  15 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

2645 Accesses

3 Altmetric

Metrics details

  • Business and management

The use of social media influencer collaboration is growing exponentially. This study explores the persuasive power of influencers on followers’ perceived brand credibility and purchase intention by applying the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. The results show that the informative value of influencers’ content, authenticity, and homophily positively affect their parasocial relationships, which in turn, affects followers’ purchase intention and evaluation of brand credibility. Followers’ persuasion knowledge negatively moderates the relationship between parasocial relationships and followers’ perceived brand credibility; it has no moderating effect on the relationship between parasocial relationships and followers’ purchase intention.

Introduction

Social media has changed how people obtain information and news dramatically in recent years. As of 2021, the number of social media users worldwide has reached 4.20 billion, with users spending an average of 2h and 25 min daily on these platforms (KEMP, 2021 ). As traditional ads lose visibility due to the widespread use of ad blockers, marketers are increasingly turning to social media influencers (SMIs) to distribute brand messages. Over 75% of brand marketers expect to allocate a budget to SMI marketing in 2022 (Geyser, 2022 ). SMIs refer to individuals who are perceived as having social influence because of the number of followers they have (Council, 2018 ). Lou and Yuan ( 2019 ) claim the difference between SMIs and traditional media celebrities is that SMIs are “regular people” who have become digital celebrities through their content and creations on social media. Social media influencers excel in their respective fields and consistently create valuable content on social media to nurture a dedicated and engaged audience. From the perspective of strategic communication, Enke and Borchers ( 2019 ) defined SMIs as third-party endorsers. These endorsers have established significant relationships with organizational stakeholders and influence others through the production, distribution, and interaction of their content and personal appearance.

Compared to traditional celebrity endorsement advertising, SMIs are more reliable and robust in influencing consumers’ attitudes (Jin et al., 2019 ). Brands and influencers work together to market their products through influencer marketing. Influencers promote brands’ products or services through social media channels, and unlike celebrity endorsements, influencer marketing goes beyond just attaching well-known celebrities to brands. They must maintain loyal followings within communities and be trusted figures. Furthermore, SMIs are usually knowledgeable about the subject of their advertising (Lou and Yuan, 2019 ). Influencer marketing can have a variety of objectives, e.g., enhancement of brand awareness, increasing product interest, and selling and buying products to help to improve the brand’s value and revenue (Enke and Borchers, 2019 ; Yuan and Lou, 2020 ).

Academic research on influencer marketing has proliferated in recent years, providing a deeper understanding of how it affects consumers (Tanwar et al., 2022 ; Hudders et al., 2021 ; Ye et al., 2021 ). For example, Researchers have emphasized that influencer characteristics, such as trustworthiness, expertise, or attractiveness, can positively affect consumers’ attitudes toward brands (Nafees et al., 2021 ), trust in brands (Reinikainen et al., 2020 ), and brand awareness (Lou and Yuan, 2019 ). A growing number of consumers rely on the content of SMIs in making decisions because of their professional expertise and knowledge. Several studies have also investigated how SMIs’ narrative strategies (Zhou et al., 2021 ), content quality (Onofrei et al., 2022 ), and content characteristics (Cheung et al., 2022 ) influence followers’ behavioral engagement. Moreover, the parasocial relationship (PSR) has been identified as an appropriate mechanism for effective brand management and advertising using SMIs (Lee and Watkins, 2016 ; Reinikainen et al., 2020 ; Wei et al., 2022 ; Yuan and Lou, 2020 ).

While companies and businesses are increasingly recognizing the benefits of integrating influencers into their marketing communication strategy, how to select and engage with the right SMIs to make achieve desirable marketing outcomes has been a challenge (Ye et al., 2021 ; Zhou et al., 2023 ). Only limited research has worked on what determines the parasocail relationships between online celebrities and their followers and its consequent impacts. Additionally, research on consumers’ persuasion knowledge was scarce in influencer marketing (Hudders et al., 2021 ), dearth of research has considered users’ persuasion knowledge in affecting consumers’ responses. Therefore, exploring the role of persuasion knowledge in influencer marketing can lead to further research contributions (Breves et al., 2021 ). Lastly, few studies have examined how SMIs’ personal and content-driven traits impact their followers (Ki et al., 2020 ). Since influencers possess unique features that differentiate them from traditional celebrities that have not been examined yet. More research is needed in influencer marketing (Tanwar et al., 2022 ). Hence, the focal objective of this research is to comprehend what causes users to have a parasocial relationship with influencers, and how this relationship affects consumers’ perceptions of the recommended brands and purchase intentions.

To fill said gaps, this study identifies followers’ PSR with influencers as an essential mechanism that affects followers’ responses and focuses on three research questions: 1) what factors shape users’ parasocial relationship with online celebrities; 2) how parasocial relationships affect users’ purchase intent and perceived brand credibility towards influencers’ recommended brands; 3) how persuasive knowledge as a moderating variable affects the relationships between parasocial relationships and followers’ perception of brands and purchase intention.

This paper is structured as follows. First, we review the literature and propose hypotheses. Second, we describe the methodology used in this article and the statistical procedure. Third, we highlight the research results. And lastly, we propose a discussion of the results and point out the theoretical and practical implications of the research and its implications and future research directions.

Literature review and hypotheses development

Social media influencers and persuasion.

The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986 ) is a widely used and popular model in consumer research. It has also found application in social media and influencer marketing after the introduction of these new communication channels (Gong, 2020 ; Teng et al., 2014 ; Sokolova and Kefi, 2020 ). ELM assumes that high-involvement subjects will be motivated to go through central cues and persuaded by message arguments (the central route). In comparison, low-involvement subjects will focus on and are more likely to be persuaded by peripheral cues such as source characteristics (the peripheral route) (Cole et al., 1990 ). SMIs deliver both informative and entertaining content in their specialized areas when communicating with their followers (Lou and Yuan, 2019 ). By being authentic, followers are able to trust the influencer’s postings (Kim and Kim, 2021 ), which may intensify an influencer’s persuasive impact. A sense of homophily may stimulate the pursuit of information, and development of interpersonal relationships with influencers, and sharing of information (Bu et al., 2022 ). Thus, we take the SMIs’ content value, namely, informativeness and entertainment, source characteristics of influencers’ authenticity, and homophily, to test the persuasion power of influencers.

Parasocial relationship in influencer marketing

As an essential concept in media studies, PSR can be defined as unilateral relationships formed by a media audience with a media character (Rubin and Step, 2000 ). Typically, this is a one-sided, nondialectical, solo-controlled relationship incapable of mutual growth (Horton and Richard Wohl, 1956 ). It is presumed that PSR serves as a motivating factor in media choices and provides people with a sense of belonging and companionship (Rubin and Step, 2000 ). SMIs are unable to respond to all comments or requests from their followers and engage in actual discussions due to the large number of followers and reactions on their social media accounts. This situation resembles the development of PSRs with celebrities. (Sokolova and Kefi, 2020 ). PSR advance the intimate friendships between digital celebrities and influence their succeeding behaviors (Hwang and Zhang, 2018 ). Yuan et al. ( 2016 ) found that PSRs are positively influenced by the motivation to use social networking sites and celebrity source credibility, which results in positive consumer attitudes and customer equity drivers. Researchers have been exploring the role of PSRs for years, but their focus has recently shifted from traditional celebrities to SMIs (Aw and Chuah, 2021 ). For example, Chen ( 2014 ) demonstrated the PSR applies well to the case of influencers and followers through regular content generation and interaction with followers; SMIs can allow followers to form lasting bonds with them. Digital celebrities create PSR through interactions with audiences, giving the illusion of intimacy while promoting products and brands and conducting public relations. Hence, PSRs can be viewed as social media advertising vehicles that can effectively improve advertising outcomes (Lueck, 2012 ). Recently, studies have found the importance of SMIs’ credibility, users’ characteristics, and content characteristics in fostering the PSR between SMIs and consumers in the context of influencer marketing (Cheung et al., 2022 ; Hwang and Zhang, 2018 ; Lou and Kim, 2019 ).

Antecedents of parasocial relationship

Smis content value.

Ducoffe ( 1995 ) developed the advertising value model, in which he defined advertising value as “a subjective evaluation of the relative worth or utility of advertising to consumers.” The model proposes advertising value based on three determinants: informativeness, entertainment, and irritation. While advertising informativeness and entertainment enhance the value of advertising, irritation negatively affects advertising value (Ducoffe, 1995 ). Influencer marketing can be considered a kind of native advertising in which SMIs advise on diverse topics, cooperate with multiple brands, and publish their content in non-commercial formats (Breves et al., 2021 ; Dhanesh and Duthler, 2019 ). SIMs can create content and usually function as creative agencies and advertising media, and several studies have regarded SMIs’ content as online advertisements and investigated its influence on consumers’ responses (Daniel et al., 2018 ; Enke and Borchers, 2019 ; Taillon et al., 2020 ). This study further adopts the two positive elements of advertising value: informativeness and entertainment facets as SMIs’ content value corresponds with Lou and Kim ( 2019 ).

The informative value of content

SMI content informativeness can be described as the capability of content to provide information on alternative products or other informative content so that purchases can yield the most excellent satisfaction from a consumer’s perspective (Ducoffe, 1996 ; Lou and Yuan, 2019 ). The extent to which the content is informative is a critical quality that affects whether the audience views SMIs as opinion leaders. Since SMIs provide information about a product’s features and quality, or reviews about their personal experiences, they are perceived as trusted sources of information by consumers today (Ki and Kim, 2019 ). Social media allow SMIs to interact with their followers and share information that consumers seek to acquire. By sharing and posting more informative content about products and brands, SMIs are more likely to exert their influencing effects (Lin et al., 2018 ). Previous studies have shown that in the social media context, advertising informativeness has a positive effect on brand attitude, which further affects brand awareness and purchase intention (Dehghani et al., 2016 ). According to Van-Tien Dao et al. ( 2014 ), informativeness positively influences consumers’ perception of social media advertising’s value, ultimately affecting their intentions to buy online. Lou and Yuan ( 2019 ) proposed a SMIs value model, which demonstrated that the informative value of influencer-generated content positively influences their fans’ trust in influencers’ branded posts and purchase intention. In influencer marketing, informative content has proved to affect followers to perceive SMIs as human brands and lead to a solid emotional bond (Ki et al., 2020 ). Hence, we propose the following hypothesis:

H1 : The informative value of influencers’ content will positively influence PSR between influencers and their followers.

The entertainment value of content

SMI content entertainment can be defined as the capability to entertain consumers, which helps audiences escape their daily lives (Ducoffe, 1996 ; Lou and Yuan, 2019 ). SMIs can entertain and potentially influence followers’ thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors through personal branding as well as build and maintain relationships with their followers on social media (Dhanesh and Duthler, 2019 ). Influencers create entertainment content usually through esthetic touches and personality twists (Lou and Yuan, 2019 ). After conducting in-depth interviews with Chinese social media users, Gan and Wang ( 2015 ) found that entertainment strongly motivates Chinese users to use Microblog and WeChat by fulfilling the hedonic gratification of using these social media. Prior studies found that the perception of entertainment influences customers’ attitudes toward web advertising, which in turn impacts their use of web advertising to obtain information (Zha et al., 2014 ); Entertainment is a hedonic benefit offered by online stores that can excite consumers’ pleasure and influences their approach behaviors (Wu et al., 2019 ). In the social media context, the value of social media advertising is significantly influenced by entertainment, and consumers’ attitudes and behavior will be positively affected by this value (Hamouda, 2018 ). Research found that the main reason people use Tiktok is for personal entertainment (Yang and Ha, 2021 ). According to Lou and Kim ( 2019 ), PSR between teenage followers and their favorite influencers is positively associated with the entertainment value of influencer-generated content. Hence, we propose the following hypothesis:

H2 : The entertainment value of influencers’ content will positively influence PSR between influencers and their followers.

Influencer authenticity

The definition of authenticity in sociology is being true to oneself; a person experiences authenticity when they are true to themselves (Vannini and Franzese, 2008 ). A conceptualization of authenticity is adopted in research on social media practice that overlaps with these notions of ‘humanness.’ Still, its foundation lies in the genuineness of one’s personality (Cohen and Tyler, 2016 ). Followers perceive influencers’ passion and sincerity in creating content and the strength of their internal intentions. To be specific, Influencers who create content with internal motivations, as opposed to those motivated by external or commercial incentives, are considered authentic (Jun and Yi, 2020 ). Authenticity has been seen as a significant predictor of PSR in traditional and social media contexts (Cohen and Tyler, 2016 ; Marwick and Boyd, 2011 ). For example, authenticity has been proven to foster emotional bonds and responses between consumers and celebrities on Twitter (Marwick and Boyd, 2011 ). Sponsorship on social media is widely known and may make users skeptical of the influencer’s motives for promoting the product/service. By being authentic, followers can believe that influencers are posting their genuine opinions (Kim and Kim, 2021 ). Studies show authenticity can help build trust between influencers and followers (Lee et al., 2021 ), eliciting a long-term relationship with the brand (Jun and Yi, 2020 ) and generating a positive attitude toward the brand (Kim and Kim, 2021 ). Accordingly, we propose the following hypothesis:

H3 : Influencers’ authenticity will positively influence PSR between influencers and their followers.

Influencer homophily

Lazarsfeld and Merton ( 1954 ) proposed the theory of homophily that the majority of human communication will take place between sources and seekers who are homophilous. The homophily described by Gilly et al. ( 1998 ) entails comparable values, preferences, lifestyles, and demographic similarities. There has been a relatively limited study of homophily in marketing and social commerce; it refers to perceptions of similarities between SMIs and their followers regarding attitudes, values, morals, appearance, and backgrounds (Ladhari et al., 2020 ). Aaker et al. ( 2000 ) found a link between the perceived similarity between an endorser and a consumer and advertising attitudes. According to Munnukka et al. ( 2016 ), an endorsement’s similarity is crucial in establishing credibility between peers, further influencing advertising effectiveness and attitude formation. Consumers will assume that the provided information is helpful and similar to their preferences when considering the information source homogeneous (Filieri et al., 2018 ). In recent research, source homophily can influence consumers’ behavioral engagement and purchase intention (Onofrei et al., 2022 ). Compared to traditional celebrities, consumers feel more similar to influencers and trust them more (Schouten et al., 2019 ). Ladhari et al. ( 2020 ) found that followers of SMIs who perceive influencers as similar in attitudes, values, and appearance are also more likely to connect with and be emotionally attached to them. Drawing upon these arguments, we hypothesize that:

H4: Influencers’ homophily will positively influence PSR between influencers and their followers.

PSR and followers’ perceived brand credibility and purchase intention

Brand credibility.

Brand credibility, as perceived in terms of expertise, trustworthiness, and likability, reflects how customers view a brand’s credibility (Keller, 2013 ). Thus, A brand’s credibility is determined by its ability and willingness to consistently deliver what has been promised concerning the product information contained in the brand (Erdem and Swait, 2004 ). The brand’s credibility indicates the quality and positioning of the product, and customers will feel more confident in the brand’s products and be more loyal to it when it has a highly credible brand (Alam et al., 2012 ). Scholars have used brand credibility as an outcome to measure the effectiveness of advertising and marketing (Dwivedi et al., 2019 ; Wang and Scheinbaum, 2017 ). Lee and Watkins ( 2016 ) demonstrate that a positive PSR with vloggers influences luxury brand perceptions (e.g., brand value, brand-user image fit, and brand luxury). Through social media, PSRs were associated with more significant source trustworthiness, positively affecting brand credibility (Chung and Cho, 2017 ). Reinikainen et al. ( 2020 ) suggest that when consumers have PSRs with influencers, they can develop trust in the brand recommended by the influencers and reduce their uncertainty about the brand. To further test the PSR effect on consumers’ perceived brand credibility, the next hypothesis is formulated as follows:

H5 : The PSR between influencers and their followers will positively influence followers’ perceived brand credibility.

Purchase intention

Purchase intention, as a social media campaign outcome, can be helpful to marketers when collaborating with SMIs (Tanwar et al., 2022 ). Most purchases are motivated by attributes or characteristics of the brands that match the buyer’s purchase motive. It is common for a purchase intention to take some time to become a purchase and plays a vital part in predicting purchase behavior (Guolla et al., 2020 ). Many advertisers and scholars have routinely used purchase intentions to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing strategies (Van-Tien Dao et al., 2014 ; Onofrei et al., 2022 ; Taillon et al., 2020 ). Using celebrities as marketing tools, marketers create strong relationships between the brand and the celebrity, thereby increasing consumers’ purchase intention (Guolla et al., 2020 ). Djafarova and Rushworth ( 2017 ) demonstrated that young female Instagram users perceive SMIs as more credible and can relate to them than traditional celebrities, making them more effective in influencing their purchase behaviors. According to Lou and Kim ( 2019 ), purchasing intentions toward products promoted by influencers will be positively correlated with adolescents’ perceived PSR with influencers. And regardless of high or low product involvement, PSR between microbloggers and their followers has salient positive effects on followers’ attitudes and behavioral intentions (Gong, 2020 ). Hwang and Zhang ( 2018 ) found that the PSR between Chinese SNS users and digital celebrities has positively affected users’ purchase intention. Based on the previous findings, the following hypothesis is advanced:

H6: The PSR between influencers and their followers will positively influence followers’ purchase intentions toward influencer-promoted products.

Persuasion knowledge as a moderator

According to the persuasion knowledge model, consumers use persuasion knowledge to deal with marketers’ persuasive attempts, which can influence their brand attitudes and responses to marketers’ advertising and sales promotions (Friestad and Wright, 1994 ). Conceptual and attitudinal persuasion knowledge are the two dimensions of persuasion knowledge. While conceptual persuasion knowledge encompasses advertising knowledge, including the ability to recognize and understand the persuasive intent, attitudinal persuasion knowledge describes potentially effective attitudes in dealing with advertising (Boerman et al., 2012 ). Followers know that influencers are paid for their endorsements, regardless of whether they disclose them. As a result of this awareness, they recognize SMIs’ content as advertising and are ready to process persuasive messages from SMIs (Dhanesh and Duthler, 2019 ). Similarly, Lee and Kim ( 2020 ) also found that explicit sponsorship disclosure language did not enhance advertising recognition as implicit disclosure language and no disclosure in Instagram posts; all respondents reported some conceptual persuasion knowledge. Previous research was limited in investigating the relationship between SMIs and consumers’ persuasion knowledge (Breves et al., 2021 ; De Jans and Hudders, 2020 ; Lee and Kim, 2020 ; Van Reijmersdal et al., 2016 ). For example, Van Reijmersdal et al. ( 2016 ) found that participants activated their persuasion knowledge due to disclosing sponsored blog content, which decreased persuasive arguments’ effectiveness. Hwang and Zhang ( 2018 ) demonstrated that PSR could enhance persuasive effects by reducing the negative impact of persuasion knowledge on followers’ eWOM and purchase intention. The study from Breves et al. ( 2021 ) indicates that, unlike users who did not follow any influencers, followers demonstrated lower levels of activated persuasion knowledge due to the established PSR between them. As a consequence, followers reported higher brand evaluations and purchase intentions. Marketing outcomes are more likely to be deeply influenced by effective relationships between users and SMIs. However, users’ persuasion knowledge triggers more significant skepticism or greater credibility (Isaac and Grayson, 2016 ), which may diminish or fortify followers’ evaluation of SMIs’ authenticity about the brand, product, or service they promote on social media. Therefore, the hypothesis is formulated as follows:

H7: Followers’ persuasion knowledge will moderate the relationship between PSR and the endorsed brand credibility.

H8: Followers’ persuasion knowledge will moderate the relationship between PSR and purchase intention.

Previous studies on influencer marketing revealed that demographic factors: age and gender could affect model testing (Cheung et al., 2022 ; Lou and Yuan, 2019 ; Yuan and Lou, 2020 ); hence, we included them as control variables. The conceptual model that summarizes this research is proposed (see Fig. 1 ).

figure 1

Research model.

Methodology

Questionnaire development and data collection.

Based on previous relevant literature measurements, we developed measurement items for each construct based on relevant literature. To evaluate the value of influencer-generated content, including informativeness and entertainment, we asked participants to respond to a statement. This statement was presented using two sets of five 7-point semantic differential scales, following the approaches of Lou and Yuan ( 2019 ) and Voss et al. ( 2003 ). The questionnaire covered various constructs, using a 7-point Likert scale from “1 Strongly Disagree” to “7 Strongly Agree”. Influencer authenticity four items were adopted from Ilicic and Webster ( 2016 ), influencer homophily was measured using four items adapted from Onofrei et al. ( 2022 ); five-item were used to examine PSRs (Kim et al., 2015 ); to measure persuasion knowledge, we adopted five items from Hwang and Zhang ( 2018 ), brand credibility included five items adapted from Baek and King ( 2011 ); We adopted a four-item scale from Yoo and Donthu ( 2014 ) to measure purchase intention. After the pilot test, 50 respondents were to assess the accuracy and consistency of the questionnaire, and some refinements were made to reduce ambiguity.

The self-administered online survey was created on Sojump which is one of the most popular platforms in China that specializes in questionnaire surveys, exams, and voting. The online survey was conducted from early August to late September 2022. We informed the participants that the questionnaire would be autonomous and that respondents would request a final report of the results in return for completing the survey. We further used a screening question to determine whether participants followed any SMIs. Those unable to identify influencers they followed were thanked and excluded from further participation. The following section provides the definition of social media influencers and prompts respondents to think of one of their favorite influencers while completing the questionnaire. The constructs and items were derived from or adapted from previous English papers and translated into Chinese. A back translation has been conducted to ensure the meaning was equivalent after translation. For this study, data were recorded in English and collected in Chinese. The survey was targeted and distributed to 800 respondents and utilized a blend of social media channels to effectively reach the audience. A total of 527 responses were obtained. Subsequently, it was determined that the responses of 263 participants, who did not identify themselves as followers of any influencers, as well as those of 48 individuals who failed to pass an attention-check question, were excluded from the analytical process. Consequently, a total of 216 valid questionnaires remained for the purposes of data analysis. Table 1 presents the demographic information of the 216 respondents. The sample had more female (57.4%) respondents than male (42.5%). With 57.8% of the respondents aged 18–25, and 24.1% from aged 26 to 30 years old; most of the respondents had a diploma or bachelor’s degree (80.6%) and had a monthly income of less than 3000 Chinese Yuan (40.7%).

Statistical procedures

A partial least squares (PLS) approach was used with SmartPLS software 3.3.9. (Ringle et al., 2015 ) to test the model. The PLS-SEM method can be superior to CB-SEM in some instances, such as when little a priori knowledge is available about the relationships between structural constructs and their measurement characteristics or when exploration has a greater priority than confirmation (Hair et al., 2016 ). PLS-SEM makes practically no distributional assumptions about the data when working with small sample sizes and complex models (Cassel et al., 1999 ). Compared to CB-SEM reviews with 4.70 latent variables, the PLS path model has 7.94 latent variables on average (Hair et al., 2011 ). Therefore, a PLS path modeling approach is more appropriate in this study for data analysis. It is recommended to use ten times the maximum number of paths in the outer and inner models aiming at any construct, as suggested by (Barclay et al., 1995 ). Thus, 216 collected samples meet the requirements.

Common method bias (CMB)

Since self-reported data were gathered from a single source, it is possible that common method bias (CMB) could lead to exaggerated relationships among the constructs in the research model. To address this concern, Harman’s single-factor test (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ) was conducted to assess CMB. The results of the test indicated that the single factor explained less than 50% of the overall variance among indicators. This suggests that the questionnaire used in the study was not influenced by CMB (Sheng and Chien, 2016 ).

Analysis of measurement model

The evaluation of the measurement model involved assessing its internal consistency reliability and its convergent and discriminant validity (Hair et al., 2016 ). The factor analysis showed that all measurement loadings were over 0.70. Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability values for all latent constructs were above 0.70, and the average variance extracted (AVE) was higher than 0.50 (Table 2 ), indicating that the measurement instrument was reliable. The cross-loadings on the other constructs were much lower than the loadings on the measured construct. As shown in Table 3 , the square root of the AVE of each construct was larger than its correlation with other latent variables, indicating the discriminant validity (Hair et al., 2016 ). We further had a collinearity test, showing that the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) values are lower than 10. It implied that variables did not contain severe problematic collinearity (Hair et al., 2009 ).

Analysis of structural model

The model fit for the research model was checked using the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) and the normed fit index (NFI). The results showed that the SRMR had a value of 0.053, which is lower than the recommended threshold of 0.08 (Hu and Bentler, 1999 ). The NFI had a value of 0.803, surpassing the accepted threshold of 0.80 (Barta et al., 2023 ; Cheung et al., 2022 ). Hence, the model fit was confirmed. Bootstrapping analysis using 5000 sample re-samples was later performed to examine the structural validity of the model. The control variables of age and gender did not significantly influence the PSR, brand credibility, and purchase intention. Table 4 and Fig. 2 show the results of the hypotheses test. Hypotheses 1, 2, 3, and 4 posit that the informative and entertainment value of influencer-generated content, as well as the authenticity and homophily of influencers, will have a positive impact on the PSR between influencers and their followers. Our findings indicate that, with the exception of H2 (which found no significant relationship between the entertainment value of influencers’ content and the PSR), the informative value of influencers’ content ( β  = 0.174, p  < 0.05), influencers’ authenticity ( β  = 0.309, p  < 0.01), and influencers’ homophily ( β  = 0.230, p  < 0.05) all had a positive influence on the parasocial relationship between influencers and their followers. Therefore, Hypotheses H1, H3, and H4 are supported. The R 2 was 0.492, meaning that the predictors explained 49.2% of the variance in the PSR.

figure 2

PLS analysis of research model.

Hypotheses 5 and 6 hypothesize that the PSR between influencers and followers will positively affect brand credibility and purchase intention. Our results showed that PSR significantly influenced brand credibility ( β  = 0.550, p  < 0.001) and purchase intention ( β  = 0.490, p  < 0.001). Hence H5 and H6 were supported. The significant paths in the model accounted for 57.3% of the variance in brand credibility ( R 2  = 0.573) and 40.5% in followers’ purchase intention ( R 2  = 0.405), which aligns with satisfactory levels in the field of social sciences, as recommended by Chin ( 1998 ).

Hypotheses 7 and 8 posit that followers’ persuasion knowledge will moderate the relationship between PSR and brand credibility, and between PSR and purchase intention. The results demonstrated that in the relationship between PSR and brand credibility, the moderating effect of persuasion knowledge of followers was significant ( β  = −0.077, p  < 0.05). Thus, H7 was supported. In the relationship between PSR and followers’ purchase intention, followers’ persuasion knowledge did not play a moderating role ( p  = 0.334). H8 was rejected.

To assess the influence of influencers’ content in terms of informative value, entertainment value, authenticity, and homophily on parasocial relationships, as well as the impact of parasocial relationships on followers’ perceptions of recommended brands and their purchase intentions, we investigated the effect sizes ( f -squared) of these relationships, as suggested by Cohen ( 1988 ). The effect sizes were as follows: the relationship between informative value and parasocial relationships yielded an effect size of 0.03, indicating a small effect. Similarly, the effect size for the relationship between entertainment value and parasocial relationships was 0.02, also classified as a small effect. The relationship between influencer authenticity and parasocial relationships showed an effect size of 0.09, again denoted as a small effect. Lastly, the relationship between influencer homophily and parasocial relationships produced an effect size of 0.05, still considered small. On the other hand, the relationship between parasocial relationships and the perception of brand credibility resulted in a substantial effect size of 0.52 (large), while the relationship with purchase intentions yielded an effect size of 0.30, indicating a medium effect. We used the blindfolding procedure to check the research model’s predictive relevance ( Q 2 ). The results demonstrated that the Q 2 values for PSR ( Q 2  = 0.336), brand credibility ( Q 2  = 0.470), and purchase intention ( Q 2  = 0.339) were greater than zero, demonstrating that the independent variables were good at predicting the dependent variables and therefore confirmed the predictive relevance of the model (Hair et al., 2016 ).

Discussions and conclusions

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the factors that contribute to the development of parasocial relationships between users and influencers. Furthermore, we aim to examine how these relationships influence consumers’ perceptions of recommended brands and their purchase intentions. In this study, we extended the application of Ducoffe’s advertising value model and integrated the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. This framework incorporates influencers’ content’s informative value, entertainment value, authenticity, and homophily as influential factors.

The proposed model tested the role of the PSR between influencers and their followers in the persuasive power of influencer marketing. Our findings indicate that influencers’ authenticity exerts the most significant influence on the relationship between influencers and their followers, followed by influencers’ homophily and content’s informative value. The informative value of influencer-generated content played a crucial role in shaping the PSR between influencers and their followers. This, in turn, influenced how followers evaluated the credibility of the endorsed brand and their purchase intentions. The finding is consistent with the prior study which demonstrated that the information value of influencer content positively affects the relationships between influencers and followers, and further affects users’ responses (Cheung et al., 2022 ; Lou and Yuan, 2019 ). However, the entertainment value of influencer posts did not affect the PSR between influencers and their follower or purchase intentions, in contrast to the finding from Lou and Kim ( 2019 ). The results suggest that influencers can foster PSRs with followers by delivering high-quality informational content rather than focusing on entertainment value. This, in turn, positively impacts how followers assess endorsed brands and make purchase decisions.

The role of authenticity has not been well defined despite the increasing importance of authenticity in SMI marketing (Alcausin, 2020 ; Jun and Yi, 2020 ). The study supports the assumption that the influencers’ authenticity is a compelling driver for building the PSR between influencer-follower. It is the most pivotal factor affecting the PSR between SMIs and users among the four exogenous latent variables in our study. Besides that, the result also shows that homophily is essential for forming the PSR between influencers and social media users. This finding extends the literature about homophily’s effect on relationships by testing it in the influencer marketing context (Ladhari et al. 2020 ).

Lastly, this study found the negative impacts of followers’ persuasion knowledge on the PSR between them and influencers and their perceived brand credibility. Surprisingly, followers’ persuasion knowledge had no significant moderate effect on the relationship between PSRs and purchase intention. This could be explained by the fact that followers place trust in their chosen online celebrities and believe that influencers share content with good intentions. Furthermore, they often cross-reference information from other sources before making purchase decisions (Lou, 2021 ). Therefore, followers’ persuasion knowledge does not affect the relationship between PSR and purchase intention.

Theoretical implications

First, this study contributes to social media marketing literature by using the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986 ), advertising value model (Ducoffe, 1995 ), and persuasion knowledge models (Friestad and Wright, 1994 ). It provides an integrated model demonstrating how the PSRs between SMIs and their fans contribute to the effectiveness of influencer marketing. When constructing the persuasive cues that impact the users’ reactions, considering influencers are content generators and advertising media, except using influencers’ characteristics, this study also embraced the informative and entertainment value of the influencer-generated content as the predictors. This study shows how SMIs can use their content value to convey their influence power. Additionally, many existing SMI marketing studies focus on characteristics such as trustworthiness, expertise, and attractiveness of SMIs, while limited research includes other SMIs’ attributions that may be the same as influential in persuading consumers. Our study evidence that influencers’ authenticity and homophily can also facilitate SMI marketing effectiveness through the PSR between them and their followers (Lou and Kim, 2019 ; Nafees et al., 2021 ; Reinikainen et al., 2020 ). Lastly, previous studies have demonstrated mixed findings regarding persuasion knowledge in influencer marketing. Some articles show that users’ persuasion knowledge has adverse marketing outcomes (Boerman et al., 2012 ; Hwang and Zhang, 2018 ), while others show the effect of persuasion knowledge is not always negative (Dhanesh and Duthler, 2019 ; Lou, 2021 ). Our study reveals that persuasion knowledge has a negative impact on the relationship between PSR and brand credibility but does not significantly moderate the relationship between PSR and purchase intention. This contributes to the growing body of literature on persuasion knowledge in influencer marketing.

Managerial implications

The study firstly provides some valuable recommendations for influencers. They can create informative content and demonstrate their authenticity and homophily characteristics to their followers, which results in positive PSRs and improve their marketing effectiveness. Secondly, marketers and brands interested in influencer marketing can also benefit from the findings of this study. As selecting suitable influencers is an ongoing challenge, many marketers struggle to solve this (Wiley, 2020 ). This study suggests that marketers should choose the influencers who have built a solid PSR with their followers to endorse or recommend their products or brands, as PSR plays a significant role in followers’ perceived brand credibility and purchase intentions. Marketers can further evaluate such relationships by examining followers’ perceptions of influencers’ authenticity, homophily, and the valuable information influencers have provided. Companies and brands can have more effective marketing outcomes if they incorporate these elements into their marketing strategies or messages. Lastly, though followers’ persuasion knowledge does not affect the relationship between PSR and purchase intention, it negatively affects the relationship between followers’ perception of a brand’s credibility and PSR. Hence, marketers and influencers should apply the appropriate approach to establish strong PSR to diminish the adverse effect of followers’ persuasion knowledge, especially when building brand trust.

Limitations and future research

Although this study presents several valuable empirical findings, there are some limitations. First, this study was limited to Chinese respondents, and the sample size was relatively small. Whether the sample in our study is representative of the whole internet population is not confirmed. Therefore, generalizing the results should be approached with caution. Future studies should consider more samples by including participants from different cultures or countries. Second, the impact of the entertainment value of influencers’ content on the PSR between influencers and their followers requires a further test. Theoretically, the former has an impact on the latter. However, this was not supported by our empirical study. Future research needs to test that in other contexts. Third, this study considers influencers’ content value, authenticity, and homophily as critical factors when examining influencer marketing effectiveness. While there may be other relevant factors, such as interactivity, emotional attachment, and followers’ involvement, that may be worth further research. Moreover, the current research considers only the moderating role of persuasion knowledge. Further studies can explore other potential moderators (e.g., the type of social media platform and the duration of social media users following influencers) that did not include in this study. Finally, this study does not differentiate between various types of influencers collected; future research could explore the suggested associations while focusing on specific categories of influencers.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Aaker JL, Brumbaugh AM, Grier SA (2000) Nontarget markets and viewer distinctiveness: the impact of target marketing on advertising attitudes. J Consum Psychol 9(3):127–140. https://doi.org/10.1207/15327660051044105

Article   Google Scholar  

Alam A, Usman Arshad M, Adnan Shabbir S (2012) Brand credibility, customer loyalty and the role of religious orientation. Asia Pac J Mark Logist 24(4):583–598. https://doi.org/10.1108/13555851211259034

Alcausin D (2020) Authenticity in influencer marketing is more important than ever. IMA. Retrieved 20 Aug 2022, from https://imagency.com/news/authenticity-in-influencer-marketing-is-more-important-than-ever

Aw ECX, Chuah SHW (2021) stop the unattainable ideal for an ordinary me!” fostering parasocial relationships with social media influencers: the role of self-discrepancy. J Bus Res 132:146–157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.04.025

Baek TH, King KW (2011) Exploring the consequences of brand credibility in services. J Serv Mark 25(4):260–272. https://doi.org/10.1108/08876041111143096

Barclay D, Higgins C, Thompson R (1995) The Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach to causal modelling: personal computer adoption and use as an illustration. Technol Stud 2:285–309

Google Scholar  

Barta S, Belanche D, Fernández A, Flavián M (2023) Influencer marketing on TikTok: the effectiveness of humor and followers’ hedonic experience. J Retail Consum Serv 70:103149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2022.103149

Boerman SC, van Reijmersdal EA, Neijens PC (2012) Sponsorship disclosure: effects of duration on persuasion knowledge and brand responses. J Commun 62(6):1047–1064. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01677.x

Breves P, Amrehn J, Heidenreich A, Liebers N, Schramm H (2021) Blind Trust? the importance and interplay of parasocial relationships and advertising disclosures in explaining influencers’ persuasive effects on their followers. Int J Advert 40(7):1209–1229. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2021.1881237

Bu Y, Parkinson J, Thaichon P (2022) Influencer marketing: Homophily, customer value co-creation behaviour and purchase intention. J Retail Consum Serv 66:102904. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2021.102904

Cassel C, Hackl P, Westlund AH (1999) Robustness of partial least-squares method for estimating latent variable quality structures. J Appl Stat 26(4):435–446. https://doi.org/10.1080/02664769922322

Chen CP (2014) Forming digital self and parasocial relationships on YouTube. J Consum Cult 16(1):232–254. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540514521081

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Cheung ML, Leung WKS, Aw ECX, Koay KY (2022) I follow what you post!”: The role of Social Media Influencers’ content characteristics in consumers’ online brand-related activities (Cobras). J Retail Consum Serv 66:102940. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2022.102940

Chin WW (1998) The partial least squares approach for structural equation modeling. In Marcoulides GA (ed), Modern methods for business research. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, p 295–336

Chung S, Cho H (2017) Fostering parasocial relationships with celebrities on social media: Implications for celebrity endorsement. Psychol Mark 34(4):481–495. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21001

Cohen EL, Tyler WJ (2016) Examining perceived distance and personal authenticity as mediators of the effects of ghost-tweeting on Parasocial Interaction. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw 19(5):342–346. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2015.0657

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Cohen J (1988) Statistical Power Analysis for the behavioral sciences. L. Erlbaum Associates

Cole C, Ettenson R, Reinke SR, Schrader T(1990) The Elaboration Likelihood Model (Elm): replications, extensions and some conflicting findings. Adv Consum Res 17:231–236

Council YE (2018) Council post: are social media influencers the next-generation Brand Ambassadors? Forbes. Accessed 10 Aug 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2018/06/13/are-social-media-influencers-the-next-generation-brand-ambassadors/?sh=329e4fbb473d

Daniel ES, Crawford Jackson EC, Westerman DK (2018) The influence of social media influencers: Understanding online vaping communities and parasocial interaction through the lens of Taylor’s six-segment Strategy Wheel. J Interact Advert 18(2):96–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2018.1488637

De Jans S, Hudders L (2020) Disclosure of vlog advertising targeted to children. J Interact Mark 52:1–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2020.03.003

Dehghani M, Niaki MK, Ramezani I, Sali R (2016) Evaluating the influence of YouTube advertising for attraction of young customers. Comput Hum Behav 59:165–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.01.037

Djafarova E, Rushworth C (2017) Exploring the credibility of online celebrities’ Instagram profiles in influencing the purchase decisions of young female users. Comput Hum Behav 68:1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.11.009

Dhanesh GS, Duthler G (2019) Relationship management through social media influencers: effects of followers’ awareness of paid endorsement. Public Relat Rev 45(3):101765. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2019.03.002

Ducoffe RH (1995) How consumers assess the value of advertising. J Curr Issues Res Advert 17(1):1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/10641734.1995.10505022

Ducoffe RH (1996) Advertising value and advertising on the Web. J Advert Res 36(5):21–35

Dwivedi A, Johnson LW, Wilkie DC, De Araujo-Gil L (2019) Consumer emotional brand attachment with social media brands and Social Media Brand Equity. Eur J Mark 53(6):1176–1204. https://doi.org/10.1108/ejm-09-2016-0511

Enke N, Borchers NS (2019) Social Media Influencers in strategic communication: a conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication. Int J Strateg Commun 13(4):261–277. https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118x.2019.1620234

Erdem T, Swait J (2004) Brand credibility, brand consideration, and choice. J Consum Res 31(1):191–198. https://doi.org/10.1086/383434

Filieri R, McLeay F, Tsui B, Lin Z (2018) Consumer perceptions of information helpfulness and determinants of purchase intention in online consumer reviews of services. Inf Manag 55(8):956–970. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2018.04.010

Friestad M, Wright P (1994) The persuasion knowledge model: how people cope with persuasion attempts. J Consum Res 21(1):1. https://doi.org/10.1086/209380

Gan C, Wang W (2015) Uses and gratifications of Social Media: a comparison of microblog and WeChat. J Syst Inf Technol 17(4):351–363. https://doi.org/10.1108/jsit-06-2015-0052

Geyser W (2022) The State of Influencer Marketing 2022: Benchmark report. Influencer Marketing Hub. Retrieved 19 Jul 2022, from https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-benchmark-report/

Gilly MC, Graham JL, Wolfinbarger MF, Yale LJ (1998) A dyadic study of interpersonal information search. J Acad Mark Sci 26(2):83–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070398262001

Gong W (2020) Effects of parasocial interaction, brand credibility and product involvement on celebrity endorsement on Microblog. Asia Pac J Mark Logist 33(6):1437–1454. https://doi.org/10.1108/apjml-12-2019-0747

Guolla MA, Belch GE, Belch MA (2020) Advertising & promotion: an integrated marketing communications perspective. McGraw-Hill Ryerson

Hair JF, Black WC, Babin BJ, Anderson RE (2009) multivariate data analysis (7th Edition) (7th ed.). Pearson

Hair JF, Hult TGM, Ringle CM, Sarstedt M (2016) a primer on partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) (Second). SAGE Publications, Inc

Hair JF, Sarstedt M, Ringle CM, Mena JA (2011) An assessment of the use of partial least squares structural equation modeling in Marketing Research. J Acad Mark Sci 40(3):414–433. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-011-0261-6

Hamouda M (2018) Understanding social media advertising effect on consumers’ responses. J Enterp Inf Manag 31(3):426–445. https://doi.org/10.1108/jeim-07-2017-0101

Article   MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Horton D, Richard Wohl R (1956) Mass communication and para-social interaction. Psychiatry 19(3):215–229. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1956.11023049

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Hu L, Bentler PM (1999) Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Struct Equ Modeling: A Multidiscip J 6(1):1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118

Hudders L, Jans SD, Veirman MD (2021) The commercialization of Social Media Stars: a literature review and conceptual framework on the strategic use of Social Media influencers. Social media influencers in strategic communication. p 24–67. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003181286-3

Hwang K, Zhang Q (2018) Influence of parasocial relationship between digital celebrities and their followers on followers’ purchase and electronic word-of-mouth intentions, and persuasion knowledge. Comput Hum Behav 87:155–173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.05.029

Ilicic J, Webster CM (2016) Being true to oneself: investigating celebrity brand authenticity. Psychol Mark 33(6):410–420. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.20887

Isaac MS, Grayson K (2016) Beyond skepticism: can accessing persuasion knowledge bolster credibility? J Consum Res https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucw063

Jin SV, Muqaddam A, Ryu E (2019) Instafamous and social media influencer marketing. Mark Intell Plan 37(5):567–579. https://doi.org/10.1108/mip-09-2018-0375

Jun S, Yi J (2020) What makes followers loyal? the role of influencer interactivity in building influencer brand equity. J Prod Brand Manag 29(6):803–814. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpbm-02-2019-2280

Keller KL (2013) Strategic Brand Management: building, measuring, and managing brand equity. Pearson

Kemp S (2021) Digital 2021: Global Overview Report—datareportal—global digital insights. DataReportal. Retrieved 20 Sep 2022, from https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-global-overview-report

Ki CWC, Kim YK (2019) The mechanism by which social media influencers persuade consumers: the role of consumers’ desire to mimic. Psychol Mark 36(10):905–922. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21244

Ki CWC, Cuevas LM, Chong SM, Lim H (2020) Influencer Marketing: social media influencers as human brands attaching to followers and yielding positive marketing results by fulfilling needs. J Retail Consum Serv 55:102133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102133

Kim DY, Kim HY (2021) Trust me, Trust Me not: a nuanced view of influencer marketing on social media. J Bus Res 134:223–232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.05.024

Kim H, Ko E, Kim J (2015) SNS users’ para-social relationships with celebrities: social media effects on purchase intentions. J Glob Sch Mark Sci 25(3):279–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/21639159.2015.1043690

Ladhari R, Massa E, Skandrani H (2020) YouTube vloggers’ popularity and influence: the roles of homophily, emotional attachment, and expertise. J Retail Consum Serv 54:102027. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.102027

Lazarsfeld PF, Merton RK (1964) Friendship as a social process: a substantive and methodological analysis. Freedom and Control in Modern Society, p 18–66

Lee JA, Sudarshan S, Sussman KL, Bright LF, Eastin MS (2021) Why are consumers following social media influencers on Instagram? exploration of consumers’ motives for following influencers and the role of materialism. Int J Advert 41(1):78–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2021.1964226

Lee JE, Watkins B (2016) YouTube vloggers’ influence on consumer luxury brand perceptions and intentions. J Bus Res 69(12):5753–5760. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.04.171

Lee S, Kim E (2020) Influencer marketing on Instagram: how sponsorship disclosure, influencer credibility, and brand credibility impact the effectiveness of Instagram promotional post. J Glob Fash Mark 11(3):232–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/20932685.2020.1752766

Lin HC, Bruning PF, Swarna H (2018) Using online opinion leaders to promote the hedonic and utilitarian value of products and services. Bus Horiz 61(3):431–442. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2018.01.010

Lou C (2021) Social Media influencers and followers: theorization of a trans-parasocial relation and explication of its implications for influencer advertising. J Advert 51(1):4–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2021.1880345

Lou C, Kim HK (2019) Fancying the new rich and famous? Explicating the roles of influencer content, credibility, and parental mediation in adolescents’ parasocial relationship, materialism, and purchase intentions. Front Psychol 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02567

Lou C, Yuan S (2019) Influencer marketing: how message value and credibility affect consumer trust of branded content on social media. J Interact Advert 19(1):58–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2018.1533501

Lueck JA (2012) Friend-zone with benefits: the parasocial advertising of Kim Kardashian. J Mark Commun 21(2):91–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527266.2012.726235

Marwick A, Boyd D (2011) To see and be seen: celebrity practice on Twitter. Convergence: Int J Res N Media Technol 17(2):139–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856510394539

Munnukka J, Uusitalo O, Toivonen H (2016) Credibility of a peer endorser and advertising effectiveness. J Consum Mark 33(3):182–192. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm-11-2014-1221

Nafees L, Cook CM, Nikolov AN, Stoddard JE (2021) Can social media influencer (SMI) power influence consumer brand attitudes? The mediating role of perceived SMI credibility. Digit Bus 1(2):100008. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.digbus.2021.100008

Onofrei G, Filieri R, Kennedy L (2022) Social media interactions, purchase intention, and behavioural engagement: the mediating role of source and content factors. J Bus Res 142:100–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.12.031

Petty RE, Cacioppo JT (1986) The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Communication and persuasion, 1–24. Springer series in social psychology. Springer, New York, NY https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4964-1_1

Podsakoff PM, MacKenzie SB, Lee JY, Podsakoff NP (2003) Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. J Appl Psychol 88(5):879–903. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879

Reinikainen H, Munnukka J, Maity D, Luoma-aho V(2020) You really are a great big sister’—parasocial relationships, credibility, and the moderating role of audience comments in Influencer marketing J Mark Manag 36(3–4):279–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257x.2019.1708781

Ringle CM, Sven W, Jan-Michael, B (2015) Smartpls 3. Bönningstedt: SmartPLS. http://www.smartpls.com

Rubin AM, Step MM (2000) Impact of motivation, attraction, and parasocial interaction on talk radio listening. J Broadcast Electron Media 44(4):635–654. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4404_7

Schouten AP, Janssen L, Verspaget M (2019) Celebrity vs. Influencer endorsements in advertising: the role of identification, credibility, and product-endorser fit. Int J Advert 39(2):258–281. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2019.1634898

Sheng ML, Chien I (2016) Rethinking organizational learning orientation on radical and incremental innovation in high-tech firms. J Bus Res 69(6):2302–2308. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.12.046

Sokolova K, Kefi H (2020) Instagram and YouTube bloggers promote it, why should I buy? How credibility and Parasocial Interaction Influence Purchase Intentions. J Retail Consum Serv 53:101742. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.01.011

Teng S, Khong KW, Goh WW (2014) Conceptualizing persuasive messages using elm in social media. J Internet Commer 13(1):65–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332861.2014.910729

Taillon BJ, Mueller SM, Kowalczyk CM, Jones DN (2020) Understanding the relationships between social media influencers and their followers: the moderating role of closeness. J Prod Brand Manag 29(6):767–782. https://doi.org/10.1108/jpbm-03-2019-2292

Tanwar AS, Chaudhry H, Srivastava MK (2022) Trends in influencer marketing: a review and bibliometric analysis. J Interact Advert 22(1):1–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2021.2007822

van Reijmersdal EA, Fransen ML, van Noort G, Opree SJ, Vandeberg L, Reusch S, van Lieshout F, Boerman SC (2016) Effects of disclosing sponsored content in blogs. Am Behav Sci 60(12):1458–1474. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764216660141

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Van-Tien Dao W, Nhat Hanh Le A, Ming-Sung Cheng J, Chao Chen D (2014) Social media advertising value. Int J Advert 33(2):271–294. https://doi.org/10.2501/ija-33-2-271-294

Vannini P, Franzese A (2008) The authenticity of self: conceptualization, personal experience, and practice. Sociol Compass 2(5):1621–1637. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00151.x

Voss KE, Spangenberg ER, Grohmann B (2003) Measuring the hedonic and utilitarian dimensions of consumer attitude. J Mark Res 40(3):310–320. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.40.3.310.19238

Wang SW, Scheinbaum AC (2017) Enhancing brand credibility via celebrity endorsement. J Advert Res 58(1):16–32. https://doi.org/10.2501/jar-2017-042

Wei X, Chen H, Ramirez A, Jeon Y, Sun Y (2022) Influencers as endorsers and followers as consumers: exploring the role of parasocial relationship, congruence, and followers’ identifications on consumer–brand engagement. J Interact Advert 22(3):269–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2022.2116963

Wiley D (2020) Council post: choosing the right influencer (and one major misstep to avoid). Forbes. Retrieved 13 Sep 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2020/12/17/choosing-the-right-influencer-and-one-major-misstep-to-avoid/?sh=7b60bd6131b2

Wu R, Wang G, Yan L (2019) The effects of online store informativeness and entertainment on consumers’ approach behaviors. Asia Pac J Mark Logist 32(6):1327–1342. https://doi.org/10.1108/apjml-03-2019-0182

Yang Y, Ha L (2021) Why people use TikTok (Douyin) and how their purchase intentions are affected by social media influencers in China: a uses and gratifications and parasocial relationship perspective. J Interact Advert 21(3):297–305. https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2021.1995544

Ye G, Hudders L, De Jans S, De Veirman M (2021) The value of influencer marketing for business: a Bibliometric Analysis and managerial implications. J Advert 50(2):160–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2020.1857888

Yoo B, Donthu N (2014) Developing a scale to measure the perceived quality of an internet shopping site (PQISS). In Proceedings of the 2000 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) annual conference, p 471–471. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11885-7_129

Yuan CL, Kim J, Kim SJ (2016) Parasocial relationship effects on customer equity in the Social Media Context. J Bus Res 69(9):3795–3803. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.12.071

Yuan S, Lou C (2020) How social media Influencers Foster relationships with followers: the roles of source credibility and fairness in parasocial relationship and product interest. J Interact Advert 20(2):133–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/15252019.2020.1769514

Zha X, Li J, Yan Y (2014) Advertising value and credibility transfer: attitude towards web advertising and online information acquisition. Behav Inf Technol 34(5):520–532. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2014.978380

Zhou L, Jin F, Wu B, Chen Z, Wang CL (2023) Do fake followers mitigate influencers’ perceived influencing power on social media platforms? The mere number effect and boundary conditions. J Bus Res 158:113589. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113589

Zhou S, Blazquez M, McCormick H, Barnes L (2021) How social media influencers’ narrative strategies benefit cultivating influencer marketing: tackling issues of cultural barriers, commercialised content, and sponsorship disclosure. J Bus Res 134:122–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.05.011

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

School of Economics and Management, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China

Xiaoyong Zheng

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

LX conceptualized the study and wrote the initial draft. ZX supervised the project, review, and editing of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiaoyong Zheng .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

The Ethics Committee of Zhejiang Normal University’s College of Economics and Management approved the study, and we followed the Declaration of Helsinki to do this research. The approval for the questionnaire survey conventionally does not include an approval number.

Informed consent

Prior to participant recruitment, potential participants were provided with a detailed information sheet outlining the study’s purpose, procedures, risks, benefits, confidentiality measures, and their rights as participants. Informed consent was obtained through a signed consent form, and verbal clarification was provided for any queries raised by participants. Informed consent was obtained from all participants before any data collection procedures commenced. Participants were given ample time to review the information provided, ask questions, and voluntarily agree to participate. The informed consent process was administered by Xiao Liu. Participants’ understanding of the study and their willingness to participate were confirmed before data collection began.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Liu, X., Zheng, X. The persuasive power of social media influencers in brand credibility and purchase intention. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 15 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02512-1

Download citation

Received : 28 December 2022

Accepted : 07 December 2023

Published : 02 January 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02512-1

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Quick links

  • Explore articles by subject
  • Guide to authors
  • Editorial policies

persuasive article 2021

Read our research on: Immigration & Migration | Podcasts | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

Americans’ social media use, youtube and facebook are by far the most used online platforms among u.s. adults; tiktok’s user base has grown since 2021.

To better understand Americans’ social media use, Pew Research Center surveyed 5,733 U.S. adults from May 19 to Sept. 5, 2023. Ipsos conducted this National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) for the Center using address-based sampling and a multimode protocol that included both web and mail. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race and ethnicity, education and other categories.

Polls from 2000 to 2021 were conducted via phone. For more on this mode shift, read our Q&A .

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and  its methodology ­­­.

A note on terminology: Our May-September 2023 survey was already in the field when Twitter changed its name to “X.” The terms  Twitter  and  X  are both used in this report to refer to the same platform.

Social media platforms faced a range of controversies in recent years, including concerns over misinformation and data privacy . Even so, U.S. adults use a wide range of sites and apps, especially YouTube and Facebook. And TikTok – which some Congress members previously called to ban – saw growth in its user base.

These findings come from a Pew Research Center survey of 5,733 U.S. adults conducted May 19-Sept. 5, 2023.

Which social media sites do Americans use most?

A horizontal bar chart showing that most U.S. adults use YouTube and Facebook; about half use Instagram.

YouTube by and large is the most widely used online platform measured in our survey. Roughly eight-in-ten U.S. adults (83%) report ever using the video-based platform.

While a somewhat lower share reports using it, Facebook is also a dominant player in the online landscape. Most Americans (68%) report using the social media platform.

Additionally, roughly half of U.S. adults (47%) say they use Instagram .

The other sites and apps asked about are not as widely used , but a fair portion of Americans still use them:

  • 27% to 35% of U.S. adults use Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Snapchat.
  • About one-in-five say they use Twitter (recently renamed “X”) and Reddit.  

This year is the first time we asked about BeReal, a photo-based platform launched in 2020. Just 3% of U.S. adults report using it.

Recent Center findings show that YouTube also dominates the social media landscape among U.S. teens .

TikTok sees growth since 2021

One platform – TikTok – stands out for growth of its user base. A third of U.S. adults (33%) say they use the video-based platform, up 12 percentage points from 2021 (21%).

A line chart showing that a third of U.S. adults say they use TikTok, up from 21% in 2021.

The other sites asked about had more modest or no growth over the past couple of years. For instance, while YouTube and Facebook dominate the social media landscape, the shares of adults who use these platforms has remained stable since 2021.

The Center has been tracking use of online platforms for many years. Recently, we shifted from gathering responses via telephone to the web and mail. Mode changes can affect study results in a number of ways, therefore we have to take a cautious approach when examining how things have – or have not – changed since our last study on these topics in 2021. For more details on this shift, please read our Q&A .

Stark age differences in who uses each app or site

Adults under 30 are far more likely than their older counterparts to use many of the online platforms. These findings are consistent with previous Center data .

A dot plot showing that the youngest U.S. adults are far more likely to use Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok; age differences are less pronounced for Facebook.

Age gaps are especially large for Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok – platforms that are used by majorities of adults under 30. For example:

  • 78% of 18- to 29-year-olds say they use Instagram, far higher than the share among those 65 and older (15%).
  • 65% of U.S. adults under 30 report using Snapchat, compared with just 4% of the oldest age cohort.
  • 62% of 18- to 29-year-olds say they use TikTok, much higher than the share among adults ages 65 years and older (10%).
  • Americans ages 30 to 49 and 50 to 64 fall somewhere in between for all three platforms.

YouTube and Facebook are the only two platforms that majorities of all age groups use. That said, there is still a large age gap between the youngest and oldest adults when it comes to use of YouTube. The age gap for Facebook, though, is much smaller.

Americans ages 30 to 49 stand out for using three of the platforms – LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Facebook – at higher rates. For instance, 40% of this age group uses LinkedIn, higher than the roughly three-in-ten among those ages 18 to 29 and 50 to 64. And just 12% of those 65 and older say the same. 

Overall, a large majority of the youngest adults use multiple sites and apps. About three-quarters of adults under 30 (74%) use at least five of the platforms asked about. This is far higher than the shares of those ages 30 to 49 (53%), 50 to 64 (30%), and ages 65 and older (8%) who say the same.  

Refer to our social media fact sheet for more detailed data by age for each site and app.

Other demographic differences in use of online platforms

A number of demographic differences emerge in who uses each platform. Some of these include the following:

  • Race and ethnicity: Roughly six-in-ten Hispanic (58%) and Asian (57%) adults report using Instagram, somewhat higher than the shares among Black (46%) and White (43%) adults. 1
  • Gender: Women are more likely than their male counterparts to say they use the platform.
  • Education: Those with some college education and those with a college degree report using it at somewhat higher rates than those who have a high school degree or less education.
  • Race and ethnicity: Hispanic adults are particularly likely to use TikTok, with 49% saying they use it, higher than Black adults (39%). Even smaller shares of Asian (29%) and White (28%) adults say the same.
  • Gender: Women use the platform at higher rates than men (40% vs. 25%).
  • Education: Americans with higher levels of formal education are especially likely to use LinkedIn. For instance, 53% of Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree report using the platform, far higher than among those who have some college education (28%) and those who have a high school degree or less education (10%). This is the largest educational difference measured across any of the platforms asked about.

Twitter (renamed “X”)

  • Household income: Adults with higher household incomes use Twitter at somewhat higher rates. For instance, 29% of U.S. adults who have an annual household income of at least $100,000 say they use the platform. This compares with one-in-five among those with annual household incomes of $70,000 to $99,999, and around one-in-five among those with annual incomes of less than $30,000 and those between $30,000 and $69,999.
  • Gender: Women are far more likely to use Pinterest than men (50% vs. 19%).
  • Race and ethnicity: 54% of Hispanic adults and 51% of Asian adults report using WhatsApp. This compares with 31% of Black adults and even smaller shares of those who are White (20%).

A heat map showing how use of online platforms – such as Facebook, Instagram or TikTok – differs among some U.S. demographic groups.

  • Estimates for Asian adults are representative of English speakers only. ↩

Sign up for our Internet, Science and Tech newsletter

New findings, delivered monthly

Report Materials

Table of contents, q&a: how – and why – we’re changing the way we study tech adoption, americans’ use of mobile technology and home broadband, social media fact sheet, internet/broadband fact sheet, mobile fact sheet, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Exclusive: Threats to US federal judges double since 2021, driven by politics

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump gather at a "Stop the Steal" protest after the 2020 U.S. presidential election was called by the media for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, in Phoenix

Ned Parker reported from New York. Editing by Jason Szep

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab

U.S. President Biden speaks about reported death of Alexei Navalny during remarks from the White House in Washington

What a second Trump presidency could mean for US energy policy

Former U.S. President Donald Trump would seek to undo much of the Biden administration’s work to fight climate change if he returns to office after November's election, and launch new efforts to expand fossil fuel production, according to Republican policy experts and Trump’s campaign website.

Russian opposition leader Navalny speaks with journalists outside a detention centre in Moscow

What Is the Maximum Possible Social Security Benefit in 2024?

Social Security benefits increased by 3.2% in 2024. Here's what that means for benefit maximums.

The Max Social Security Benefit in 2024

persuasive article 2021

Getty Images

Full retirement age, which varies depending on when you were born, refers to when you can claim your full Social Security benefits.

Key Takeaways

  • To receive the highest Social Security payout, you must retire at 70 and have at least 35 working years, earning at least the maximum income amount for the year.
  • Claiming benefits early means less money. If you retire at 62, your benefits will be 30% lower.
  • Your benefits are determined by your average income earned over 35 years, cost-of-living adjustments and other factors.
  • You can maximize your benefits by increasing your income, filling in any earning gaps and delaying retirement.

Social Security benefits increased by 3.2% this year. So, how does that affect the maximum benefit limit?

The estimated average Social Security benefit for retired workers in 2024 is $1,907 per month. The maximum benefit amount, however, is more than double that.

Here's a look at the most you can receive from Social Security in 2024 and how the benefit calculation process works.

The maximum Social Security benefit you can receive in 2024 ranges from $2,710 to $4,873 per month, depending on the age you retire.

"Maximum benefits can be received by delaying the start of benefits until age 70 since benefits increase by about 8% for each year you delay beyond full retirement age. It's also essential to have maximum taxable earnings for at least 35 years," said Michelle Delker, certified public accountant and founder of The William Stanley CFO Group, in an email.

Each year, the Social Security Administration limits the amount of earnings that are subject to Social Security taxes. That limit is the maximum amount of income that counts toward computing your Social Security benefit for the year.

In 2024, for example, the limit is $168,600. To receive any of the maximum benefit amounts above, you must have worked for at least 35 years, during which you made at least the maximum income amount for the year.

What Is Full Retirement Age?

Full retirement age refers to when you can claim your full Social Security benefits. It varies depending on when you were born. See the table below for more information on full retirement age.

You don't have to wait until full retirement age to claim your benefits because they're available once you turn 62. The SSA will reduce your benefits, however, if you take them early. For example, if you were born after 1960 and take your benefits when you're 62, they'll be reduced by 30%.

What Factors Determine Your Social Security Benefits?

"The Social Security Administration calculates the benefit amount for each recipient annually, taking into account their average income over 35 years, cost-of-living adjustments and other factors," said Linda Chavez, founder and CEO of Seniors Life Insurance Finder, in an email.

Here's a closer look at the four main factors that determine your benefit amount each year:

  • Average Indexed Monthly Earnings (AIME): The SSA indexes your highest earnings over a maximum of 35 years to reflect changes in general wage levels during your employment years. The average is then rounded down to the nearest dollar to get your AIME.
  • Primary Insurance Amounts (PIA): The PIA is the benefit amount a person gets if they elect to receive benefits at full retirement age. It's the sum of three separate percentages of portions of the AIME, based on changes in the national average wage index.
  • Retirement age: The age at which you retire will determine if your benefit amount is higher than, lower than or equal to the PIA.
  • Other benefits: Your benefit amount will be higher if you qualify for other Social Security benefits, like those paid to disabled workers .

How to Boost Your Social Security Benefit

Even if you don't qualify for the maximum benefit, the closer you are to hitting the maximum income limit each year, the higher your benefit amount. If you have any zero years in your 35-year average, try to replace them.

"Be sure that you have 35 full years of contributions to the system," said David Freitag, a financial planning consultant with MassMutual Financial Group, in an email. "The 35-year average will include any zero years. By removing them, you can increase the size of your check at retirement time. Even a small contribution to the 35-year average will help increase the benefit."

It can also pay to wait until you're 70 to begin taking your benefits, but that will depend on your situation.

"Generally, this depends on longevity. If you have short longevity, then taking benefits early will maximize your retirement benefit. If you have extended longevity, then deferring benefits and earning those 8% per year delayed retirement credits is the way to go," Freitag said.

You can get an idea of your expected longevity by using the simple life expectancy calculator at SSA.gov or a more detailed calculator like the one found at Living to 100 .

Social Security: Just 1 Piece of the Puzzle

While some Americans may qualify for the maximum Social Security benefit amount, that's not the norm. Most people will need to plan for a benefit closer to the average, along with other supplementary retirement income sources.

Delker said, "To maximize retirement income, consider diverse income streams. Besides Social Security, retirement funds like 401(k)s and IRAs, investments in stocks, bonds or real estate, and potentially part-time work can be beneficial ."

10 Best Places to Retire on Social Security Alone

Emily Brandon May 11, 2017

Cape Coral, Florida; Richmond, Virginia; Colorado Springs, Colorado

Tags: retirement , money , personal finance , Social Security

The Best Financial Tools for You

Credit Cards

persuasive article 2021

Find the Best Loan for You

Best Bank Accounts of 2024

persuasive article 2021

Comparative assessments and other editorial opinions are those of U.S. News and have not been previously reviewed, approved or endorsed by any other entities, such as banks, credit card issuers or travel companies. The content on this page is accurate as of the posting date; however, some of our partner offers may have expired.

persuasive article 2021

Subscribe to our daily newsletter to get investing advice, rankings and stock market news.

See a newsletter example .

You May Also Like

7 tips from fire retirees.

Rachel Hartman Feb. 16, 2024

persuasive article 2021

Older Citizens are More Likely to Vote

Kate Stalter Feb. 15, 2024

persuasive article 2021

The Cheapest Places to Retire Abroad

Rachel Hartman Feb. 13, 2024

persuasive article 2021

Most Enjoyable Jobs for Older Workers

Maryalene LaPonsie Feb. 12, 2024

persuasive article 2021

How to Prep for Retirement in 2024

Rachel Hartman Feb. 9, 2024

persuasive article 2021

How Much a 401(k) Early Withdrawal Costs

Rachel Hartman Feb. 7, 2024

persuasive article 2021

What to Prep Now for 2025 Retirement

Kate Stalter Feb. 6, 2024

persuasive article 2021

Invest for Retirement With Little Money

Brian O'Connell Feb. 6, 2024

persuasive article 2021

10 Common Scams That Target Seniors

Rachel Hartman Feb. 2, 2024

persuasive article 2021

Save for Retirement in a Roth IRA

Emily Brandon and Rachel Hartman Jan. 31, 2024

persuasive article 2021

Turn $1 Million Into Passive Income

Rachel Hartman Jan. 30, 2024

persuasive article 2021

New RMD Rules for 2024

Rachel Hartman Jan. 26, 2024

persuasive article 2021

How to Open a Roth IRA

Brian O'Connell Jan. 25, 2024

persuasive article 2021

Reduce Your Tax Bill With a Roth IRA

Kate Stalter Jan. 24, 2024

persuasive article 2021

What Will a $750K Annuity Pay Annually?

persuasive article 2021

How to Claim the Saver's Credit

Emily Brandon and Rachel Hartman Jan. 23, 2024

persuasive article 2021

Why I Don't Regret Retiring by FIRE

Rachel Hartman Jan. 19, 2024

persuasive article 2021

Is a 60/40 Portfolio Appropriate?

Brian O'Connell Jan. 18, 2024

persuasive article 2021

How Roth IRA Taxes Work

Rachel Hartman Jan. 17, 2024

persuasive article 2021

After-Tax 401(k) Contributions

Rachel Hartman Jan. 16, 2024

persuasive article 2021

  • Election 2024
  • Entertainment
  • Newsletters
  • Photography
  • Press Releases
  • Israel-Hamas War
  • Russia-Ukraine War
  • Latin America
  • Middle East
  • Asia Pacific
  • AP Top 25 College Football Poll
  • Movie reviews
  • Book reviews
  • Financial Markets
  • Business Highlights
  • Financial wellness
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Social Media

Partial rerun of Germany’s 2021 election in Berlin costs a governing party 1 seat

Poll workers empty the ballot boxes at polling station 317 in the Carl von Ossietzky-Gymnasium during the vote count in Berlin, Sunday Feb. 11, 2024. A partial rerun of Germany's 2021 election in Berlin brought a decline in support for the governing parties and cost one of them a seat in parliament, but led to no significant overall change, official results showed Monday. (Soeren Stache/dpa via AP)

Poll workers empty the ballot boxes at polling station 317 in the Carl von Ossietzky-Gymnasium during the vote count in Berlin, Sunday Feb. 11, 2024. A partial rerun of Germany’s 2021 election in Berlin brought a decline in support for the governing parties and cost one of them a seat in parliament, but led to no significant overall change, official results showed Monday. (Soeren Stache/dpa via AP)

Poll workers sort the ballot papers during the vote count at Carl von Ossietzky-Gymnasium in polling station 317 in Berlin, Sunday Feb. 11, 2024. A partial rerun of Germany’s 2021 election in Berlin brought a decline in support for the governing parties and cost one of them a seat in parliament, but led to no significant overall change, official results showed Monday. (Soeren Stache/dpa via AP)

  • Copy Link copied

BERLIN (AP) — A partial rerun of Germany’s 2021 election in Berlin brought a decline in support for the governing parties and cost one of them a seat in parliament, but led to no significant overall change, official results showed Monday.

The repeat election was held Sunday in 455 of 2,256 precincts in the capital, which account for only 0.9% of the national electorate. Germany’s highest court in December ruled on where the vote must be rerun following severe glitches at many polling stations in the city in September 2021.

Polls now show a very different picture from 2 1/2 years ago but it was always clear that the rerun was much too limited to endanger the majority held by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unpopular three-party government .

Sunday’s outcome showed noticeable declines in support in Berlin for Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats and for the smallest party in the coalition, the pro-business Free Democrats , while support for the third governing party, the environmentalist Greens, was down only slightly.

French President Emmanuel Macron, right, welcomes his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy Friday, Feb. 16, 2024 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. French President Emmanuel Macron will sign a bilateral security agreement with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy to provide "long-term support" to the war-ravaged country which has been battling Russia's full-scale invasion for nearly two years. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

The center-right opposition Christian Democrats, who currently lead nationwide polls, gained support, as did the far-right Alternative for Germany, whose strength has doubled in national surveys since 2021.

Germany’s complex electoral system meant that low turnout in Sunday’s voting, only 69.5%, cost Berlin four seats. Three of those were redistributed to other states, though they were kept by the same parties that previously held them. The fourth, held by the Free Democrats, was eliminated — meaning that parliament’s lower house, or Bundestag, shrinks by a single seat to 735 seats.

Berlin held four polls on Sept. 26, 2021: the German national election, a state election, a vote for the city’s 12 district assemblies and a local referendum. The Berlin Marathon, held the same day, added to logistical difficulties.

Some polling stations ran out of ballot papers and others received papers for the wrong district. Another issue was that exit polls were made public even though some voters waiting in line at the close of the polling stations at 6 p.m. were allowed to cast their ballots.

The state election held that day was completely rerun a year ago and resulted in a change of the local government, with conservative Kai Wegner replacing center-left Social Democrat Franziska Giffey as mayor. Berlin is one of three German cities that is also a state in its own right.

Germany’s next national parliamentary election is due in the fall of 2025.

persuasive article 2021

  • Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Ross Douthat

The Case Against Abortion

persuasive article 2021

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

A striking thing about the American abortion debate is how little abortion itself is actually debated. The sensitivity and intimacy of the issue, the mixed feelings of so many Americans, mean that most politicians and even many pundits really don’t like to talk about it.

The mental habits of polarization, the assumption that the other side is always acting with hidden motives or in bad faith, mean that accusations of hypocrisy or simple evil are more commonplace than direct engagement with the pro-choice or pro-life argument.

And the Supreme Court’s outsize role in abortion policy means that the most politically important arguments are carried on by lawyers arguing constitutional theory, at one remove from the real heart of the debate.

But with the court set this week to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, it seems worth letting the lawyers handle the meta-arguments and writing about the thing itself. So this essay will offer no political or constitutional analysis. It will simply try to state the pro-life case.

At the core of our legal system, you will find a promise that human beings should be protected from lethal violence. That promise is made in different ways by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence; it’s there in English common law, the Ten Commandments and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We dispute how the promise should be enforced, what penalties should be involved if it is broken and what crimes might deprive someone of the right to life. But the existence of the basic right, and a fundamental duty not to kill, is pretty close to bedrock.

There is no way to seriously deny that abortion is a form of killing. At a less advanced stage of scientific understanding, it was possible to believe that the embryo or fetus was somehow inert or vegetative until so-called quickening, months into pregnancy. But we now know the embryo is not merely a cell with potential, like a sperm or ovum, or a constituent part of human tissue, like a skin cell. Rather, a distinct human organism comes into existence at conception, and every stage of your biological life, from infancy and childhood to middle age and beyond, is part of a single continuous process that began when you were just a zygote.

We know from embryology, in other words, not Scripture or philosophy, that abortion kills a unique member of the species Homo sapiens, an act that in almost every other context is forbidden by the law.

This means that the affirmative case for abortion rights is inherently exceptionalist, demanding a suspension of a principle that prevails in practically every other case. This does not automatically tell against it; exceptions as well as rules are part of law. But it means that there is a burden of proof on the pro-choice side to explain why in this case taking another human life is acceptable, indeed a protected right itself.

One way to clear this threshold would be to identify some quality that makes the unborn different in kind from other forms of human life — adult, infant, geriatric. You need an argument that acknowledges that the embryo is a distinct human organism but draws a credible distinction between human organisms and human persons , between the unborn lives you’ve excluded from the law’s protection and the rest of the human race.

In this kind of pro-choice argument and theory, personhood is often associated with some property that’s acquired well after conception: cognition, reason, self-awareness, the capacity to survive outside the womb. And a version of this idea, that human life is there in utero but human personhood develops later, fits intuitively with how many people react to a photo of an extremely early embryo ( It doesn’t look human, does it? ) — though less so to a second-trimester fetus, where the physical resemblance to a newborn is more palpable.

But the problem with this position is that it’s hard to identify exactly what property is supposed to do the work of excluding the unborn from the ranks of humans whom it is wrong to kill. If full personhood is somehow rooted in reasoning capacity or self-consciousness, then all manner of adult human beings lack it or lose it at some point or another in their lives. If the capacity for survival and self-direction is essential, then every infant would lack personhood — to say nothing of the premature babies who are unviable without extreme medical interventions but regarded, rightly, as no less human for all that.

At its most rigorous, the organism-but-not-person argument seeks to identify some stage of neurological development that supposedly marks personhood’s arrival — a transition equivalent in reverse to brain death at the end of life. But even setting aside the practical difficulties involved in identifying this point, we draw a legal line at brain death because it’s understood to be irreversible, the moment at which the human organism’s healthy function can never be restored. This is obviously not the case for an embryo on the cusp of higher brain functioning — and if you knew that a brain-dead but otherwise physically healthy person would spontaneously regain consciousness in two weeks, everyone would understand that the caregivers had an obligation to let those processes play out.

Or almost everyone, I should say. There are true rigorists who follow the logic of fetal nonpersonhood toward repugnant conclusions — for instance, that we ought to permit the euthanizing of severely disabled newborns, as the philosopher Peter Singer has argued. This is why abortion opponents have warned of a slippery slope from abortion to infanticide and involuntary euthanasia; as pure logic, the position that unborn human beings aren’t human persons can really tend that way.

But to their credit, only a small minority of abortion-rights supporters are willing to be so ruthlessly consistent. Instead, most people on the pro-choice side are content to leave their rules of personhood a little hazy, and combine them with the second potent argument for abortion rights: namely, that regardless of the precise moral status of unborn human organisms, they cannot enjoy a legal right to life because that would strip away too many rights from women.

A world without legal abortion, in this view, effectively consigns women to second-class citizenship — their ambitions limited, their privacy compromised, their bodies conscripted, their claims to full equality a lie. These kind of arguments often imply that birth is the most relevant milestone for defining legal personhood — not because of anything that happens to the child but because it’s the moment when its life ceases to impinge so dramatically on its mother.

There is a powerful case for some kind of feminism embedded in these claims. The question is whether that case requires abortion itself.

Certain goods that should be common to men and women cannot be achieved, it’s true, if the law simply declares the sexes equal without giving weight to the disproportionate burdens that pregnancy imposes on women. Justice requires redistributing those burdens, through means both traditional and modern — holding men legally and financially responsible for all the children that they father and providing stronger financial and social support for motherhood at every stage.

But does this kind of justice for women require legal indifference to the claims of the unborn? Is it really necessary to found equality for one group of human beings on legal violence toward another, entirely voiceless group?

We have a certain amount of practical evidence that suggests the answer is no. Consider, for instance, that between the early 1980s and the later 2010s the abortion rate in the United States fell by more than half . The reasons for this decline are disputed, but it seems reasonable to assume that it reflects a mix of cultural change, increased contraception use and the effects of anti-abortion legal strategies, which have made abortion somewhat less available in many states, as pro-choice advocates often lament.

If there were an integral and unavoidable relationship between abortion and female equality, you would expect these declines — fewer abortions, diminished abortion access — to track with a general female retreat from education and the workplace. But no such thing has happened: Whether measured by educational attainment, managerial and professional positions, breadwinner status or even political office holding, the status of women has risen in the same America where the pro-life movement has (modestly) gained ground.

Of course, it’s always possible that female advancement would have been even more rapid, the equality of the sexes more fully and perfectly established, if the pro-life movement did not exist. Certainly in the individual female life trajectory, having an abortion rather than a baby can offer economic and educational advantages.

On a collective level, though, it’s also possible that the default to abortion as the solution to an unplanned pregnancy actually discourages other adaptations that would make American life friendlier to women. As Erika Bachiochi wrote recently in National Review , if our society assumes that “abortion is what enables women to participate in the workplace,” then corporations may prefer the abortion default to more substantial accommodations like flexible work schedules and better pay for part-time jobs — relying on the logic of abortion rights, in other words, as a reason not to adapt to the realities of childbearing and motherhood.

At the very least, I think an honest look at the patterns of the past four decades reveals a multitude of different ways to offer women greater opportunities, a multitude of paths to equality and dignity — a multitude of ways to be a feminist, in other words, that do not require yoking its idealistic vision to hundreds of thousands of acts of violence every year.

It’s also true, though, that nothing in all that multitude of policies will lift the irreducible burden of childbearing, the biological realities that simply cannot be redistributed to fathers, governments or adoptive parents. And here, too, a portion of the pro-choice argument is correct: The unique nature of pregnancy means that there has to be some limit on what state or society asks of women and some zone of privacy where the legal system fears to tread.

This is one reason the wisest anti-abortion legislation — and yes, pro-life legislation is not always wise — criminalizes the provision of abortion by third parties, rather than prosecuting the women who seek one. It’s why anti-abortion laws are rightly deemed invasive and abusive when they lead to the investigation of suspicious-seeming miscarriages. It’s why the general principle of legal protection for human life in utero may or must understandably give way in extreme cases, extreme burdens: the conception by rape, the life-threatening pregnancy.

At the same time, though, the pro-choice stress on the burden of the ordinary pregnancy can become detached from the way that actual human beings experience the world. In a famous thought experiment, the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson once analogized an unplanned pregnancy to waking up with a famous violinist hooked up to your body, who will die if he’s disconnected before nine months have passed. It’s a vivid science-fiction image but one that only distantly resembles the actual thing that it describes — a new life that usually exists because of a freely chosen sexual encounter, a reproductive experience that if material circumstances were changed might be desired and celebrated, a “disconnection” of the new life that cannot happen without lethal violence and a victim who is not some adult stranger but the woman’s child.

One can accept pro-choice logic, then, insofar as it demands a sphere of female privacy and warns constantly against the potential for abuse, without following that logic all the way to a general right to abort an unborn human life. Indeed, this is how most people approach similar arguments in other contexts. In the name of privacy and civil liberties we impose limits on how the justice system polices and imprisons, and we may celebrate activists who try to curb that system’s manifest abuses. But we don’t (with, yes, some anarchist exceptions) believe that we should remove all legal protections for people’s property or lives.

That removal of protection would be unjust no matter what its consequences, but in reality we know that those consequences would include more crime, more violence and more death. And the anti-abortion side can give the same answer when it’s asked why we can’t be content with doing all the other things that may reduce abortion rates and leaving legal protection out of it: Because while legal restrictions aren’t sufficient to end abortion, there really are a lot of unborn human lives they might protect.

Consider that when the State of Texas put into effect this year a ban on most abortions after about six weeks, the state’s abortions immediately fell by half. I think the Texas law, which tries to evade the requirements of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey by using private lawsuits for enforcement, is vulnerable to obvious critiques and liable to be abused. It’s not a model I would ever cite for pro-life legislation.

But that immediate effect, that sharp drop in abortions, is why the pro-life movement makes legal protection its paramount goal.

According to researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, who surveyed the facilities that provide about 93 percent of all abortions in the state, there were 2,149 fewer legal abortions in Texas in the month the law went into effect than in the same month in 2020.

About half that number may end up still taking place, some estimates suggest, many of them in other states. But that still means that in a matter of months, more than a thousand human beings will exist as legal persons, rights-bearing Texans — despite still being helpless, unreasoning and utterly dependent — who would not have existed had this law not given them protection.

But, in fact, they exist already. They existed, at our mercy, all along.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram .

Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author of several books, most recently, “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.” @ DouthatNYT • Facebook

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

  • Q&A(よくある質問)
  • 防衛費増額・安保3文書
  • with Planet
  • デジタル・テクノロジー
  • マンガ・アニメ・ゲーム
  • &Travel

伯父に懲役30年の有罪判決 兵庫・稲美、小学生兄弟死亡の放火殺人

  • Facebookでシェアする
  • Xでシェアする list
  • はてなブックマークでシェアする

写真・図版

 2021年、 兵庫県 稲美町 の住宅に放火して小学生の兄弟を殺害したとして、 現住建造物等放火 と殺人の罪に問われた伯父の無職松尾留与(とめよ)被告(53)に対する 裁判員裁判 の判決が15日、 神戸地裁 姫路支部であり、 佐藤洋 幸裁判長は被告に懲役30年(求刑死刑)を言い渡した。

 起訴状などによると、松尾被告は21年11月19日深夜、自室の押し入れにガソリンをまいて火をつけ、同居していたおいの松尾侑城(ゆうき)さん(当時12)と真輝(まさき)さん(同7)を殺害したとされた。

 松尾被告は公判で起訴内容を認め、亡くなった2児の両親にあたる妹夫妻との関係に不満を募らせ、「(妹夫妻が)かわいがっている子どもたちを殺害して、妹夫妻に自分の苦しみを分からせたかった」と述べた。また、自ら「死刑になるくらい罪深い事件」と話す一方、妹夫妻に謝罪はしなかった。

 検察側は「動機は身勝手で結果は重大。反省がなく更生は困難」として死刑を求刑。弁護側は、被告が2児への謝罪の言葉を述べるなど、更生の可能性があるとして「死刑とする事案ではない」と主張していた。 (宮沢崇志、杉山あかり)

有料会員になると会員限定の 有料記事もお読みいただけます。

※無料期間中に解約した場合、料金はかかりません

「なんでや。やめんか」うめく母を絞殺 介護続けた息子、陥った孤独

写真・図版

コンビニコーヒー「量増し」の不正行為 中学校長の懲戒免職は妥当か

写真・図版

小学生兄弟死亡の放火殺人事件、伯父が起訴内容認める 兵庫・稲美町

写真・図版

パチンコ代は盗みで稼ぐ 服役3回、でも「依存症じゃない」の深刻度

写真・図版

給食「ふりかけ持参OK」に論争 生徒の要望で開始、議員からは異論

写真・図版

実家は年収300万円台 東大生は訴える「一般入試を減らさないで」

写真・図版

注目ニュースが1分でわかる

  • ローマ字つづり方、見直しへ
  • 「GDP」世界4位に転落
  • 自民党、裏金調査の結果公表

ニュースの要点[object Object]

  • 全患者の初診料引き上げへ
  • 4歳次女に薬飲ませ殺害容疑
  • ベア要求が歴史的な高水準

ニュースの要点[object Object]

  • 自民の裏金、使い道なお不明
  • 核のごみ、文献調査結果公表
  • ダイハツ、奥平社長を更迭

ニュースの要点[object Object]

  • 腕時計シェア会社が突然解散
  • 臓器移植用ブタ、日本初誕生
  • バスケ女子4点差で五輪切符

ニュースの要点[object Object]

  • 支援金 74歳以下9割負担
  • 特殊詐欺 直近15年で最多
  • クマを指定管理鳥獣に指定へ

ニュースの要点[object Object]

プーチン氏批判の「最後のカリスマ」 ナワリヌイ氏の死、世界に衝撃

モスクワで2019年、集会に参加するロシアの反政権派指導者アレクセイ・ナワリヌイ氏(左)と妻のユリア氏=ロイター

  • ナワリヌイ氏が獄中で死亡、ロシア反政権派リーダー 「死因調査中」
  • 「殺されても、あきらめないで」 ナワリヌイ氏、受賞映画で「遺言」

避難所に設置された救護室で、被災者の情報を共有する國井泰人さん(右)と黒田愛子さん(左)=石川県内

耳に残る「助けて」の声、眠れない被災者も 長引く避難で増える相談

安倍派5人衆。(写真左上から時計回りに)松野博一氏、西村康稔氏、高木毅氏、萩生田光一氏、世耕弘成氏

安倍派幹部「5人衆は名ばかりだ」 板挟みの議員が言い返したのは…

日経平均株価とダウ工業株平均

日経平均、NYダウの数値を8年ぶり逆転 専門家の予想上回る急騰

判決後、記者会見を開いた吉田寮の寮生ら=2月16日、京都市中京区、北村有樹子撮影

京大吉田寮の「自治の価値」認定 寮生「話し合いで合意形成望む」

生まれて間もないころの細谷美輝ちゃん=2019年春撮影、関係者提供

手遊び歌大好きだった美輝ちゃん 父の弁護士「かわいがっていた」

オンラインで報道陣の取材に応じたスタンフォード大野球部のデービッド・エスカー監督

佐々木麟太郎、スタンフォード大進学の経緯 監督「成績も十分見た」

桜島で爆発的噴火 噴煙5000メートル 2020年8月以来

  • 23:31 祖母に懲役9年判決 大阪・富田林2歳女児死亡 大阪地裁堺支部

2023年12月16日、ソウルで開かれたYOASOBIのコンサート(C)LIVET,Kato Shumpei

IMAGES

  1. Top Persuasive Speech Topics for 2021 on Ethics

    persuasive article 2021

  2. 50 Free Persuasive Essay Examples (+BEST Topics) ᐅ TemplateLab

    persuasive article 2021

  3. 💋 Persuasive editorial article. 25+ Persuasive Essay Examples. 2022-10-11

    persuasive article 2021

  4. 💋 What is a persuasive article. What Is a Persuasive Essay?. 2022-10-29

    persuasive article 2021

  5. 50 Free Persuasive Essay Examples (+BEST Topics) ᐅ TemplateLab

    persuasive article 2021

  6. how to write a persuasive feature article

    persuasive article 2021

COMMENTS

  1. Vaccine Persuasion

    1. Seeing that millions of other Americans have been safely vaccinated. Consider these quotes from Kaiser's interviews: "It was clearly safe. No one was dying." — a 32-year-old white Republican man...

  2. Persuading the Unpersuadable

    Adam Grant From the Magazine (March-April 2021) Eleni Kalorkoti Save Summary. We live in an age of polarization. Many of us may be asking ourselves how, when people disagree with or discount...

  3. Climate Change: What Must Be Done, Now

    Lily G. Haussamen Las Cruces, N.M. To the Editor: It is time to get serious. The conclusions of the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on climate change are devastating, and,...

  4. Opinion

    Opinion Columnists Opinion Audio Maureen Dowd Mr. President, Ditch the Stealth About Health Biden must confront the age-old question. By Maureen Dowd Pete Marovich for The New York Times Guest...

  5. The art of rhetoric: persuasive strategies in Biden's ...

    This research investigated the main linguistic strategies used in President Biden's inauguration speech presented in 2021.

  6. The top 10 most read articles in 2021

    The top 10 most read articles in 2021 Provocative girls, silent employees, the bittersweet aftertaste of oil, and understanding people who spend millions on digital assets. Here are the articles our readers were most deeply engaged with this year.

  7. The Art of Persuasion: Our Favorite Reads

    Persuasion The Art of Persuasion: Our Favorite Reads by Paige Cohen November 25, 2021 HBR Staff/Getty Images/Glasshouse Images Post Post Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend...

  8. Deep canvassing: Persuasion, ethics, democracy and activist public

    Deep canvassing emphasises non-judgemental listening to voters' stories and emotions, in order to avoid any threat that voters may feel from 'forms of persuasion employed by traditional political campaigns'. In current conditions, some see it as an antidote to the increased persuasive power of misinformation campaigns.

  9. Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions

    Here we use two survey experiments to study how persuasive messaging affects COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions. In the first experiment, we test a large number of treatment messages. One subgroup of messages draws on the idea that mass vaccination is a collective action problem and highlighting the prosocial benefit of vaccination or the ...

  10. Controlling the spread of misinformation

    Abrams, Z. (2021, March 1). Controlling the spread of misinformation. ... Starbird and her colleagues tracked how one Medium article, ... Insights on persuasion and belief. 1960s-1980s Psychological research enhanced our understanding of belief—for example, how people evaluate a source's credibility—and what types of messages tend to be ...

  11. Full article: Persuasion amidst a pandemic: Insights from the

    14,886 Views 9 CrossRef citations to date 0 Altmetric Listen Articles Persuasion amidst a pandemic: Insights from the Elaboration Likelihood Model Mark W. Susmann , Mengran Xu , Jason K. Clark , Laura E. Wallace , Kevin L. Blankenship , Aviva Z. Philipp-Muller , show all

  12. Persuasion News, Research and Analysis

    May 1, 2023 Respectful persuasion is a relay race, not a solo sprint - 3 keys to putting it in practice Colin Marshall, University of Washington Immanuel Kant's ideas about respect are still...

  13. Full article: Narratives' Impacts on Attitudes:Do Signaling of

    Building upon past theorizing in narrative persuasion, this present work investigates whether signaling of persuasive intent (signaling vs. no signaling) and the fictional presentation of texts (fact vs. fiction) decrease counterarguing and, in turn, increase persuasion.

  14. Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake ...

    2021 Dec 3;39(49):7158-7165. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.10.039. Epub 2021 Oct 22. ... We find that persuasive messaging that invokes prosocial vaccination and social image concerns is effective at increasing intended uptake and also the willingness to persuade others and judgments of non-vaccinators. We replicate this result on a nationally ...

  15. An inclusive, real-world investigation of persuasion in language and

    Introduction. Understanding persuasion—how people can fundamentally alter the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others—is a cornerstone of social psychology.Historically, social influence has been outstandingly difficult to study in the real-world, requiring researchers to piece together society-level puzzles either in the abstract [] or through carefully-crafted field studies [].

  16. What Makes an Article or Review Persuasive?

    By Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA — October 20, 2021 As I have been arguing of late, the gist, the information, and the emotional components all play a role. A new study looks at the helpfulness of consumer reviews in guiding choice. The emotion they chose to consider - anger - is, unfortunately, around us 24/7/365.

  17. The persuasive power of social media influencers in brand ...

    Social media has changed how people obtain information and news dramatically in recent years. As of 2021, the number of social media users worldwide has reached 4.20 billion, with users spending ...

  18. Mastering The Modes Of Persuasion

    Oct 13, 2021, 07:30am EDT. Share to Facebook; ... Aristotle wrote about the modes of persuasion — three key components that form the basis for any debate or persuasive argument.

  19. How Americans Use Social Media

    A third of U.S. adults (33%) say they use the video-based platform, up 12 percentage points from 2021 (21%). The other sites asked about had more modest or no growth over the past couple of years. For instance, while YouTube and Facebook dominate the social media landscape, the shares of adults who use these platforms has remained stable since ...

  20. Exclusive: Threats to US federal judges double since 2021, driven by

    Serious threats against federal judges - ones that trigger an investigation by the agency - rose to 457 in fiscal year 2023, which ended on Sept. 30, from 224 in fiscal 2021, according to the ...

  21. The Argument

    Has Polling Broken Politics? As the midterms near, Margie Omero and Nate Silver consider what voter surveys are good for. By 'The Argument' Is America Headed for Another Civil War? Jamelle Bouie...

  22. Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine ...

    Volume 39, Issue 49, 3 December 2021, Pages 7158-7165. Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions. Author links open overlay panel Erin K ... We find that persuasive messaging that invokes prosocial vaccination and social image concerns is effective at increasing intended uptake and also the willingness to persuade ...

  23. What Is the Maximum Possible Social Security Benefit in 2024?

    Key Takeaways. To receive the highest Social Security payout, you must retire at 70 and have at least 35 working years, earning at least the maximum income amount for the year.

  24. Gina Carano sues Lucasfilm and Disney over her firing from 'The

    FILE - This Oct. 19, 2019, file photo shows Gina Carano at the Disney Plus launch event promoting "The Mandalorian" at the London West Hollywood hotel in West Hollywood, Calif. Carano on Tuesday sued Lucasfilm and its parent The Walt Disney Co. over her 2021 firing from "The Mandalorian," saying she was let go for expressing right-wing views on social media.

  25. Partial rerun of Germany's 2021 election in Berlin costs a governing

    A partial rerun of Germany's 2021 election in Berlin brought a decline in support for the governing parties and cost one of them a seat in parliament, but led to no significant overall change, official results showed Monday. (Soeren Stache/dpa via AP) Read More. 2 of 2.

  26. Jeff Bezos Sells $2 Billion of Amazon Shares in First Sale Since 2021

    Jeff Bezos unloaded 12 million shares of Amazon.com Inc. this week, the first time the billionaire has sold the company's stock since 2021.

  27. Opinion

    By Ross Douthat Opinion Columnist A striking thing about the American abortion debate is how little abortion itself is actually debated. The sensitivity and intimacy of the issue, the mixed...

  28. SoftBank Shares Climb Again With Arm's Explosive AI Rally

    SoftBank's stock climbed as much as 11% on Tuesday, to the highest level since May of 2021. SoftBank held onto a stake of about 90% in Arm as it took the company public last year.

  29. 伯父に懲役30年の有罪判決 兵庫・稲美、小学生兄弟死亡の放火殺人 [兵庫県]:朝日新聞デジタル

    2021年、兵庫県稲美町の住宅に放火して小学生の兄弟を殺害したとして、現住建造物等放火と殺人の罪に問われた伯父の無職松尾留与(とめよ ...