Dark Patterns to Nudge Them All? A development of a theoretical framework and an experimental examination of individuals' susceptibility to dark patterns in e-commerce

Abstract

While dark patterns--specific ways of designing interfaces to help companies gather more profit by manipulating users choices--are largely discussed in both legislation and academia in relation to those populations and groups that might be especially vulnerable to dark patterns, there is little known about the role of broad personality constructs as a source of protection or vulnerability. Personality traits are known to shape many life outcomes and choices, including potentially harmful buying behaviors such as impulsive purchases. Dark patterns often aim to increase impulsive decisions online. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate their role in relation to personality traits. For this purpose, we developed a theoretical foundation to explain the relationship between personality traits and users' susceptibility to dark patterns and investigated these relationships in a controlled, preregistered experiment (N = 964). Our findings showed that certain personality traits--specifically high emotionality, high disintegration, and low honesty-humility--were more susceptible to dark patterns as they reported higher purchase intentions--a classic measure to identify consumer preferences and choices--when exposed to particular dark patterns. These results suggest that individual differences in personality can be used to reveal and potentially exploit vulnerability to dark patterns. We discussed the ways companies may exploit such tendencies to maximize profit via personality-related data collection of online behaviors and discussed potential legislative gaps related to such data collection.

Keywords: dark patterns, consumer vulnerability, personality, e-commerce, advertising