Page 199 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

188 PETTY, PRIESTER, BRIÑOL

allow newly acquired attitudes and intentions to be translated into action.
Bandura’s (1977, 1986) social-cognitive theory provides a framework to
understand these processes (see chap. 6).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Although considerable research on mass media effects has shown that it is
possible for media messages to change the knowledge or facts that people
have about some object, issue, or person, we have argued that knowledge
reception does not invariably result in attitude and behavior change. Our
brief review of the ELM and the research supporting it has emphasized
that information will only be successful in producing enduring changes in
attitudes and behavior if people are motivated and able to process the
information and if this processing results in favorable thoughts and ideas
that are integrated into the person’s relatively enduring cognitive struc-
ture. Furthermore, once attitudes have changed, implementing changes in
some behaviors may require overcoming past attitudes and learning new
skills and perceptions of self-efficacy. Thus, current work on attitude and
behavior change may help to account for some unsuccessful media cam-
paigns in which knowledge acquisition failed to have attitudinal and/or
behavioral consequences. First, the knowledge acquired may have been
seen as irrelevant by the recipients or may have led to unfavorable rather
than favorable reactions. Second, even if favorable reactions were pro-
duced, people may have lacked confidence in those favorable thoughts,
attenuating their reliance on them and reducing the likelihood of change.
Third, even if appropriate attitude changes were induced, the changes
may have been based on simple peripheral cues rather than on elabora-
tive processing of the message. Thus, whatever changes were produced
would be unlikely to persist over time and guide behavior. Fourth, even if
attitude changes were produced by the central route, the people influ-
enced may have lacked the necessary skills or self-confidence to translate
their new attitudes into action, or the impact of attitudes on behavior may
have been undermined by competing norms.
Perhaps the three most important issues raised in our review are
(1) although some attitudes are based on an effortful reasoning process
in which externally provided information is related to oneself and inte-
grated into a coherent belief structure (central route), other attitudes are
formed as a result of relatively simple cues in the persuasion environment
(peripheral route); (2) any one variable (e.g., source expertise, mood) can
be capable of inducing persuasion by either the central or the peripheral
route in different situations by serving in one or more roles (i.e., affecting
motivation or ability to think, biasing thinking, affecting thought confi-
dence, serving as an argument, or a peripheral cue); and (3) although both