Page 176 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

7. MASS MEDIA ATTITUDE CHANGE 165

about a message were mostly unfavorable, then increasing confidence
reduced persuasion, but undermining confidence increased persuasion.
These relationships held whether confidence in thoughts was measured
or manipulated. Thus, research on cognitive responses suggest that gen-
erating favorable or unfavorable thoughts to a persuasive message is an
important factor in producing attitude change, but it is not the only fac-
tor. Individuals also need to have confidence in the thoughts that they
generate.

THE ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL OF PERSUASION

Although the cognitive response approach provided important insights
into the persuasion process, it only focuses on those situations in which
people are active processors of the information provided to them. The the-
ory did not account very well for persuasion in situations where people
were not actively thinking about the message content. To correct this
deficit, the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion (ELM) was pro-
posed. The ELM holds that persuasion can occur when thinking is high or
low, but the processes and consequences of persuasion are different in
each situation (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981, 1986a; Petty & Wegener, 1999).
More specifically, the ELM holds that the processes that occur during the
“yielding” stage of influence can be thought of as emphasizing one of two
relatively distinct “routes to persuasion” (see Fig. 7.2). 2

Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion

Central Route. The first or central route to persuasion involves effort-
ful cognitive activity whereby the person draws on prior experience and
knowledge in order to carefully scrutinize all of the information relevant
to determining the central merits of the position advocated (Petty, 1994;
Petty & Cacioppo, 1986a). Consistent with the cognitive response
approach to persuasion, the message recipient under the central route is
actively generating favorable and/or unfavorable thoughts in response to

2 Although the ELM has implications for the other stages in McGuire’s information proc-
essing sequence described earlier (see Fig. 7.1), it does not attempt to provide a general the-
ory of information exposure, memory, and so on. For example, even though the ELM would
expect people to seek out and attend to messages of high personal relevance more so than
messages of low personal relevance, the ELM provides an incomplete account of exposure,
as variables unrelated to yielding processes could also determine message exposure. For
example, people may seek messages for purposes of excitement or mood management (e.g.,
see chap. 2).