Media Persuasion: The Elaboration Likelihood Model

An alternative model to the Hovland-Yale model was put forward by Perry

and Cacioppo (1981) who suggested that persuasion and attitude change
were the result of a more complex process. Their Elaboration-Likelihood
Model (ELM) consists of two routes which vary depending on the personal
interest of the message to the target audience. These two routes are
the:

Central route

Peripheral route

The Central Route

The Peripheral Route

An important concept in the ELM is the need for cognition (NC). This is
the view that some people have a stronger need than others to know
more about a concept/product etc.

Petty and Cacioppo (1986) argued

that people who are high in need of cognition are more likely to use the
central route (central processing).
It has also been argued that we are more likely to centrally process
information which is of relevance to us. If the message we are presented
with has little relevance to us or we have no direct experience of it, we
are more likely to use peripheral processing.

Would you use central or peripheral processing when forming attitudes

based on these media messages? Why?

Support for the

ElaborationLikelihood Model

Criticisms of the
ElaborationLikelihood Model

Homework 4:
Discuss the relationship between persuasion and attitude change.

[8

+ 16 marks]

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