Resisting Persuasion

Agents that are subject to persuasion attempts often employ strategies that allow them to effectively resist. In the context of Bayesian Persuasion (Kamenica and Gentzkow, 2011), we argue that if appropriate action-contingent payoff adjustments are available to the subject of persuasion (e.g., through public commitment), then payoff improvements are achieved. Remarkably, payoff-improving resistance strategies need not involve adding benefits to any action. We characterize the optimal resistance strategy when only costly payoff adjustments are allowed and we show that it always induces a substantial increase in the agent's welfare and it often induces the design of a perfectly informative signal