Page 58 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Social Psychological Foundations of Social Marketing 51

as implicit measures (for a review in the consumer domain, see Perkins &
Forehand, 2009). Because implicit and explicit measures of attitudes are
useful in predicting behavior separately (Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann
& Banaji, 2011) and in combination (Petty & Briñol, 2006; Briñol, Petty,
& Wheeler, 2006), it might be useful for marketers to understand how
each is modified by various persuasion techniques. From the perspective
of the ELM, sufficient research now makes it clear that the same funda-
mental processes described in this chapter for understanding changes in
explicit measures of attitudes are also critical for understanding changes in
automatic evaluations (Briñol, Petty & McCaslin, 2009).

Conclusion

The present chapter informs social marketers by providing an introduc-
tion to the foundations of attitudes and attitude change. The chapter first
offered an organizing structure by which to think of the factors that can
affect the persuasiveness of a communication: the source, the message,
and the recipient. Second, it introduced the Elaboration Likelihood Model
(ELM) as an organizing framework to understand how numerous variables
can exert different effects on persuasion as a function of elaboration. Third,
the chapter introduced and discussed the importance of matching and
alignment effects in persuasion, and it explained how the ELM could be
used to understand and study such effects. Finally, it introduced the con-
cept of attitude strength and the role of elaboration in determining the
persistence, resistance, and influence of attitudes.
At the core, the present chapter offers four key questions that social
marketers should ask themselves when crafting a message designed to per-
suade a recipient:

• What are the relevant source, message, and recipient factors in a given context?
• What is the elaboration likelihood level of the target audience?
• How might source, message, and recipient variables interact?
• Has a communication fostered strong (i.e., enduring, resistant, and influential)
attitudes?

By asking these questions, social marketers can seek to understand and
improve the efficacy of their persuasive attempt before any efforts have
been undertaken. As other chapters in this volume will attest, social mar-
keting represents a complex process with many problems and challenges.
However, understanding the basic principles of persuasion, whether cen-
tral or peripheral, represents an excellent starting point.