Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion - Term Paper Example

The Theory of Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is a major breakthrough in the research field of persuasion. It has helped fix the gaps of past researches, which failed to explain why people responded differently to persuasion messages. Also, it has disputed the notion of past researches perception that positive attributes of persuasive messages always led to favorable changes in attitudes. The ELM has two routes; the central route and peripheral route. ELM strategy has also been incorporated in modern ad campaigns, in the mass media. This paper describes the theory of ELM in detail then explores its applicability in advertisements. Key Words: Elaboration Likelihood Model, central route, peripheral route, ad campaigns. The Theory of Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion Introduction Today businesses are constantly developing new persuasion mechanisms to market their products and services. They are looking for innovative ways of creating and delivering the content of the message. They aim to capture the audience attention, create assurance, spawn preferred attitudes, create social norms and eventually influence behavior. In this paper, I will explain the theory of elaboration likelihood model and show how it explains the persuasive strategy apparent in a television ad campaign for Budweiser puppy love commercial. A lot of research studies conducted in this field of persuasion indicates the challenges of developing a persuasive message. The results are varying particularly on issues dealing with public policies (Rucker & Petty, 2006). These results are linked to the thinking of the early 1970s researches about persuasion. The variables suggested by researchers during the 1970s continue to be investigated till now; they include message characteristics. This will encompass its credibility, attractiveness, emotional appeal, the mood it creates, and the channel used to present the message (Petty, Barden, et al., 2009). The assumption was that these variables achieved a single goal, which is persuasion. They could produce only one outcome, the effect of the persuasion message would be either successful or reduced. Some studies show that including only positive arguments in the message improved persuasion efforts. However, other studies found no similar benefits of incorporating positive aspects only; sometimes it reduced the effect of persuasion efforts. Some studies found also that incorporating negative aspects enhance the impact of persuasion rather than reduce it as earlier thought. The contentious issues in these results were the uncertainty on how these negative effects were relayed and steps involved in conveying them (Wagner & Petty, 2011). It was due to the shortcomings of these researches of failing to explain how the positive and negative aspects influenced persuasion that influenced further researches to fill these gaps. The new models gave researchers extra insight on different methods attitudes could be developed or altered. The models also estimated the duration the message would impact on an individual. One of the distinct models that had the greatest influence is the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1996). The Elaboration Likelihood Model The theory of elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (ELM) is a theory that describes the process of thinking of a person when trying to decode a message. This process involves the ability of the message communicated to alter the person’s attitude, the varying effects of persuasion, and how strong is the final judgment. The ELM is much efficient as compared to the previous models of single effect view since it believes that a single variable can impact on a person’s attitudes in dissimilar manners. ELM can also decrease or increase persuasion using different approaches (Petty et al., 2004). The basic assumption of ELM is that people have their own ways of conceiving the message. People can highly or lowly perceive the message. The time also people engage in thinking about the message also influences the effect of the persuasion. The level of thinking about the message of people is dissimilar and thus they can be categorized in an “elaboration continuum”. Motivation and the ability of an individual to decode the relayed message can be used to determine the person’s position along this continuum. There are a number of things that may sway a person’s motivation; such as personal interest on the issue, usually likes thinking and independence of decoding the message (Rucker & Petty, 2011). Therefore, factors determining the motivation and ability of the recipient can specifically rely on the context of the communication or self attributes of the person. When grouping these perspectives together it is found that: In case there is a high level of motivation and great ability to think, a person will follow the “central route of persuasion”, but if there is a low level of motivation or ability to think is stalled the person will tend to follow the “peripheral route of persuasion” (Petty, Brinol, & Priester, 2009). The Central Route to Persuasion A person follows the central route of persuasion if he/she gets enough motivation and the ability to think carefully. That is the message relates to the person and his environment contains few distractions. In this route, people cautiously analyze the message to see if it makes sense and could be useful to them somehow. In the central route, persuasion efforts concentrate on how strong the arguments of the message are presented; the sections of the information that represents the communicators’ intentions. If strong arguments are presented, they will positively alter the recipients’ attitudes by creating mostly positive thoughts about the message. However, in the advent the message arguments are weak, the recipients’ thoughts will be more negative than positive, and the message may not change the person’s attitudes or will shift to another option (Wagner & Petty, 2011). Moreover, a deeper analysis of the message does not assure the communicator that the recipient will objectively process the arguments. A number of things may make the message interpretation process be biased. For instance, people’s definition of a strong argument is that which build on their pre-existing attitudes and not the one that tries to oppose their initial attitudes. Also, prejudice can arise because of emotions during the evaluation process. Notably, research has found out that when people are happy they tend to evaluate the message more favorably than when they are in a neutral state. From these results, it is essential to realize that the central route mode of persuasion does not essentially entail impartial deliberation on the arguments portrayed by the message (Wagner & Petty, 2011). The Peripheral Route to Persuasion People sometimes lack the motivation and ability to reflect cautiously on the information they are exposed to, as described in the central route. Despite this, there can be a change of attitudes since other processes of persuasion will involve little deliberation of the message arguments. Hence, the peripheral route of persuasion involves such processes. In this process, the simple cues from the message influence the recipients’ final judgment. For instance, a message may contain a clue like ‘happiness’ which drives the recipient emotionally thus influencing a positive response. In other cases, the message may be delivered by an expert, and according to the mental perspective of the recipient is that experts are always right hence concurring with the message arguments. Sometimes people make judgments on the basis of the number of arguments presented or others’ opinions about the message. So far, it is evident that the strength of the message is not a major influencing factor on recipients’ attitudes. Despite the fact that this processes do not entail careful deliberation of the message content, the peripheral route can effectively generate positive attitude changes, though in the short-term (Petty, Barden et al., 2009). This distinction between the peripheral and central routes to persuasion gives an extra insight on the way people can largely process information: which can be quite useful to businesses and ad companies. However, the fact is that both peripheral and central routes may manipulate people’s thoughts concurrently. Though, central route of persuasion has much impact on attitude change than the peripheral route process (Petty, Barden et al., 2009). The elaborate route of persuasion has different consequences since the central route will have different implications when compared to those caused by the peripheral route. The central route process will generate long-term attitude changes that are not easily swayed (Rucker & Petty, 2006). Though the central route process is very effective in changing the attitudes of the recipients, it is as well hard to accomplish due to its requirement of a high elaboration of the message. Thus, this tends to make the communicator to shift to the less difficult peripheral route. It may seem a way out, but the reality is that the peripheral route impact is short-term and not solid therefore, the recipient attitude can be easily changed (Wagner & Petty, 2011). Application of ELM Incorporating theoretical concepts into the real world sometime can be challenging. Nevertheless, with the right guidelines and creativity this can be achieved. In this section, the focus of the paper is to describe how the theory of elaboration likelihood model can be incorporated by people that create advertisements. An example used as reference is the “Budweiser Super Bowl XLVIII Commercial – Puppy Love”. The Budweiser is a brewery company, and it targets to increase their brand ‘Budweiser’ popularity. The targeted audience is all the super bowl viewers across America. Taking into account the millions of people watching the super bowl hence it provides an effective platform to woo more customers and retains the existing customers. In order to apply the theory of ELM into practice there are six basic sets that need to be followed: (1) Deliberate on the level of elaboration of the audience: Is it the nature of the audience to analyze carefully the message? What is the probability of doing so? (2) Devise and assess the characteristics of the message: this will involve determining possible cues or arguments that can be easily retrieved from the message. (3) The goal of the message: evaluate if the message is supposed to produce long-term or –short-term changes in attitudes of recipients. (4) Review if there is a correlation between the goals, characteristics of the message, and the elaboration level of the audience: determine if there is consistency between these three variables. (5) The effectiveness of the message: practically assess which one between high or low elaboration methods would produce much effect. (6) Assess the effectiveness of the message: Which level of elaboration produced the greatest effect? What factors influenced the level of elaboration used? (Rucker & Petty, 2006) Budweiser commercial puppy love is quite captivating. If the ad campaign intended to have a long-term impact on people’s attitudes positively with unswerving behaviors, the best ELM method they could use would be the central route to persuasion. Conversely, it is essential to keep in mind that motivation to evaluate the information if greatly determined by its supposed individual significance. However, what is mostly advertised in the media is perceived not to be directly significant to the viewer at that instant. Therefore, people give most of the ads a cursory consideration or presumably to be peripheral cues. Ads which try to have long lasted impacts will, therefore use persuasion strategies that can increase the level of motivation of the recipients to take an interest in the message. This can be achieved by developing messages that try to show personal relevance (Petty, Brinol, et al., 2009). The Budweiser commercial puppy love has attempted to use such strategy by portraying personal relevance of friendship. It emphasizes not how much people try to separate the puppy from the Clydesdale, in the end their love for each other prevails. This is a good strategy, at the superficial level it will trigger an interest on the viewer to continue watching it but, when analyzing the message carefully it is more than personal relationships portrayed. Although the ad uses a puppy, its underlying meaning is to try to portray the superiority of the brand Budweiser no matter the many competitive brands in the market (Budweiser Super Bowl Commercial, 2014). Hence, saying that the advert could have used a central route of persuasion only may at all not be effective. Taking into consideration the audience is of diverse nature and would not naturally be thoughtful thinkers; the central route impact could be minimal. The viewers’ intention maybe could be watching for fun. Thus, opting for a method that involves a deeper analysis of the message could be futile. Also, the use of peripheral route could be significant in this case. Taking the large number of people watching the super bowl and the time span of the message, the peripheral route offers surface cues that can positively change the attitudes of the viewers. However, these should be formulated well not to trigger negative stereotypes. In addition, opting to use only one route will not be beneficial; choosing either central or peripheral both will give some negative outcomes. Hence, incorporating both of these models would be the best strategy employed by Budweiser. This will generate short –term and long-term impacts simultaneously. Conclusion The ELM is an effective tool for advertisers to relay the desired information to consumers. It can also offer a platform for evaluating the effectiveness of past ad campaigns. This will be much useful particularly in the areas where the message failed to persuade the recipients to change their attitudes. For instance, the message could have been termed as irrelevant or might have achieved negatively rather than positively outcomes. Also, the attitude changes could have been short-term (Petty, Brinol et al., 2009). Finally, the ELM has been a quite significant tool for modern researchers as it has been able to fix some of the gaps of the past researches. This model reveals the complexities involved in the persuasion process. It explains the rigorous process of creating persuasive messages and the process people take to respond to these messages. Their attitudes maybe unfavorable achieving short-term effects or favorable which have long lasting effects and cannot be easily manipulated. The long-term impact seems also to be creating a sense of bias in perception of the message. The general assumption when using ELM is that, the best results are achieved when the central and peripheral routes of persuasion are merged together in the composition of the message. References Budweiser Super Bowl Commercial. (2014). Retrieved on March 8, 2014 from : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQB7QRyF4p4 Petty, R.E., & Cacioppo, J.T. (1996). Attitudes and persuasion: Classic and contemporary approaches. Boulder: Westview Press. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J.T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag. Petty, R. E., Brinol, P., & Priester, J.R. (2009). Mass media attitude change: Implications of the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion. In J. &. Bryant (Ed.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (3rd edition ed., pp. 125-164). New York: Routledge. Petty, R. E., Barden, J., & Wheeler, S.C. (2009). The elaboration likelihood model persuasion: Developing health promotions for sustained behavioral change. In R. C. DiClemente (Ed.), Emerging theories in health promotion practice and research (2nd edition ed., pp. 185-214). San Francisco: Josey-Bass. Petty, R. 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