People may have strong attitudes about certain views, and attitudes about other things that are not nearly as strong. Either way, there are methods of persuasion that can be implemented in order to change a person's attitude, but there are several factors that are involved that have to be considered. The main factor to consider when trying to persuade someone is the way in which they process the information that you are trying send them. People tend to use a process called elaboration (Greenwald, 1968), which can be defined as thinking about and teasing apart an argument, to varying degrees. According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), there are two major routes that people take when processing information, which are the central route, and the peripheral route respectively. People that take the central route to persuasion usually focus on the actual content of the message, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses to the argument at hand. However, when people are not concerned and/or are otherwise busy, they tend to take the peripheral route to persuasion, and instead focus on the superficial cues that are presented to them. These cues can range from being body language to the length of the material. No matter what the case, the central route gives us a much better understanding of the argument contained in persuasive communication.
It might be a bold claim, but I would like to think that I take the central route to persuasion over the peripheral route. This may be due to my relatively recent understanding of research methods that I have gained over my college years, but overall I tend to look for statistics and the reporting of evidence when articles make claims, as opposed to looking at a long article and assuming that it has to be right. Especially when it comes to making important decisions, such as which president I'm going to vote for, I believe that taking the central route is crucial, as making decisions off of mindless cues is pointless. Taking the previous example (though I would consider myself to be more liberal than conservative), when making my decision to vote for president, I definitely took some of the time out of my day to really look into the different policies that each candidate promised to adopt. I also looked at the track records of both the candidates, especially that of President Obama, in order to see if their previous statements held any validity.
Word Count: 411
References
Greenwald, A. G. (1968). Cognitive learning, cognitive response to persuasion, and attitude change. In A. G.
Greenwald, T. C. Brock, and T. M. Ostrom (Eds.), Psychological foundations of attitudes (pp. 147-
170). New York: Academic Press
Petty, R.E., & Cacioppo, J.T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes
to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag
It might be a bold claim, but I would like to think that I take the central route to persuasion over the peripheral route. This may be due to my relatively recent understanding of research methods that I have gained over my college years, but overall I tend to look for statistics and the reporting of evidence when articles make claims, as opposed to looking at a long article and assuming that it has to be right. Especially when it comes to making important decisions, such as which president I'm going to vote for, I believe that taking the central route is crucial, as making decisions off of mindless cues is pointless. Taking the previous example (though I would consider myself to be more liberal than conservative), when making my decision to vote for president, I definitely took some of the time out of my day to really look into the different policies that each candidate promised to adopt. I also looked at the track records of both the candidates, especially that of President Obama, in order to see if their previous statements held any validity.
Word Count: 411
References
Greenwald, A. G. (1968). Cognitive learning, cognitive response to persuasion, and attitude change. In A. G.
Greenwald, T. C. Brock, and T. M. Ostrom (Eds.), Psychological foundations of attitudes (pp. 147-
170). New York: Academic Press
Petty, R.E., & Cacioppo, J.T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes
to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag
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