Page 422 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

Chapter 14 Persuasive Speaking 389

tailed discussion of the pros and cons of changing the laws to permit doctors to
assist terminally ill patients in ending their lives. Another possibility is that au-
dience members have no direct experience with the topic and simply prefer not
to think about such diffi cult issues. Some ways of presenting the speech might
invite the audience to engage in what Petty and Cacioppo call “central route
processing,” or elaboration. On the other hand, some messages on this topic
might be designed to avoid elaborated thinking. Petty and Cacioppo call this
“peripheral route processing.”
The questions for a public speaker are (1) what factors are likely to lead an
audience to engage in either central or peripheral message processing, and
(2) which of these processes is most likely to lead to the achievement of the
speaker’s goals?
The second question is the easier to answer. In most situations, the speaker
wants the audience to use the elaborated, or central, processing route. The rea-
son is that if the argument presented by the speaker is accepted by audience
members, they are more likely to believe and conform to the argument over
time. Let’s say you are against physician-assisted suicide and want your audi-
ence to come to the conclusion that it is both unethical and might lead families
to “pull the plug” prematurely. You will not only need to make both claims, but
also need to give your audience suffi cient grounds to think long and hard about
what you are saying. Not only will you want them to agree with the claims,
you’ll also want them to believe and behave accordingly when the issue of
physician- assisted suicide is raised. On the other hand, if you are simply inter-
ested in a short-term goal, for example, getting voters to vote no on an upcoming
initiative to allow doctor-assisted suicide in your state, you might simply want to
say, “Killing is wrong, period. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Vote no!”
To reiterate, then, the fi rst question speakers should ask is “What factors in
this situation will increase or decrease the likelihood of elaboration on the part
of an audience member?” If audience members are motivated and able to un-
derstand a message, they are more likely to engage in elaborated thinking.
On the other hand, if they fi nd a message irrelevant or are unwilling or un-
able to understand the message, they are more likely to follow the peripheral
route. Some factors are beyond the speaker’s control. For example, individual
listeners differ in their “need for cognition,” that is, their need to process in-
15
formation centrally. There is not much a speaker can do to make people who
don’t like to think about messages do so. On the other hand, a speaker can take
steps to make the topic relevant to the audience and to provide understandable
and strong arguments that will be persuasive to those who are motivated to pro-
cess the message centrally.
Let’s walk through the elaboration likelihood model depicted in Exhibit 14.2
on page 390 to further explain the process. On the far left we have the persua-
sive speech. Next we see the audience. There are two possibilities–that they are
motivated and able to understand the message or that they are unmotivated or
unwilling or unable to understand it. If the fi rst condition applies, the process
follows the boxes along the top of the model. It is likely that the audience will en-
gage in central route processing. Two factors make this route more likely. First, if
the message is perceived as relevant, the audience is more likely to pay attention.
Second, the message needs to be understandable. An audience member may fi nd
a speech on nuclear terrorism relevant but be lost in the technical jargon and
thus unable to process the message. Even when messages are understandable