E L A B O R A T I O N
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Research Report

In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology the article "Personal Involvement as a Determinant of Argument-Based Persuasion" by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo, they suggest that there are two basic routes to persuasion: the central and peripheral routes.

Attitude change is not determined solely by either issue-relevant argumentation or cue association. "Cialdini, Petty & Cacioppo (1981) concluded that one consequence of the different routes to persuasion was that changes induced via the central route tended to be enduring and predictive of subsequent behavior, whereas changes induced via the peripheral route tended to be more ephemeral and less predictive of subsequent behavior." (p. 848)

Cacioppo & Petty thought that in the central route, persuasive communication was on a topic of great personal relevance, attitude change would be influenced when thoughtful consideration of the topic at hand took place. On the other hand, when the message was on a topic with very low personal relevance, peripheral cues would be most effective.

For example, people who expect to have a discussion with a person with an opposite view of the topic at hand would form a more supportive argument in advance for the discussion when the issue had high rather than low personal relevance. Thus, as personal relevance increases, so does the increase of issue-relevant argumentation. In the case of peripheral cues, the manipulation of source credibility is more useful in low rather that high personal involvement (Johnson & Scileppi 1969, Rhine & Severance 1970). One relevant study done by Chaiken (1980) introduced subjects to a message containing either two or six arguments from a likable or dislikable source, under either high- or low-involvement conditions. She found that message manipulation had a greater impact on high personal involvement situations and source manipulations had a greater impact on attitude under low personal involvement. Chaiken suggests that message manipulation or manipulation of the number of relevant arguments can act as a peripheral cue in the same way that source manipulation or likable or dislikable sources can serve as cues. Therefore, even if the subjects did little or no thinking about the messages at hand, it is highly probable that they would take into consideration that one message had relatively few or relatively many supportive arguments.

Fishbein & Ajzen (1981) have this to say about persuasion research:

The general neglect of the information contained in a message...
is probably the most serious problem in communication and persuasion
research. We are convinced that the persuasiveness of a communication
can be increased much more easily and dramatically by paying careful
attention to its content...than by manipulation of credibility, attractiveness,...
or any of the other myriad factors that have caught the fancy of
investigators in the area of communication and persuasion.

Therefore, while the message content may be of the most importance in some circumstances, noncontent manipulations like source credibility and attractiveness may be more important in other cases.

Issue-relevant argumentation and peripheral cues are of equal importance in attitude change, and the level of personal involvement with the message at hand plays a major role in distinguishing which type of persuasion occurs. There are two reasons why an increase in involvement is associated with the increase of the message important arguments in producing persuasion.

  1. First, as an issue increases in personal involvement for the message recipient, it becomes more important to have a strong argument to back up that opinion. An attitude based on careful consideration of the facts will most likely be easier to defend if challenged in the future. People are motivated to hold researched opinions when personal consequences are high. If the consequences are low, it is less likely that the message recipient will do the nessecary work to back up their argument. People are able and more motivated to think about things that are relevant to themselves (p. 853).
  2. Second, people have a greater ability to create issue-relevant arguments when personal involvement is high. If there is high personal consequences it is likely that the message recipient has done a lot of thinking about that issue and may have preexisting useful information (self-schema) to evaluate the message argument at hand.
Any variable that reduces a person's motivation to do the cognitive work necessary to develop an argument about the message content would make the peripheral route more feasible.
Given the information above, I now have a greater understanding of the central and peripheral routes in the elaboration likelihood model.
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