Elaboration Likelihood Model

The elaboration likelihood model (in short: ELM ) is a 1986 developed by Richard Petty and John T. Cacioppo model in social psychology. It describes the impact of a persuasive message on the recipient with respect to its attitude towards the issue of this announcement. It is among other things one of the most famous models in the field of media effects research.

• 2.1 deflection
• 2.2 repetition
• 2.3 Personal Relevance
• 2.4 Personal mood
• 2.5 need for cognition ( need for cognition )

Basic assumption

The ELM is based on two types of processing ( elaboration ) of a message that can be viewed as antagonistic with respect to the influence on the setting change as a result of persuasive communication:

Central Processing

This is primarily oriented to the arguments and the quality of the communication. These are active compared with the recipient already appropriated knowledge on the subject (or adjacent relevant subjects ), weighed and assessed. On this basis, the arguments can be either rejected or integrated agreement. (Recognition of cognitive responses )

• Prerequisite: The receiver has the knowledge need ( need for cognition ) and the opportunity and the ability to process the persuasive message.
• He is interested in the message and motivated to process cognitively consuming. The theme of the message is relevant for him, he feels personally affected and it is hoped that the processing of the message a gain in knowledge. ( Motivation and directed attention in this case can also be achieved using peripheral cues, as it often happens, for example in advertising. )

• The intentional setting change in the release is stable ( at least resistant and persistent against counter communication as a setting change only on peripheral route below), which is due to the fact that an active and motivated examination of the arguments was completed. ( both attention / motivation as well as " depth of processing " / " self-reference effect" are for the encoding of new information in memory of a very large influence. )
• A prediction of the behavior is limited ( but more than in the peripheral processing path ), that is, only for specific behaviors are possible. ( This dissociation between attitudes and behavior was recognized in 1974 by Fishbein and Ajzen, which proposed as an approach to improve the " aggregation principle") The ELM used but not primarily for the purpose of predicting behavior, but focuses on the mechanisms of attitude change.

Peripheral processing

Here, the arguments and their quality is not a concern; Instead, peripheral cues are used. These include characteristics of the sender as its attractiveness ( perceived) competence or notoriety, the length of the communication, etc. ( As noted above, a more precise differentiation and interpretation of such cues needed to clarify whether this actually right for the setting change be used or above merely stated represent a signal of attention, which then activates the central route ). The peripheral processing is the one that is used by us most when we also its usually not even aware are (-> classical conditioning ). Certain heuristics save us time and cognitive effort.

• Prerequisite: not have sufficient skills, sufficient motivation and low relevance of the topic. Regarding motivation has become the personal " concern" turned out to be quite relevant for the appointment of peripheral cues. People who are affected by a subject little, rather support ( the source of an article and its benefit in kind or the number of arguments, for example), than on the strength ( quality) of the arguments on peripheral cues.

• Only weak, unstable attitude change.
• Only bad behavior prediction possible.

If both routes were initially considered and treated as antagonistic, then an interaction of both does not exclude. (for example, central processing route, which will be moderated by peripheral route - you can read attentive and motivated a technical article of a respected scientific journals and process "central" or you can get the same information also at a meeting, where the credibility of the speakers be appearance, the consent of other colleagues may have a moderating influence, etc.. )

Factors

Petty & Cacioppo further describe a number of factors that affect the message processing.

Distraction

Distraction reduces the ability of a recipient for processing via the central route. This is the dominant cognitive response that would otherwise trigger the message, impaired. A dominant response to a message containing weak arguments, try to find counter-arguments. By distraction, so an interruption of this process, the resistance force is weakened against interference. Petty, Wells and Brock in 1976 did by an attempt to do so. The conditions were a strong or weak message and a distraction in 4 stages, from nonexistent to severe. They suspected that a strong form of the message triggers an affirmative response, the deflection the Persuasionskraft ( power of the message to result in a change of attitude ) of the message reduced. In a weak form of the Embassy called the consequent making of counter-arguments and enhanced by deflecting Persuasionswirkung. Your hypotheses were supported by their experiments. They came to the results that, for a weak message a deflected subject stronger the message agrees as a non- deflected, and that stronger with a strong message of non-deflected subject consents as the deflected.

Repetition

If good mood as a peripheral stimulus acts, then facilitates the acceptance of the message. However, avoid people in a good mood cognitive processes, because they could end their good mood.

Personal Relevance

Topics that are of high personal relevance for the processing person are processed more on the central path, while irrelevant issues are often processed peripherally. If a topic has high personal relevance for a person, it will be influenced more by good arguments, while a topic leads to lower personal relevance that the person for weak arguments and peripheral cues is receptive.

Personal mood

People who are in a good mood are in persuasive messages rather follow the peripheral route of information processing. Thus, they are exposed to possible setting change strengthened. Both strong and weak arguments lead to increased acceptance ( strong: .46 / weak: .47 ) of the persuasive message. People who are in a bad mood are in persuasive messages rather follow the central route of information processing. This makes them unresponsive to a possible change of attitude. Messages with weak arguments carry much less likely to change attitudes ( .30 ), messages with strong arguments, however, are believed most likely ( .53 ). If the listener a persuasive message rather cranky, strong arguments were most likely to effect a change in attitude. Are the listeners, however, a good mood, so-called cues are ( attractiveness, status, competence of the sender, etc.) most effectively to bring about a change in attitude.

Need for cognition ( need for cognition )

" A personality characteristic by which you can differentiate individuals in terms of how much and how much they think about issues and problems."

Individuals with a high NC makes it fun to mentally intensively with a variety of situations and topics deal (cognitive activities), which are for them the arguments and the quality of communication in the foreground. When confronted with persuasive messages people tend with high cognitive needs rather inhaltsrelevantem think, have a stronger processing of messages via the central route and are less susceptible to the influence of peripheral cues (personal characteristics, etc.) than those with low cognitive need. It follows as a consequence for people with a high NC, that they will form their attitudes rather by an attentive perception of argumentation and that the expression of the other person can bring a stable attitude change. A prediction of the behavior, however, is still difficult to make, that is only applicable to specific behaviors.

Persons with low NC are generally, however, not very motivated and do not have sufficient skills to undergo a cognitive effort. For them, the arguments and their quality are completely beside the point and also the topic comes up a little relevance to peripheral cues (personal characteristics such as attractiveness, credibility, etc.) are instead preferred. For this type of processing only a weak, unstable setting change is the result of the intentional setting change in the message. Therefore, only a poor predictor of behavior is possible.

Central and peripheral processes can occur simultaneously ( Petty & Wegener, 1998a ), the interaction of the precise mechanisms and conditions, however, was not explained in this theory (explicit see current two-process theory).

ELM in the media

By selectively repeating a message here, the stability of attitude change is to be increased in peripheral processing. A classic example is the advertising that so tries to change a setting in certain target groups (permanently).