User:ZLyuLililalawawa/Elaboration likelihood model

(Introduction instance added) For instance, as the picture shows, a person is considering buying a car and he is persuaded by his friend to buy a certain model. If he processes his friend’s message by taking the central route, he will carefully evaluate his friend’s argument and rationally think about the cost, reliability, fuel efficiency of this model. Once he generates favorable thought along the central route, the ELM predicts he will accept the message and the result is enduring. However, if he uses the peripheral route to process the message, he will be likely to buy the car because he likes the color, or a famous idol on television “asks” him to buy this car. Compared to the central route’s effect, thoughts generated from the peripheral route will be relatively short-lasting.

Assumption: (added)

Assumption 1: “People are motivated to hold correct attitudes”

Assumption 2: “Although people want to hold correct attitudes, the amount and nature of issue relevant elaboration in which they are willing or able to engage to evaluate a message vary with individual and situational factors”

Assumption 3: “Variables can affect the amount and direction of attitude change by:

Serving as persuasive arguments;

Serving as peripheral cues; and/or

Affecting the extent or direction of issue and argument elaboration”

Assumption 4: “Variables affecting motivation and/or ability to process a message in a relatively objective manner can do so by either enhancing or reducing argument scrutiny”

Assumption 5: "Variables affecting message processing in a relatively biased manner can produce either a positive (favorable) or negative (unfavorable) motivational and/or ability bias to the issue-relevant thoughts attempted”

Assumption 6: "As motivation and/or ability to process arguments is decreased, peripheral cues become relatively more important determinants of persuasion. Conversely, as argument scrutiny is increased, peripheral cues become relatively less important determinants of persuasion."

Assumption 7: "Attitude changes that result mostly from processing issue-relevant arguments (central route) will show greater temporal persistence, greater prediction of behavior and greater resistance to counter-persuasion than attitude changes that result mostly from peripheral cues."

Petty, R.E. and Wegener, D.T. (1999), “The elaboration likelihood model: current status and controversies”, in Chaiken, S. and Trope, Y. (Eds), Dual Process Theories in Social Psychology, Guilford Press, New York, NY, pp. 44-72.

Variables can serve as arguments or peripheral cues to affect the persuasiveness of a message. According to the ELM, changing the quality of an argument or providing a cue in a persuasive context could influence the persuasiveness of a message and affect receivers’ attitudes.

Strong messages are ones containing arguments which guide people to elaborate the message and generate favorable thoughts. Weak messages are ones containing arguments usually lead people to generate unfavorable thoughts. A potential cue is able to affect attitudes when it works in a persuasive context without argument processing. For instance, a subject was presented with a non-processable argument (in a foreign language) and a potential cue (the speaker was dressing formally). The subject might rate the man as convincing even without high elaboration. When subjects are processing messages under conditions of high elaboration, variables serve as arguments to affect message persuasiveness; If subjects are under conditions of low elaboration, cues will influence on message persuasiveness which might be positive or negative; If subjects are under conditions of moderate elaboration, variables together might enhance or reduce the persuasiveness in an objective manner, or bialy motivate or inhibit subjects to generate a kind of thought. For instance, a distraction could serve as a variable to affect the persuasiveness of a message. If a man evaluate very carefully about a weak argument, the distraction can hardly stop him from generating unfavorable thoughts; While if he doesn't think a lot about the argument, the distraction will enhance the persuasion of a weak argument.

-- Self-Validation: Recent scholars studied persuasion combining ELM with a another concept self-validation: a role for variables : to affect the extent to which a person trusts their thoughts in response to a message (self-validation role). (added:) A person not only needs to have an attitude towards a message, but also needs to trust his own attitude as correct one so this message can influence his behaviors. If he doesn't deem his thoughts as correct, he will mentally abandon his own thought. A person may think, "If an expert presented this information, it is probably correct, and thus I can trust that my reactions to it are informative with respect to my attitude." This role, because of its metacognitive nature, only occurs in high-elaboration conditions. The ELM posts that variables (credulity, happiness, etc.) can influence the amount and direction of processing, and self-validation postulated that those variables can affect how people use their thoughts as well. For example, when people are generating favorable thoughts about a new idea, they will be more self-affirmed if they are nodding their heads (a variable). Conversely, if they are shaking their heads, they will be less self-affirmed about their thoughts.

In Media:
(added)

Scholars have also studied whether media modalities will serve as variable to affect which processing route to take. The previous researches by Chaiken suggested that audio and video modes tended to led receivers to heuristic processing (taking the peripheral route) rather than engage in systematic processing (taking the central route). Bootb-Butterfield and Gutowski have studied how media modalities, argument quality, and source credibility interact to influence receivers to process messages. Bootb-Butterfield and Gutowski conducted an experiment by providing students with strong or weak arguments from high or low credible sources in print, audio, or video modes. By giving participants with negative thought topics, experiment results shows that media modalities, source credibility, and argument quality have significant interactions in attitudes change and elaboration mounts: Within the print mode, the interaction between source credibility and argument quality was the least, partly confirmed that print mode would generate systematic processing. And participants generated more unfavorable thoughts towards weak arguments than strong arguments. Within the audio mode, there was no difference between weak and strong arguments with low credible sources; But, weak arguments with high credible sources generate more unfavorable thoughts than strong arguments. Within the video mode, arguments with low credible sources had no difference in elaboration mounts, while strong arguments with high credible sources produced more thoughts.

Braverman researched on combining media modality and content design. She directed a study focusing on the persuasion effects of informational (anecdotal evidence) and testimonial messages (personal stories or experience) in text or audio modes. Study results supported that people in low issue-relevance would be persuaded more by testimonial messages, while people in high issue-relevance would be persuaded more by informational messages. She also found that text was more effective for informational messages, whereas audio was relatively more effective for testimonial messages.

In Politics:
Scholars also studied how partisan cues in media content will affect elaboration direction and mount. Jennings combined social identity theory and elaboration likelihood model to study whether identities will motivate audience to only rely on partisan cues on media to process information, and whether partisan cues would inhibit audience from learning. Jennings's experiment provided participants with a nonpartisan or partisan article at first and used questionnaires to test their elaboration and learning outcomes. The results supported Jennings hypotheses: articles with partisan cues would prevent partisans from learning more information in the article, compared to articles without partisan cues. Besides, nonpartisan articles would relatively generate more positive thoughts than partisan articles. Also, partisan members tend to elaborate more negative thoughts when exposed to out-group's information, and partisan members will elaborate more positive thoughts when exposed to in-group's messages. For instance, Republicans will come out of more negative reasons why a Democrat senator should not be elected, while Democrats will generate more positive reasons to elect a Democrat senator.

In Media:

Social Media:

Scholars have also studied on how the ELM functions on Connective-collective action on social media. "Connective-collective activities" means ones are able to receive other's personal opinions and add responses to them, so the information will be accumulated and turned into a collective one. On social media there four types of activities are considered as connective-collective: 1) commenting; 2) uploading materials; 3) relaying information received; 4) affiliating (i.e. Liking, following, etc.). Nekmat et al. have suggested that the overabundance of information on social media might not induce audience to heuristic processing; Instead, source attributes such as credibility and personalness (which means the closeness of friends in a circle) will be mediated by elaboration cognition. Nekmat et al. found that personalness was positively related to elaboration and users with elaboration cognition were more willing to participant in connective-collective activities. They speculated that this was due to the need to cross the private-public boundary when interacting on social media gave people burdens.

Molina and Jennings focused on whether civil and uncivil behaviors on Facebook serve as cues to encourage users' willingness to participant in a discussion. By presenting experiment participants with Facebook posts and comments (civil or uncivil), they found that: civil comments will encourage more elaboration and therefore generate more willingness to engage in a discussion than uncivil comments; The more elaboration participants generate, the more they are willing to participant in the discussion..

In e-commerce:

Since social media become a popular e-commerce platform as well, some scholars also use the ELM to examine how purchase intentions, brand attitudes, and advertising attitudes could be affected by interactivity and source authority on social media platforms. Ott et al. conducted an experiment by presenting participants with Facebook posts from a fictitious company and analyzing their attitude change. The results shows that high and medium interactivity (which means numbers of responses from company representatives on social media posts would: 1) enhance the perceived informativeness (consumers can get useful information from advertising), and then strengthen positive attitudes and purchase intentions; Or 2) increase perceived dialogues, which led to increasing perceived informativeness and then positive attitudes and purchase intentions. However, high interactivity without the perceived informativeness would generate negative attitudes and low purchase intentions. This study has suggested that to some extent companies should engage audience in a systematic processing way in social media advertisings, as consumers elaborate along central route will generate more positive attitudes and higher purchase intentions.

In ideological persuasion

Dunbar et al. studied on how violent and nonviolent ideological groups developed their persuasion strategy online. Ideological groups (or ethnic groups) are people who shared similar values such as religious beliefs, political beliefs, and social movements which distinguish them from out-group members. Some ideological groups are considered as violent because they acquiesce use of violence to achieve their values. For instance, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ website advocated their ideas nonviolently, while ISIS website sanctioned and prioritized violent acts for their goals. Dunbar et al. have studied how nonviolent ideological groups and violent groups used tactics to induce central or peripheral processing, and surprisingly found that both nonviolent ideological and violent groups applied more central cues than peripheral cues in their persuasion, in another word, they adopted more arguments and evidence than simply designing a visually attractive website or idolizing someone. Besides, violent ideological groups used more fear appeals to their audience, and interacted less with their audience. Dunbar et al. speculated that some extreme groups desired to have tight control over their content so they had low tolerance for other's opinions.

In organizations:
Li has expanded the theoretical frame of the ELM and applied it to information system acceptance. Li conducted a research on persuasive tactics for managers who needed to persuade staff to adopt new information systems within firms by integrating the ELM, social influence theory (It studies how a person is influenced by others in a network to conform to a community, and there are two types of social influences: informational and normative influences), and affective and cognition responses (or emotional responses and rational responses). Li's experiment suggested that: 1) managers should tailor their persuasive strategies according to various elaboration abilities of staff. For staff who have higher levels of elaboration likelihood, managers should emphasize benefits and values of new systems; For staff who have lower levels of elaboration likelihood, managers should provide expertise and credible sources. 2) Commonly speaking, providing strong arguments is more effective than relying on credibility. 3) Since normative influences lead to more affective responses and informational influences lead to more cognition responses, mangers should implement different strategies to provoke staff's reaction, while 4) cognition responses are more important than affective responses when accepting a new system.