Persuasion of Interacting Receivers

Abstract

This paper investigates how to persuade multiple interacting receivers under arbitrary equilibrium selection and when receivers’ preferences may exhibit psychological traits. Our main result characterizes the conditions under which the sender can categorize information using partitions and then disclose partition-related information without altering the equilibrium outcome. This finding broadens the traditional direct approach based on the revelation principle, which categorizes messages solely by equilibrium actions. Consequently, our results support a generalized direct approach, which we apply to study information disclosure in fostering fairness within groups where members may demonstrate altruistic behaviors.