Consider the evidence suggesting that there are different cognitive routes to attitude change
Consider the evidence suggesting that there are
different cognitive routes to attitude change
Name: Daniel Clay
Course: Social Cognition
Seminar Group: Thursday, 11.30 - 1.20pm.
Date: 13/3/01
Word Count: 2020
Consider the evidence suggesting that there are
different cognitive routes to attitude change
The persuasion process is something that occurs throughout our daily lives whether we are aware of it or not. Our attitudes are under constant bombardment from countless forms of advertising, propaganda and other individuals; all with varying degrees of success in persuading us to see things their way. Social psychologists (e.g. Allport, 1935) have long been interested in the study of attitudes and persuasion; due to this there are vast numbers of theories attempting to explain attitude change. One approach developed by Hovland, Janis and Kelley (1953) has given much food for thought for those interested in attitude change. For a message to be persuasive it must first gain the attention of whoever it is aimed at and must then be posited in a manner comprehensible to the receiver. It must then be mentally rehearsed by the receiver so as to establish a mental link between the arguments contained within the message and the response those persuasive arguments require.
Whether the communication actually persuades the receiver depends on a number of other factors, specifically: (1) the source of the communication, (2) the content of the message, (3) the channel through which the message is deployed, and (4) recipient factors. However, there is little agreement as to how these factors actually effect attitude change. The evidence that there are differing cognitive routes to attitude change will be discussed with reference to the elaboration-likelihood model (ELM) and the heuristic-systematic model (HSM). Both outline competing, but complimentary general frameworks to understand attitude change by proposing two different cognitive routes to attitude change. The idea of cognitive elaboration (i.e. understanding and evaluating a communication) in Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) ELM is essentially derived from Greenwald’s (1968) cognitive response model (CRM). The CRM sees people as intelligent information processors but doesn’t recognise peoples limitations in attending to information. In contrast both the ELM and Chaiken’s (1980) HSM are dual process models which distinguish between processing involving cognitive elaboration, referred to as ‘central route’ or ‘systematic’ processing and the shallower ‘peripheral’ or ‘heuristic’ processing.
The main premise of the ELM is that people are motivated to hold correct attitudes. Therefore in an ideal world everyone would process information via their central route which involves actively and thoroughly evaluating the message arguments. The person would then be able to draw upon all this information in order to confirm a particular stance. However postulate two of the ELM states that ‘although people want to hold correct attitudes, the amount and nature of issue relevant elaboration in which people are willing or able to engage to evaluate a message vary with individual and situational factors’ (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986, p.128). This is similar to Chaiken’s assumption that people are “economy minded souls” who require satisfaction with the least amount of effort expended. When time, motivation and ability are limited, cues in the persuasion context may induce change which takes place via the peripheral route in the ELM. This has been called heuristic processing by Chaiken (1980); heuristics are essentially mental shortcuts people use to evaluate an argument. For example source expertise, people may have learned that statements by experts tend to be more valid than those made by non-experts (Eagly and Chaiken, 1984). This decision rule can then be used when a person hears a statement made by an expert to by-pass the ‘central’ or ‘systematic’ route. The main difference between the ELM and HSM is that the conception of heuristic processing is much narrower than the ELM’s use of peripheral route persuasion. This has benefits in that it incorporates more variables that may effect peripheral persuasion, however Eagly and Chaiken (1993) argues that as the ELM offers only the most basic explanation as to how peripheral mechanisms operate, it may actually be limited in its use (p.327). According to Petty and Cacioppo, heuristic processing is one of many strategies (including classical conditioning, identification) that form the peripheral route to persuasion. They all have in common the fact that the validity of the argument itself is not directly considered by the message recipient, rather only external cues. The two routes could be seen as complimentary as one emphasises argument quality whilst the other focuses on persuasion cues (e.g. source attractiveness) which permit persuasion without affecting argument scrutiny (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986, p.134). The differences between the HSM and ELM’s shallow processing conceptualisations will be examined later; we shall now consider the evidence supporting separate cognitive routes to attitude change.