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The Role of Issue-Relevance in the Elaboration Likelihood Model Olivia Smith
University of Tennessee
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ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to identify the strong relationship between issue-relevance and
central or peripheral route persuasion in the elaboration likelihood model. Relevance to the issue
allows persuasion to occur through the central route. This is found in multiple studies done by
Petty and Cacioppo, the authors of seminal works on the elaboration likelihood model and by
other researchers in various fields including psychology and advertising. When argument quality
is high, issue-relevance is high, and persuasion is central. In opposition, the argument quality is
low, issue-relevance is low, and persuasion occurs through various peripheral cues. It has been
found that issue-relevance is a commonality across all studies done relating to the literature
review, which solidifies that its relationship to persuasion is the strongest.
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Richard Petty and John Cacioppo developed the Elaboration Likelihood Model in 1979 to
study message elaboration in either central or peripheral routes of persuasion. Elaboration
likelihood is affected motivation and ability to engage. The central route of persuasion occurs
when elaboration likelihood is high and occurs through a considerable amount of issue-relevant
thinking. The peripheral route occurs when issue relevance is low, and persuasion happens
through a number of peripheral cues. Throughout the paper, studies done to prove the validity of
this model will be discussed, as well as the specific idea of issue-relevance in argumentation.
Central or peripheral route persuasion is determined by the relevance of the issue to the receiver.
Literature Review
The Elaboration Likelihood Model is a social scientific theory developed by Petty and
Cacioppo in 1979 that breaks down message elaboration into two routes: central and peripheral.
“The central route of persuasion is simply defined as the path of cognitive processing that
involves scrutiny of message content. In opposition, the peripheral route of persuasion is a
mental shortcut process that accepts or rejects a message based on irrelevant cues instead of
thinking about the issue” (Cacioppo & Petty, 2015, p. 189). Both routes are primarily based on
motivation, although the peripheral route has multiple influential factors including the expertise
and credibility of the communicator, popularity and attractiveness of the communicator, the
number and position of arguments, vocal cues and non-verbals (Cacioppo & Petty 1981).
Petty and Cacioppo researched this method in 1981 using a subject group of 145
undergraduate students majoring in psychology from the University of Missouri. The students
were told that they would receive extra credit in their psychology course for participating in this
study. All of the students were told that the university was undergoing an academic reevaluation
and that the new chancellor was looking for some recommendations by the students about policy
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changes he might implement. Half of the students were told that this change would occur in the
next year while the other half were told it would not occur for another ten years (Cacioppo,
Goldman, & Petty 1981). This was one of the independent variables used to measure high
personal involvement versus low personal involvement, which affects the route of persuasion
taken. Another independent variable used was the recording. Half of the students were told that
the recording was a man from a high school and the other half were told he was a Princeton
professor. This was done to measure high or low source expertise. Finally, half of the students
were told arguments with strong quality, using data and statistics and the other half heard weaker
quality arguments. The dependent variables were the measurement tests the students took after
listening to the arguments. They were to rate their opinions on a few different number scales to
determine their opinion about the new policy change. “The study revealed that under high
involvement, argument quality affected attitudes but source expertise did not, and under low
involvement a reverse patterned occurred” (Cacioppo, Goldman, & Petty, 1981, p. 852). The
results of this study show that issue-relevance played a large role in determining whether or not
the students were persuaded through the central of peripheral route. The difference between high
involvement and low involvement is simply how affected the group will be based on the result of
the argument. The central route of persuasion motivated the high involvement subjects. They
paid closer attention to the quality of the argument because it directly affected them. The
peripheral route of persuasion motivated the low involvement subjects because they did not have
to deal with the repercussions of this new policy, so rather than being motivated by the quality of
the argument, they were motivated by source expertise, which is an exterior factor of persuasion
(Cacioppo, Goldman, & Petty 1981).
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In a similar study implementing comparable ideas to the study described above, Cacioppo
and Petty in 1981 replicated this study to analyze the effects of The Elaboration Likelihood
Model and its relationship to advertising. College students were given a booklet with six
different advertisements, five of which were irrelevant to the study but familiar to the subjects.
The sixth ad was for Vilance Shampoo, a fictitious product created to test elaboration likelihood
and its correlation with the media. All of the subjects were asked to read the descriptions of each
ad in their booklet. The five irrelevant messages were the same throughout all of the groups in
the experiment, but the ad for Vilance Shampoo varied to create two different personal-relevant
conditions (Cacioppo & Petty 1981). The message written to the low-involvement group, those
who would not be affected by the results of this study, stated that the company was planning on
marketing the shampoo to only European countries, but that they were sent over as samples for
feedback to university students across the United States. The description for those in the high-
involvement condition, those who would be directly affected by the results of this study, read
that the university of the selected students had been chosen for research purposed because the
brand was going to soon be hitting the local marketplace.
The Vilance Shampoo ad was created in four different versions with two independent
variables. The two variables were the attractiveness of the couple and their reasons for why they
liked the product. One ad had a couple that was rated as highly attractive and the other had a
couple rated as moderately attractive. The ad with the strong argument contained persuasive
information about the shampoo, such as “Vilance contains minerals that strengthen each hair
shaft so it helps to prevent split ends (Cacioppo & Petty, 1981, p. 17).” The opposing ads had
weaker arguments; such as the shampoo color was brown and looked natural. After all of the
subjects read the messages, they were asked a series of questions and were asked to rate the
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shampoo on multiple scales. What Cacioppo and Petty found after their analysis was that the
subjects who were exposed to ads with stronger arguments or more attractive models liked the
product more, which was an unsurprising find. What they found more interesting was a
“significant argument-quality-by-involvement interaction (Cacioppo & Petty, 1981, p.17).” More
simply defined, this means that those whose attitudes were of high personal relevance paid closer
attention to the quality of the argument, which is the central route of persuasion. However, those
under low-involvement had no significant data revealing that they had been persuaded by the
peripheral route.
Finally, Festinger and Allyn studied the effect of distractions in persuasive contexts
(1986). High school students were presented with a speech discussing the danger of teenage
driver on the road. One group of students was forewarned of the topic and was told that
following the speech their opinions would be assessed and other group was told that they were to
analyze the speaker’s personality (Festinger 1986). The students with extreme opinions or those
who felt the topic was important were considered to be the high-involvement subjects. “A
significant difference was found such that there was more persuasion in the personality than the
opinion orientation condition (Festinger, 1986, p. 139).” Meaning that those who were told to
evaluate the personality of the speaker were persuaded more by the argument that teenage drivers
are dangerous than those who were told to formulate opinions about the subject. This concluded
that the peripheral route of persuasion in a public speaking scenario was more prominent than the
central route. The two explanations for this happening were that those forewarned in the opinion
orientation group stimulated those students to counter argue the speaker, or that the subjects in
the personality orientation group were distracted from the message the speaker was conveying in
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order to focus on his personality. This study portrays that The Elaboration Likelihood Model is
persuasive both centrally, but more prominently peripherally, in a public forum.
The Relationship between Central or Peripheral Route Persuasion and Issue-
Relevance Pertaining to the Elaboration Likelihood Model
Petty and Cacioppo developed the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion to
distinguish the different factors that allow people to be persuaded by either the central or
peripheral route. There are a number of elements to this, but one that is most prevalent is issue-
relevance. Persuasion Theory and Research (O’Keefe, 1990) discusses the variations in the
degree of elaboration. He states, “The elaboration likelihood model is based on the idea that,
under different conditions, receivers will vary in the degree to which they are likely to engage in
‘elaboration’ of information relevant to the persuasive issue. By ‘elaboration’ is meant (roughly)
engaging in issue relevant thinking” (O’Keefe, 1990, 96). Issue-relevant thinking can be defined
as how attentive a group will be to a message depending on their relationship to it. Issue-
relevance can also be referred to as involvement. Involvement is looked at as either high or low;
high involvement subjects are more likely to be persuaded centrally while low involvement
subjects typically are persuaded by peripheral cues. This is shown in the study discussed in the
literature review (Cacioppo, Goldman, & Petty, 1981, p. 852). O’Keefe (1990) continues in his
discussion examining low issue-relevant thinking, saying “sometimes receivers wont undertake
so much issue-relevant thinking; no one can engage in such effort for every persuasive topic of
message, and hence sometimes receivers will display relatively little elaboration” (96). What he
means by this is that those who are in low issue-relevant conditions rarely put in effort to listen
to the argument and allow it to persuade them based on its quality, so the elaboration they
portray is minimal and the route they are persuaded on is peripheral.
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Issue-relevance and argument quality go hand-in-hand. If the argument quality is high,
subjects will engage in extensive issue-relevant thinking, which will lead to the route that will
persuade them. In high argument quality conditions, central route persuasion is most likely to
occur. O’Keefe and Jackson (1995) examine what happens when issue-relevance is low, saying
(1995) “when the receiver does not engage in extensive issue-relevant thinking, ‘peripheral
routes to persuasion’ are said to be engaged…the outcome of persuasive efforts is taken to
commonly depend upon the receiver’s use of simplifying decision principles (‘heuristics’)” (88).
Without issue-relevance, the receiver is guided by exterior motives, such as the extent to their
feeling toward the communicator or their opinion on the credibility of the speaker.
In a study done by Petty and Cacioppo (1981), undergraduate students examined a variety
of advertisements and provided their impressions of them. The independent variables in this
study were product involvement, source attractiveness, and message quality, which all have a
different but prominent relationship with issue-relevance. Not surprisingly, they found that
“when the advertisement was high in personal relevance to the subjects, the quality or cogency of
the arguments presented in the ad had a much greater impact on the attitudes toward the
advertised product than when the ad was of low relevance (Petty & Cacioppo 23). This is
because the students who thought the results of their responses would directly affect whether or
not the shampoo was sold in cities near them, they took the survey much more seriously and
allowed the advertisements to persuade them based on argument quality rather than the overall
aesthetics of the ad.
Bryant and Zillmann (2008) further analyze the importance of issue relevance in
persuasive messages. They discuss an extension to the study done by Petty and Cacioppo (1981).
Burnkrant and Unnava (1989) found in their study that “simply changing the pronouns in a
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message from third person (e.g., one or he and she) to the second person (i.e., you) was sufficient
to increase personal involvement and processing of the message arguments” (172). The messages
that contained self-relevant pronouns were more persuasive, strong arguments. This study
provides evidence that issue-relevance can be created with the usage of pronouns, which means
that central and peripheral route persuasion can be influenced by something as simple as
pronouns.
O’Keefe discusses the factors that affect elaboration motivation, and while there are
many, the main three are receiver involvement, the presence of multiple sources, and the
receiver’s degree of “need for cognition” (99). Focusing on issue-relevance, the most prevalent
factor is receiver involvement. O’Keefe (1995) defines receiver involvement as “where
involvement is understood as the personal relevance of the topic to the receiver. As a given issue
becomes increasingly personally relevant to a receiver, the receiver’s motivation for engaging in
thoughtful consideration of that issue presumably increases” (99). This further solidifies that an
argument that is issue-relevant is going to motivate the receiver to scrutinize the message and be
persuaded centrally by the argument quality rather than through peripheral cues.
Conclusion
The Elaboration Likelihood Model discusses the abilities and motivations behind the
central and peripheral routes of persuasion. A major component in persuasion routes is relevance
of the issue to the receiver. It has been confirmed through numerous studies that when issue-
relevance is high, the receiver is persuaded through the central route and when issue-relevance is
low; the receiver is persuaded by peripheral cues. Currently, the bulk of studies done relating to
persuasion are based on advertisements. To further the study of persuasion and issue-relevance
from a psychological perspective, new research could study the motivations of certain behaviors
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to determine if the behavior elicited was due to the specific action that occurred or because of an
ulterior motive such as the relationship with the person, current mood, or any other factors
unrelated to the action performed by the other. Expanding this theory to other fields would allow
the core ideas behind it to flourish in greater detail and further solidify the argument of central
and peripheral route persuasion.
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References
Bryant, J., & Zillmann, D. (Eds.). (2008). Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Burnkrant, R., & Unnava, R. (1989). Self Referencing: A Strategy for Increasing Processing of Message Content. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 628- 638. Cacioppo, J., & Petty, R. Central and Peripheral Routes to Persuasion: Application to Advertising [Electronic version]. Advertising and Consumer Psychology, Chapter 1. Cacioppo, J., Goldman, R., & Petty, R. (1981). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
(Vol. 41, No. 5). American Psychological Association, Inc. Cacioppo, J., & Petty, R. (1986). The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion [Electronic version]. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19. Academic Press, Inc. Griffin, E., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. (2015) A First Look at Communication Theory (9th ed.). New York; McGraw-Hill. Jackson, S., & O’Keefe, D. (1995). Argument Quality and Persuasive Effects: A Review of Current Approaches. Argumentation and Values (pp. 89-92). Annadale, VA: Speech Communication Association. Petty, R., & Cacioppo, J. (1981). Issue Involvement as a Moderator of the Effects on Attitude of Advertising Content and Context. In Advances in Consumer Research 8, 20-24. Petty, R., & Wegener, D. (1999). The Elaboration Likelihood Model: Current Status and Controversies. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual Process Theories in Social Psychology (pp.41-72). New York: Guilford Press.
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