Persuasion and attitude change (Hovland-Yale model and Elaboration-Likelihood model)

Persuasion and attitude change (Hovland-Yale model and Elaboration-Likelihood model)

1. Hovland-Yale model

   • The communicator
     • Experts vs Non-experts - Experts appear to be more persuasive than non-experts. The same arguments are more convincing if the audience believes that the person delivering the message knows what they are talking about.
       • Baron and Bryne (1997) suggest that this is why Tv adverts often put their experts in white coats, to emphasise the scientific status of the message.
     • The credibility, status and attractiveness of the communicator appear to play an important part in persuasion.
     • The use of celebrity endorsement is not always effective (Humes,1992). the celebrity can overshadow the product in this case the celeb is remembered but not the product.
   • The message
     • It appears to be more effective for a communicator to present a two-sided balanced argument to try to persuade an undecided audience. Two sided arguments make people more resistant to later arguments that contradict the original message.
       • McGuire (1964) - Suggested that 2-sided arguments mean that people become 'innoculated' against later conflicting arguments. He proposed that messages that weakly attack their arguments should be put forward in order to make the favoured message more rresistant to other conflicting arguments. (Baron and Byrne (1997)
     • Fear in the message
       • Fear arousal seems to be effective if the message: creates a substantial fear in people, provides a simple way of coping with the fear, if the recipients believe that the dire warnings will affect them. However if the message simply frightens people and these 3 criteria are not met then the message is more likely to be ignored, rejected or denied.
       • Repeated exposure to the message
         • Zajnoc in the 1990s coined the term 'mere exposure'. this states that 'mere repeated exposure of the individual to the stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude towards it'. The stimulus can refer to people and objects. Given time and repeated exposure we can grow to like most things.
   • The audience
     • Generally, studies suggest that people of moderate intelligence and moderate self-esteem are more readily persuaded by messages than those at either end of the continuum. (wood and stagner 1994)
     • Eagly and Carli (1981) found that both women and men are more easily persuaded by topics the know little about and are not interested in than topics on which they are well informed.
     • Self-esteem: Baumeister and Covington (1985) found that there is no difference in how easily people of low ar high self-esteem are persuaded.
     • Intelligence may increase peoples understanding of the message, but decrease their agreement with it since they might spot weaknesses in the message.
   • The channel
     • Face to face interaction seems a particularly good way of persuading people because the message can be tailored to fit the individual.
     • With complicated messages, printed media are often more effective than visual messages, possibly because people pay more attention to it and can review written material
   • Evaluation
     • The model tends to see people as rational minded that can weigh up a huge amount of information, however this is not always the case. Most of the time people are cognitive misers. they take short cuts and jump to conclusions on the basis of limited information.
     • The studies measure the change of attitude but not the change of behaviour.
     • It does not take enough account of internal factors. The Hovland-Yale model focsses on external processes e.g the communicator but does not take sufficient account of underlying internal factors e.g attention and comprehension
     • Samples used in studies are usually students and army personnel, they are not representative of the population.

2. Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

   • Petty and Cacioppo (1981) suggested two routes to persuasive communication.
     • Central route
       • it is the message that is important. These messages require an audience to really think about the message
         • Creates a long-lasting attitude change
       • Lin et al (2011) - asked 263 Taiwanese students to take part in an online shopping study in a virtual shopping mall. Students had to select a mobile phone to purchase based on customer reviews. Students also completed a 'need for cognition' measure. High need for cognition students based their decision on review quality and students with low need for cognition based their decision on the large number of high quality reviews. This supports the ELM as it shows that students with a higher need for cognition focus on the quality of argument.
       • 1) is the audience likely to pay attention to the strengths of the arguments presented - is the message personally important to them?
       • 2) Some people enjoy analysing arguments and creating a deep understanding of the issues; they have a high need for cognition
       • 3) The message should be based on facts
     • Peripheral route
       • The focus is more on the context than on the message itself. The audience is not required to think deeply about the meaning of the message.
         • Creates a short lived attitude change
       • 1) some people do not want to spend spend time and effort to consider issues, or the message is not personally important / relevant to them, so they tend not to process the information in-depth - they are cognitive misers.
       • 2) Rather than presenting too many facts, advertisers may take the peripheral route to persuasion
       • 3) The mood created by the advert may be more important, or a celebrity is endorsing a product
   • Evaluation
     • It focuses on internal processes of attitude change i.e how attitudes are formed and changed
     • It takes on account of individual differences. for example, the need for cognition, motivation and interests.
     • Oversimplification: it is more likely that people are on a continuum rather than use one route or another. It is also unlikely that people only ever use one form
     • Difficult to predict behaviour from the model. It is a complex model taking into account several factors whilst this can be a strength it also makes it difficult to tell which type of processing people will use in any particular situation.