Elaboration Likelihood Model
The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM for short) is a model in social psychology developed in 1986 by Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo . It describes the impact of a persuasive message on the recipient's attitude towards the subject of the message. Among other things, it is one of the best-known models in the field of media impact research .
Basic assumption
The ELM assumes 2 types of processing ( elaboration ) of a message, which can be viewed as antagonistic with regard to the influence on the change of an attitude as a result of persuasive communication:
- Central processing of the message
- Peripheral processing of the message
Central processing
This is primarily based on the arguments and the quality of the communication. These are actively compared, weighed and assessed by the recipient with the knowledge they have already acquired on the topic (or related related topics). On this basis, the arguments can then either be rejected or integrated with approval. (Approach of cognitive responses)
-
Requirement :
- The recipient has the need for cognition and the opportunity or ability to process the persuasive message.
- He is interested in the message and is motivated to process it cognitively with great effort. The topic of the message is relevant to him, he feels personally affected and he hopes to gain knowledge through processing the message. (In this case, motivation and directed attention can also be achieved by means of peripheral cues, as is often the case in advertising, for example.)
-
Consequence :
- The intended change in attitude of the message is stable (at least more resistant and persistent against counter-communication than change in attitude only on the peripheral route, see below), which is due to the fact that an active and motivated discussion of the arguments was carried out. (Both attention / motivation as well as "depth of processing" / "self-reference effect" are of great influence for the encoding of new information in the memory.)
- A prediction of the behavior is only conditional (but more so than with the peripheral processing path), i. H. only possible for specific behavior. (This dissociation between attitude and behavior was recognized as early as 1974 by Fishbein and Ajzen, who suggested the “ aggregation principle ” as an approach to improving ) The ELM, however, does not primarily serve the purpose of predicting behavior, but is dedicated to the mechanisms of attitude change.
Peripheral processing
The arguments and their quality are irrelevant here; instead, peripheral cues (e.g. cues, affects, moods) are used. These include characteristics of the sender such as its attractiveness, (presumed) competence or awareness, the length of the communication, etc. (As already noted above, a more precise differentiation or interpretation of such cues is necessary in order to clarify whether these are actually directly responsible for changing attitudes can be used or, as stated above, merely represent an attention signal which then activates the central route). Peripheral processing is the one that we use most often, even if we are usually not even aware of it (-> classical conditioning). Certain heuristic procedures save us time and cognitive effort.
-
Requirement :
- insufficient skills, insufficient motivation and low relevance of the topic. With regard to motivation, personal "concern" has proven to be quite relevant for the use of peripheral cues. People who are little affected by a topic rely more on peripheral cues (for example, the reference to the source of an article and its factual reference or the number of arguments) than on the strength (quality) of the arguments.
-
Consequence :
- Only weak, unstable attitude change.
- Only poor prediction of behavior is possible.
Even if both routes were initially viewed and treated as antagonistic, an interaction between the two is by no means excluded. (For example central processing route, which is moderated by the peripheral route - you can read a specialist article from a respected scientific journal attentively and with motivation and process it "centrally" or you can also receive the same information at a conference where the credibility of the speaker is Appearance, the approval of other colleagues, etc. can have a moderating influence.)
Influencing factors
Petty & Cacioppo also describe a number of factors that affect message processing.
deflection
Distraction reduces a recipient's ability to process via the central route. This affects the dominant cognitive response that the message would otherwise have triggered. A dominant response to a message that contains weak arguments is to try to find counter-arguments. By distraction, i.e. an interruption of this process, the resistance to influence is weakened. Petty, Wells, and Brock attempted this in 1976. The conditions were a strong or weak message and a distraction in 4 levels, from nonexistent to strong. They suspected that a strong form of the message elicited an affirmative response, with the distraction reducing the persuasion (power of the message to change attitudes) of the message. In the case of a weak form of the message, they mentioned the resultant generation of counter-arguments and a persuasion effect reinforced by distraction. Their hypotheses were supported by their experiments. They came to the results that with a weak message a distracted subject agrees more strongly with the message than one who is not distracted, and that with a strong message the undistracted subject agrees more strongly than the distracted subject.
Repetition
Repetition of stimuli is broken down into a two-phase attitude change process. In the first phase, repetition increases the chance of processing perceived information. In the second phase, excessive repetition of messages or information leads to boredom and reactance. Both behavior patterns then lead to information being less accepted.
Personal relevance
Topics that are of high personal relevance for the processing person are more likely to be processed via the central route, while irrelevant topics are often processed peripherally. If a topic has high personal relevance to a person, he is more likely to be influenced by good arguments, while a topic with low personal relevance will make the person receptive to weak arguments and peripheral cues .
Personal mood
People who are in a good mood are more likely to take the peripheral route of information processing with persuasive messages. This means that they are increasingly exposed to a possible change in attitude. Both strong and weak arguments lead to an increased acceptance (strong: .46 / weak: .47) of the persuasive message. People who are in a bad mood are more likely to take the central route of information processing with persuasive messages. This makes them less sensitive to a possible change in attitude. Messages with weak arguments lead to a change of attitude significantly less often (.30), whereas messages with strong arguments are most likely to be accepted (.53). If the listeners of a persuasive message are in a bad mood, strong arguments are most likely to bring about a change in attitude. If, on the other hand, the listeners are in a good mood, so-called cues (attractiveness, status, competence of the broadcaster, etc.) are most effective in bringing about a change in attitude.
Need for cognition
“A personality trait that can be used to differentiate individuals with regard to how much and how much they think about topics and problems”.
People with a high NC enjoy mentally and intensively dealing with a variety of situations and topics (cognitive activities), whereby the arguments and the quality of the communication are in the foreground. When confronted with persuasive messages, people with a high need for cognition tend to reflect more relevant to the content, show more processing of messages via the central path and are less susceptible to the influence of peripheral cues (personal characteristics, etc.) than people with a low need for cognition. The consequence for people with a high NC is that they are more likely to form their attitudes by observing the argumentation carefully and that the expression of the other person's opinion can bring about a stable change in attitude. A prediction of the behavior is nevertheless only possible to a limited extent, i. H. only applicable to specific behaviors.
On the other hand, people with low NC are generally less motivated and lack the ability to submit to cognitive exertion. For them, the arguments and their quality are completely irrelevant and the topic is also of little relevance, instead peripheral cues (personal characteristics such as attractiveness, credibility, etc.) are preferred. For this type of processing, only a weak, unstable change in setting results in response to the intended change in setting of the message. Therefore, only a poor prediction of behavior is possible.
Central and peripheral processes can also occur at the same time (Petty & Wegener, 1998a), but the interaction of the exact mechanisms and conditions was not explained in this theory (more explicitly see current two-process theory).
ELM in the media
Targeted repetition of a message is intended to increase the stability of the setting change in peripheral processing. A classic example is advertising that tries to change the attitudes of certain target groups (permanently).
literature
- Aronson, E. et al. (2003). Social psychology. Pearson study. ISBN 3-8273-7084-1
- Stroebe, Jonas, Hewstone; Social psychology; Springer Medizin Verlag Heidelberg, 4th edition, 2003
- Petty, Richard E .; Cacioppo, John T. (1986): The Elaboration Likelihood Model Of Persuasion. In: Advances in experimental social psychology (Ed. L. Berkowitz), 19, pp. 123-205. New York: Academic Press.
- Petty, Richard E., & Wegener, Duane T. (1999). The Elaboration likelihood model: Current status and controversies. Pp. 41-72 in: Shelly Chaiken, Yaacov Trope: Dual-process theories in social psychology The Guilford Press, 1999, ISBN 978-1572304215
Individual evidence
- ^ Greenwald, Anthony G .: Cognitive Learning, Cognitive Response to Persuasion and Attitude Change. In: Greenwald, Anthony G./Brock, TC / Ostrom, Th. (Ed.): Psychological Foundations of Attitudes. New York 1968, pp. 147-170
- ↑ Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (1974). Attitudes towards objects as predictors of single and multiple behavioral criteria. Psychological Review, 81, 59-74.
- ↑ Petty, Richard E./Wells, GL / Brock, TC: Distraction Can Enhance or Reduce Yielding to Propaganda: Thought disruption versus Effort justification. In: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 1976, pp. 874-884