Perloff, Richard M. Processing persuasive communications. In The dynamics of persuasion: Communication and attitudes in the 21st century , 2d ed. By Richard M.
Perloff, — Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. This is an excellent and readable overview of dual-process persuasion models, focusing on the ELM. It also traces the history of dual-process models to ancient Greece. Petty, Richard E. Attitudes and persuasion: Classic and contemporary approaches. Dubuque, IA: W. This book presents antecedents to the Elaboration Likelihood Model. Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change.
New York: Springer. An obvious source to consult. Wegener, and Leandre R. Attitudes and attitude change. Annual Review of Psychology — DOI: This review article examines attitude change, structure, and consequences. The review also examines research on central route processing, defined as a high-effort process, and on peripheral route processes, which are defined as low-effort processing.
Christian Wheeler, and George Y. Is there one persuasion process or more? Lumping versus splitting in attitude change theories. In this case, persuasion will occur using what the model calls peripheral route processing.
Developed in the mids by the co-founder of the field of social neuroscience, John Cacioppo , and Richard Petty , a distinguished psychology professor at Chicago University, the Elaboration Likelihood Model ELM seeks to explain how humans process stimuli differently and the outcomes of these processes on changing attitudes, and, consequently, behavior. They noticed that previous persuasion theories gave conflicting results and developed the model to explain better how people are persuaded.
They did this by proposing two routes of persuasion that the results of previous studies can fall into. The ELM posits that when a persuader presents information to an audience, a level of elaboration results.
Elaboration refers to the amount of effort an audience member has to use in order to process and evaluate a message, remember it, and then accept or reject it. Specifically, the ELM has determined that when facing a message, people react by using either of two channels but sometimes a combination of both, too , reflecting the level of effort they need. As such, they either experience high or low elaboration, and whichever of these will determine whether they use central or peripheral route processing.
If elaboration is high, then you will process the decision through your central route. To determine which route to use, the model says that three factors determine whether your elaboration is likely to be high. These are:. For example, imagine the government announced new tax reliefs for recently married couples. Having the opportunity means you have the time available to receive the message, process it, and then make your decision. Central route processing happens when elaboration is higher.
Consequently, they invest in examining the message. Using central route processing, they will carefully listen to the message and evaluate the pros and cons before making a decision. Central route processing requires conscious thought and critical thinking. An extremely valuable avenue of research would be an application of the ELM to the development of a normative model of communication structure that would identify which cues are processed centrally, which peripherally, under what conditions, and by whom.
A later section of this paper suggests at a conceptual level variables that are likely to mediate elaboration likelihood and the route to persuasion in marketing situations. A pilot study reported elsewhere Obermiller and Bitner begins to address these questions.
In the study we have specifically identified atmosphere as an important peripheral cue for product evaluations, and purchase orientation "shopping" versus "browsing" as a determinant of motivation. The results of that study showed that a pleasant atmosphere enhances product evaluations when subjects are in a low state of motivation "browsing" , but that pleasantness of atmosphere has no effect on product evaluations when subjects are motivated "shopping" as the ELM predicts.
Although the study does not address the core problem of how to know in advance that atmosphere will act as a peripheral cue, the results contribute to our knowledge of how and when atmosphere may operate as a peripheral cue to influence our attitudes toward products. ELM combines a variety of effects under the category of peripheral processing. These effects may, in fact, result from quite different processes.
On one hand, peripheral effects may result from cognitive "short cuts. Her information processing center is a miser that decides, "I'm not very interested in this issue, so, rather than waste effort on developing a well-considered attitude, I'll base my affective response on a source cue. A physically repulsive lawyer may have difficulty attracting clients regardless of ability. The negative effect associated with physical appearance is a simple affective response, not a cognitive short cut.
Other less conscious affective responses may result from classical conditioning and mere exposure. Since the cognitive short cuts imply a low degree of object relevant cognitive activity and direct affective responses imply almost no cognitive activity, ELM may be underspecified in grouping the two types of processing together. This possibility is suggested by Greenwald and Leavitt in their separation of levels of involvement into four categories: preattention, focal attention, comprehension and elaboration.
Preattention and focal attention represent distinctly different processes of elaboration, yet the ELM implies that both levels of involvement would result in "PeriPheral processing. A direct implication of the preceding discussion is the question of differing strengths of resulting attitudes.
Petty and Cacioppo argue that peripheral results in less durable, less forceful attitudes that are less predictive of behavior. Their prediction is consistent with a model that presents affect as a cognitive structure that can be more or less integrated with an object representation, thus more or less durable and forceful.
Greenwald and Leavitt are in agreement. Their principle of "higher level dominance" posits that effects of more elaborate processes will dominate the effects of less elaborate processes given equal numbers of repetition. The equal repetition constraint is an important one since peripheral processing is typically associated with many exposures, central processing with few. Another possibility is a model incorporating another construct, confidence in attitude, such that attitudes based on peripheral cues are held with less confidence.
An altogether different model is argued by Zajonc ; with Markus , who maintains that attitudes based on directly affective responses may be more durable and more forceful than attitudes that result from thoughtful consideration, particularly because they are less susceptible to change by central processing. Petty and Cacioppo present post hoc support for their hypothesis, but no direct test has been conducted.
We propose two approaches to researching the question of relative attitude strength and predictability of behavior. The first is a straightforward between subjects tests.
One group would receive a positive central processing manipulation followed by a negative peripheral processing manipulation. The extent and durability of change would be compared with a second group that received the manipulations in the opposite order. Such a test would address the relative resistance of attitudes developed centrally and peripherally.
Behavioral measures could also be taken in each case to compare relative attitude-behavior consistencies.
The second approach would be to select objects with existing attitudes formed largely from either central or peripheral processes. For example Zajonc and Markus suggest that our attitudes toward some foods are acquired early in life primarily through affective or peripheral associations. On the other hand, attitudes toward expensive products such as cars and houses are likely to result from central processing of specific product-relevant information.
Several objects of each type could be selected and their relative resistances could then be assessed by subjecting each to change strategies. ELM presents the two routes as alternatives. Of particular interest to marketers is the question of separate main effects versus interaction.
Petty and Cacioppo suggest an interaction: If central processing occurs first, peripheral processing is irrelevant, but if peripheral processing occurs first, it may lead to central processing. Their reasoning recalls the hierarchy of effects model of low involvement learning Ray Advertising may work through low involvement by creating very weak preferences peripheral effects that induce purchase, which leads to strong attitudes based on experience central effects.
Another attractive hypothesis is that peripheral processing may have a main effect in addition to central processing. If central processing results in nearly equal preferences for alternatives, peripheral effects may be marginally determinant. For many product categories objective differences, even advertising claim differences, are small, and preferences may well result from peripheral effects. Research addressing this question might involve the selection by "expert" judges or through another procedure of several brands of a product that are determined to be essentially the same in their central, product-relevant characteristics.
Peripheral cues such as music, endorser characteristics, or atmosphere could then be varied systematically to explore whether such peripheral cues can significantly alter the evaluations of essentially similar products and when this is most likely to be true. Image advertising of products such as beer and soft drinks would suggest that marketers believe that peripheral cues are the determinants of preference when objective cues are approximately equal.
What happens when one is highly motivated to process thoughtfully but there is no "useful" information to process? ELM suggests two possibilities.
The first is that "useful" is a subjective criterion. A given individual may be psycho-logical even is she bypasses information and relies on attractiveness of background music in forming her attitude. There may, however, be a consensus about which cues are objectively central and which are not.
In the absence of central cues, ELM further suggests that self-generated thoughts about the issue will determine attitude via central processing. Yet, we would contend that consumers frequently face evaluation situations in which neither alternative is quite acceptable--when motivation is high, when useful central cues are absent, and when existing issue attitudes are insufficient to generate own thoughts of consequence. When judging a professional service, an expensive, unfamiliar product, even a new restaurant, consumers may be forced to form evaluations without objectively useful information and without useful prior attitudes.
In such cases, consumers may well rely on peripheral cues--decor, physical features and personality traits, information source characteristics--but not on peripheral process. When nothing else is available, consumers may elaborate cues that would, otherwise, be peripheral. Does such elaboration lead to durable, forceful attitudes?
A more likely hypothesis is that consumers hold attitudes with varying confidences depending on the basis of the attitudes. An evaluation of an insurance agent, based upon the pleasantness of the office, should be held with little confidence regardless of any amount of elaboration of that cue.
On the other hand, a comparison of premiums, data on claims honored, or past experience. Confidence in attitudes is an important construct that is related to the notions of central and peripheral cues, but it probably results from an interaction between the elaboration process and the nature of the cues. ELM could be modified by research on the usefulness or the confidence in inferences drawn from various types of informational cues.
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