Elaboration Likelihood Model Of Persuasion

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1. Elaboration Likelihood Model
The Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, developed by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo, is essentially a theory about the thinking processes that might occur when we attempt to change a person’s attitude through communication, the different effects that particular persuasion variables play within these processes, and the strength of the judgements that result.
At its core, and as the name suggests, the ELM assumes that individuals can differ in how carefully and extensively they think about a message and the position, object or behavior it is advocating. That is, in any given context, the amount of elaboration or thinking a person does about a message or issue can vary from low to high along an “elaboration …show more content…

This idea is called by most theorists as cognitive consistency. As the research continues however, Leon Festinger introduced the idea of cognitive dissonance wherein a person experiences a psychological discomfort if the idea that was introduced to him/her does not support his/her current beliefs and values. Since there is a bulk of information introduced to the public, there is a tendency that people will try, in various ways, to make enlign this information to their current beliefs and values. This is where selective processes comes …show more content…

The audiences interpret the media in their own perspective and tend to avoid messages that do not go along with their beliefs. Selective processes theory includes selective exposure, selective attention, selective retention and selective perception. The first two steps in this theory involve the selective exposure and selective attention. This step explains the tendency of the audience to expose themselves and/or to attend to messages they feel are align to their current attitudes or beliefs and interests. Political interest and opinion for example might influence the way an individual gave attention to a media message. Selective exposure and selective attention also include their tendency to avoid those that might create dissonance.
Selective retention, on the other hand, “is the process by which people tend to remember best and longest information consistent with their preexisting attitudes and interests.” In this step, an individual tend to remember more those that are closer to their beliefs and