Think or Feel? Understanding the Two Routes of Persuasion

Nowadays, everything is full of advertisements. Even if someone tries to ignore them, there can be one that gets the attention of a person. Maybe something that makes someone look even further, something that can change someone’s attitude towards buying or not, looking or not.  Zhou (2022) found in an experiment that people can respond to a video advertisement, process that information, and respond to it by analysing it, but also using other factors as information perceived and liked. Also, San Jose et al. (2009), in an online context, found that individual motivation can influence how an advertisement influences someone. But these two researches open the question: How does persuasion work? 

Read More: Psychology of Persuasion: How to get people to say yes

Persuasion in Action: Two Routes Available 

Having a change of mind is something pretty common for everyone every day. From what someone wants to eat to what to do next on a regular day, all of it is made by decisions and changes in everyday life. But how do these changes happen? The Elaboration Likelihood Model, created by Petty and Cacioppo, is an attempt to explain how people change of attitude. This model explains how effective communication can persuade someone to do something. In this model, persuasion happens through two routes: 

• Central Route: The first route is the result of a careful consideration of the information presented to someone.  
• Peripheral Route: The other one involves less information. When the information is presented to someone, there is a cue that might be something that attracts you to someone or stands out, and that cue leads to that someone accepting the information without further research or analysis. (Petty, Cacioppo, 1986). 

Read More: Know the Power of Attitude and Persuasion

Thinking Carefully: the Central Route 

One of the routes of persuasion involves looking carefully at what is in front of the person, not just accepting it. It sounds simple, but it actually is not. That route involves more work from the mind than what it actually looks like. Hutton & Baumeister (1992) point out that the central route of persuasion actually involves a lot more. To begin with, the person needs to pay attention to the content of the message (the information given) to analyse it through a cognitive process. Such as evaluating how rational that message is to the person in order to accept it or not. 

But this route is not bias-proof. If the information actually goes against a personal belief, it could not take the central route. But there is a variable there. Self-awareness. Research found that the more self-aware an audience is, the less likely people will take a message without reflecting and evaluating carefully before being persuaded (Hutton & Baumeister, 1992). 

The differences don’t stop there; there is also one more point to take into account. How does taking the central route affect the person? When talking about a change of attitude, there is a change in how someone behaves, not only for a short period of time. In experiments, people who took the central route in front of information presented attitude changes that were more persistent over time (Petty, 2013). 

Read More: The Art of Persuasion

Looking Not Looking: The Cues of the Peripheral Route 

The other route of persuasion involves a different way of taking the information presented in front of the person. Not going for the traditional rational way of evaluating to accept it or reject it. When the information takes the peripheral route of persuasion, it’s not carefully taken into evaluation. Instead, there is an association with positive or negative cues. Or the person makes an inference about the information presented based on the context cues and the position taken  (Petty, Cacioppo, 1984). It needs to be taken into consideration that this is not a careful pros and cons method. So the kind  of cues that the peripheral route takes, according to research, can be, for example: 

• Persuasive information presented during a nice lunch (association with a pleasant situation equals change in attitude). 
• The information presented is apparently too extreme (association with something unpleasant or uncomfortable, so negative attitude changes). 
• The source of a message is an expert (association of an apparent trustworthy source, positive change in attitude) (Petty, Cacioppo, 1984). 

Petty and Cacioppo (1986) researched more variables associated with the cues that can affect a person’s change in attitude. And there is one that proves to affect people as well when accepting or rejecting information: who gives it. But not just if someone is an expert or not, as previously mentioned. 

Huddleston used the information about the persuasion routes researched by Petty and Cacioppo  (1986) to do another experiment trying to sell a new brand of pencils to students. There were two ways that the pencil was presented: one advertisement had a description of the benefits of the pencil, such as it being easy to erase and at a competitive price. The other way was introduced by a presenter who smiled, presented an amicable attitude and was charming during the presentation. Which one convinced the students? The second one. 

A more recent example would be social media. How many times can someone open any social media platform and see a product presented by a celebrity, a model or an influencer? A campaign can be the face of a brand or even an organisation. Because someone who is related to a positive experience can also induce a change in attitude, and that is what the peripheral route looks like in action. 

Highs and Lows: Motivation and Ability for Persuasion 

There are two other factors that are involved in this process of taking the central or the peripheral route: motivation and ability. These two factors play a role when someone is being persuaded.  High levels of motivation and ability to process information lead to a careful analysis and consideration of what is presented to someone, but low levels of these two give, as a result, an analysis taking the peripheral route based on sentimental or other cues that can be perceived in a fast way (Mardhatilah et al., 2023). 

The higher the motivation, the more careful the scrutiny of the information presented by the person. Also, by going along the central route, the person will consider all the knowledge that the person has acquired. But with low motivation and ability, the desire to go through that process decreases, and there is a weak process of analysis (Winarsunu, 2023). Other factors involved in high or low levels, as researched by Winarsunu (2023), are: 

• Motivation factors: personal relevance, extrovert-introvert personality, psychological consistency, emotion. 
• Ability factors: message repetition, time limitation, knowledge and experience.

Read More: Why You Feel Sluggish Mid-Year and How to Boost Your Motivation  

Conclusions

Persuasion, according to the Elaboration Likelihood Model, takes two routes to change a person’s attitude towards something. The peripheral route involves taking situational or personal cues to process something in a fast way and act on it, and the central route involves a careful and thoughtful analysis. In this process, there is also the involvement of motivation and ability in order to determine whether there is a low or high process of information inside the persuasion. Motivation and ability can determine that.

References +

• Hutton, D. G., & Baumeister, R. F. (1992). Self-Awareness and Attitude Change: Seeing Oneself on the Central Route to Persuasion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18(1), 68–75.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167292181010 
• Mardhatilah, D., Omar, A., & Septiari, E. D. (2023). A literature review on persuasive communication: utilising the elaboration likelihood model to understand consumer engagement on social media platforms. Journal of Technology Management and Business, 10(2), 87-100. 
• Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Message Elaboration versus Peripheral Cues. In  Communication and Persuasion (pp. 141–172). Springer New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1- 4612-4964-1_6 
• Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1984). The effects of involvement on responses to argument quantity and quality: Central and peripheral routes to persuasion. Journal of personality and social psychology, 46(1), 69. 
• Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (pp. 123–205). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065- 2601(08)60214-2 
• Petty, R. E. (2013). Two routes to persuasion: State of the art. International perspectives on psychological science, II: The state of the art, 229-247. 
• SanJosé-Cabezudo, R., Gutiérrez-Arranz, A. M., & Gutiérrez-Cillán, J. (2009). The combined influence of central and peripheral routes in the online persuasion process. CyberPsychology & Behaviour, 12(3), 299-308. 
• Winarsunu, T. (2024). Developing the Contribution of Information Processing Activities in Forming  Persuasion. KnE Social Sciences, 555-562. 
• Zhou, Y. (2022, April). Experiment Report: Peripheral and Central Persuasion Name. In 2022  International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2022) (pp. 355-358).  Atlantis Press.