FINAL THEORY RESEARCH PAPER

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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.


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


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).


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


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


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.


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


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


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.


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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