Petty
and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model
Traditional
approaches to persuasion, like the Yale model, tend to assume
that persuasion occurs when listeners (or viewers) learn a
message. If you learn, and remember, the ideas from a message,
you are likely to be persuaded by it. On the other hand, if
you do not learn, and cannot remember, the ideas from a
message, you will not be persuaded by it. Often persuasion is
accompanied by learning, so there is a reason to think that
learning could be associated with persuasion.
However, learning is not always part of persuasion. Sometimes,
for example, an advertisement is so annoying that we just
cannot forget it -- and we hate the product or company
that sponsored it. Here, we learned the message but were just
not persuaded by it. Other times we may hear or see the
beginning of a message and then start thinking about the topic
without paying much attention to the message. For example,
when I see a public service ad about buckling up my seatbelt,
once I recognize the topic (wearing seat belts) I start
thinking about one of my relatives who was thrown through the
windshield of a car -- and suffered serious cuts to the face.
These thoughts revitalize my determination to always wear my
seatbelt. But then I realize the commercial is over and I
haven’t paid any attention to it. I don’t remember the
points that it made. I was persuaded: My attitudes toward seat
belts were reinforced or strengthened. If the commercial had
not prompted me to think about my relative I would not have
reinforced my attitude, but I did not learn anything from the
message. These two ideas -- that we can learn a message but
not be persuaded by it and that we can be persuaded without
paying attention to or learning a message -- set the stage for
the Cognitive Response model of persuasion.
The Cognitive Response approach states that receivers, or
audience members, can be active participants in the persuasion
process (Perloff & Brock,
1980). The Cognitive Response
Model argues that persuasion is not caused directly by
messages; we are only persuaded if we have thoughts
that agree with the message. Therefore, persuasive messages
create attitude change by encouraging listeners to have
favorable thoughts. This means that if we want to understand
persuasion we have to understand what receivers are likely to
think about a message: (1) how many thoughts they have
about a message and (2) whether those thoughts are favorable
to the message (which means persuasion is happening) or unfavorable
to the message (which means persuasion is not occurring).
To return to the hypothetical examples, the thoughts I had in
response to the annoying commercial were unfavorable
and I was not persuaded by it, even though I learned that
stupid commercial by heart. On the other hand, my thoughts in
response to the seat belt commercial were favorable and
I was persuaded without paying attention to, or learning, the
message. Of course, if I do learn a persuasive message and am
persuaded by it, I will have favorable thoughts. The Cognitive
Response Model explains how persuasion occurs, or does not
occur, in all of these situations.
There are two main versions of the Cognitive Response Model.
One was developed by Chaiken (1980) and is called the
Heuristic and Systemic Processing Theory. More work, however,
has been done on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)
developed by Petty and Cacioppo (Petty &
Cacioppo, 1981;
Petty, Ostrom, & Brock, 1981). I will focus this
discussion on Petty and Cacioppo’s ELM because more research
examines it.
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