Theories of Self-Persuasion

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Theories of Self-Persuasion
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Objectives

• What is self-persuasion?
• What is motivation?
• What is involvement?
• What is Elaboration Likelihood Model?

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Self-persuasion

• The theory of self-persuasion was created by Dr.
  Hovland at Yale University.
• It suggests that a receiver takes an active role
  in persuading himself or herself to change his or
  her attitude.

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Important Factors in Self-persuasion Motivation
and Involvement
Involvement is perceived importance evoked by a
subject.
Motivation is an activated state that leads to
goal-directed behavior. It is the reason for
behavior.
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Involvement and Leaning Situations
High-involvement learning situation
Classical
Low-involvement learning situation
Operant
Conditioning
Conditioning
Reasoning
Thinking
Thinking
Commonly used Occasionally used
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The Four Levels of Involvement

• Greenwald and Leavitt
• Preattention
• Focal attention
• Comprehension
• Elaboration

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Preattention

• Receivers use immediate analysis to process
  messages.
• This stage Involves little perceptual capacity.

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Focal attention

• Receivers attend to messages.
• Receivers typically pay attention to the messages
  concerned with the sensory elements such as
  unexpected or emotionally arousing elements.

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Comprehension

• Receivers attend to the semantic elements of the
  messages (words and language).
• Receivers learn the content of the messages

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Elaboration

• Receivers generate his or her own arguments
  concerning messages arguments or conclusions.
• Receivers connect with messages personally.
• Receivers use imagery to imagine the implications
  and interpret messages.

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Summary

• Preattention
• Immediate analysis
• Involves little capacity

• Focal attention
• Representations between texts and pictures

• Comprehension
• Intended meaning of representations

• Elaboration
• Personally connected
• Implications

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What is One of the Most Important Theories of
Self-persuasion?

• Petty and Cacioppo - The Elaboration Likelihood
  Model
• It describes how receivers elaborate on messages.
• It suggests that a receiver engages in
  issue-relevant thinking.
• Elaboration depends on individual and situational
  factors.
• Ability
• Motivation

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Exercise
You are driving from NYC to Stamford for a party
on a Friday evening. Based on your motivation and
ability to navigate through the traffic, please
decide whether to take I-95 or Route 1.
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The Essence of ELM
A receiver will tend to take on either peripheral
or central route of information processing to
elaborate on messages based on his or her ability
and motivation to process information.
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Two Main Routes of Processing

• Peripheral route
• Receivers try to react to messages.
• Receivers look for peripheral cues that are
  appealing to them to process information.
• Credibility trustworthiness or expertise
• Liking likeability
• Distinctiveness
• Consistency
• Consensus
• Attitudes formed or changed by this route process
  are relatively less persistent, resistant and
  predictive of long-term behaviors.

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Two Main Routes of Processing

• Central Route
• Receivers actively engage in processing messages.
  
• Receivers look for central cues that are relevant
  or important.
• Credibility trustworthiness or expertise
• Consensus
• Attitudes formed or changed by this route are
  relatively persistent, predictive of behaviors
  and resistant to change.

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ELM Process
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Effects of Elaboration/Counter Argument on
Persuasion
High

Area 1
Area 4
Favorability
Area 3
Area 2
Low
High
Elaboration
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Exercise 1 Peripheral or Central Cues?
Motivation
Lower
Higher


lower
Ability
Higher
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Exercise 2 Easy or Difficult to Persuade?
Motivation
Lower
Higher


lower
Ability
Higher
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Summary
Motivation
Lower
Higher


lower
1
2
Ability
Higher
3
4
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1 Lower Motivation and Ability

• Receivers process persuasive communications and
  look for peripheral cues to form temporary
  attitudes toward specific messages that represent
  peripheral cues.
• Receivers also focus on processing messages that
  formulate elementary meaning analysis (Alba and
  Hutchinson, 1987).
• Classical conditioning may be executed in
  persuasive communications.

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2 Higher Motivation and Lower Ability

• This condition is ideal.
• Operant conditioning may be executed in
  persuasive communications.
• Higher levels of motivation could facilitate
  information processing of persuasive
  communications that feature appealing and
  simplified messages.

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3 Lower Motivation and Higher Ability

• This condition could present some challenges.
• The lower levels of motivation could prevent
  receivers from wanting to process persuasive
  communications.
• Because receivers have higher levels of ability
  to process persuasive communications, they could
  either ignore or reject any messages in
  persuasive communications.
• Research, for example, has found that experiences
  in using a credit card could have an inverse and
  negative effect on comprehension of the financial
  disclosures related to a credit card
  advertisement (Wang, 2012).

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4 Higher Motivation and Ability

• Receivers would activate higher levels of
  involvement with persuasive communications (Wang,
  2012).
• Disconfirmation could emerge when knowledgeable
  receivers evaluations of persuasive
  communications indicate discrepancies due to
  their counter-arguments (Alba and Hutchinson,
  2000 Chang, 2004 Wang, 2009).
• Strategically selecting selling points to include
  in persuasive communications that appeal to
  knowledgeable receivers could be the most
  important and challenging task.

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Message Strategies
Motivation
Lower
Higher
Peripheral cues Simplified messages Classical conditioning Peripheral cues Incentives Operant conditioning
Vivid and attention-getting visuals. Using priming and framing Consistency Credible messages Consensus Strong arguments Details Important benefits
lower
Ability
Higher
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Exercise 3
Motivation
Lower
Higher


lower
Ability
Higher
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Strengths Weaknesses

• Strengths
• It recognizes the importance of receiver
  responses that are specific to message arguments.
• It recognizes the importance of individual and
  motivational factors in information processing.

• Weaknesses
• It can not calculate the result.
• It may not account all factors in the process.

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Questions

• Can ELM model help explain Yale Schools Message
  Learning Theory?

• Are they different?