Page 43 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

36 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

unconstrained, a happy state could reduce processing of a cogent message
compared to a sad state, thereby reducing persuasion. Second, the under-
lying process has implications for the immediate and long-term conse-
quences of the persuasive attempt. In particular, the more thoughtful the
mechanism that is involved in producing attitude change, the more the
attitude created is expected to be durable, resistant, and impactful over
time (Petty, Haugtvedt & Smith, 1995). For example, if a person agreed
with a store salesperson’s request to purchase a box of cookies solely be-
cause of the salesperson’s attractiveness, the person would be easier to talk
into purchasing a different box of cookies on a subsequent visit than if the
initial purchase came after the attractiveness led the consumer to carefully
scrutinize the merits of the cookies and form a strong favorable attitude
toward them. Thus, the ELM holds that the process by which an influence
attempt is successful can be consequential for the future. That is, even if
two different processes result in the same extent of influence at an initial
occasion, the consequences of this influence can differ.
The next section explains how several different source, message, and re-
cipient variables have been shown to affect persuasion under different degrees
of elaboration. Because not every possible process has been examined for
every possible variable, the full array of effects that specific variables are capa-
ble of incurring has not been documented. However, this section showcases
the many different roles two particular variables, source credibility and recipi-
ent mood or emotion, have been shown to play in the persuasion process.

Effects of Variables under Low Elaboration Conditions

When the elaboration likelihood is low, either because of low motiva-
tion or ability to think about the persuasive proposal, variables are likely
to exert their influence by serving as simple cues or input to simple heu-
ristics. Heuristics can be thought of as rules of thumb, such as “When a
message comes from a friend, it can be trusted.” Evidence for the use of
heuristics often comes from the fact that when people’s message-related
thoughts are examined, there are very few of them and/or those thoughts
do not mediate or explain the reason behind the attitudes formed (see
Rucker, Briñol & Petty, 2011, for discussion). That is, the use of heuristics
means that people did not rely much on the substantive message content
in forming their attitudes; although variables serving as heuristics can op-
erate through multiple processes at all levels of elaboration.
Under conditions of low elaboration, the credibility of the source has
been shown to serve as a simple positive cue to persuasion. For example,
when messages deal with unimportant or irrelevant issues (low motivation