Elaboration likelihood model

The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion is a dual process theory describing the change of attitudes. The ELM was developed by Richard E. Petty and John Cacioppo in 1986.

The study of attitudes and persuasion began as the central focus of social psychology, featured in the work of psychologists Gordon Allport (1935) and Edward Alsworth Ross (1908). Allport described attitudes as "the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary social psychology". Considerable research was devoted to the study of attitudes and persuasion from the 1930s through the late 1970s. These studies embarked on various relevant issues regarding attitudes and persuasion, such as the consistency between attitudes and behaviors and the processes underlying attitude/behavior correspondence. However, Petty and Cacioppo noticed a major problem facing attitude and persuasion researchers to the effect that there was minimal agreement regarding "if, when, and how the traditional source, message, recipient, and channel variables affected attitude change". Noticing this problem, Petty and Cacioppo developed the elaboration likelihood model as their attempt to account for the differential persistence of communication-induced attitude change. Petty and Cacioppo suggested that different empirical findings and theories on attitude persistence could be viewed as stressing one of two routes to persuasion which they presented in their elaboration likelihood model.

Core ideas

There are four core ideas to the ELM.

The ELM predicts that the degree of thought used in a persuasion context determines how consequential the resultant attitude becomes. Attitudes formed via high-thought, central-route processes will tend to persist over time, resist persuasion, and be influential in guiding other judgments and behaviors to a greater extent than attitudes formed through low-thought, peripheral-route processes.
The ELM also predicts that any given variable can have multiple roles in persuasion, including acting as a cue to judgment or as an influence on the direction of thought about a message. The ELM holds that the specific role by which a variable operates is determined by the extent of elaboration.

Assumptions

Assumption 1: "People are motivated to hold correct attitudes"

Assumption 2: "Although people want to hold correct attitudes, the amount and nature of issue relevant elaboration in which they are willing or able to engage to evaluate a message vary with individual and situational factors"

Assumption 3: "Variables can affect the amount and direction of attitude change by:

Serving as persuasive arguments;

Serving as peripheral cues; and/or

Affecting the extent or direction of issue and argument elaboration"

Assumption 4: "Variables affecting motivation and/or ability to process a message in a relatively objective manner can do so by either enhancing or reducing argument scrutiny"

Assumption 5: "Variables affecting message processing in a relatively biased manner can produce either a positive (favorable) or negative (unfavorable) motivational and/or ability bias to the issue-relevant thoughts attempted"

Assumption 6: "As motivation and/or ability to process arguments is decreased, peripheral cues become relatively more important determinants of persuasion. Conversely, as argument scrutiny is increased, peripheral cues become relatively less important determinants of persuasion."

Assumption 7: "Attitude changes that result mostly from processing issue-relevant arguments (central route) will show greater temporal persistence, greater prediction of behavior and greater resistance to counter-persuasion than attitude changes that result mostly from peripheral cues."

Under the central route, persuasion will likely result from a person's careful and thoughtful consideration of the true merits of the information presented in support of an advocacy. The central route involves a high level of message elaboration in which a great amount of cognition about the arguments are generated by the individual receiving the message. The results of attitude change will be relatively enduring, resistant, and predictive of behavior.
On the other hand, under the peripheral route, persuasion results from a person's association with positive or negative cues in the stimulus or making a simple inference about the merits of the advocated position. The cues received by the individual under the peripheral route are generally unrelated to the logical quality of the stimulus. These cues will involve factors such as the credibility or attractiveness of the sources of the message, or the production quality of the message. The likelihood of elaboration will be determined by an individual's motivation and ability to evaluate the argument being presented. Examples: Routes of ELM (central and peripheral)

Central route

thumb|469x480px|ELM diagram

The central route is used when the message recipient has the motivation as well as the ability to think about the message and its topic. When people process information centrally, the cognitive responses, or elaborations, will be much more relevant to the information, whereas when processing peripherally, the individual may rely on heuristics and other rules of thumb when elaborating on a message. Being at the high end of the elaboration continuum, people assess object-relevant information in relation to schemas that they already possess, and arrive at a reasoned attitude that is supported by information. or individual factors like the need for cognition. However, if the message recipient has a strong negative attitude toward the position proposed by the message, a boomerang effect (an opposite effect) is likely to occur. That is, they will resist the message and may move away from the proposed position. Two advantages of the central route are that attitude changes tend to last longer and are more predictive of behavior than the changes from the peripheral route. Overall, as people's motivation and ability to process the message and develop elaborations decreases, the peripheral cues present in the situation become more important in their processing of the message.

Peripheral route

The peripheral route is used when the message recipient has little or no interest in the subject and/or has a lesser ability to process the message. Being at the low end of the elaboration continuum, recipients do not examine the information as thoroughly. In addition, credibility can also be used as a heuristic in peripheral thinking because when a speaker is seen as having a higher credibility, then the listener may be more likely to believe the message. Credibility is a low-effort and somewhat reliable way to give us an answer of what to decide and/or believe without having to put in much work to think it through. Peripheral route processing involves a low level of elaboration. The user is not scrutinizing the message for its effectiveness.

If these peripheral influences go completely unnoticed, the message recipient is likely to maintain their previous attitude towards the message. Otherwise, the individual will temporarily change his attitude towards it. This attitude change can be long-lasting, although durable change is less likely to occur than it is with the central route.

Determinants of route

The two most influential factors that affect which processing route an individual uses are motivation (the desire to process the message; see Petty and Cacioppo, 1979) and ability (the capability for critical evaluation; see Petty, Wells and Brock, 1976). The extent of motivation is in turn affected by attitude and personal relevance. Individuals' ability for elaboration is affected by distractions, their cognitive busyness (the extent to which their cognitive processes are engaged by multiple tasks), and their overall knowledge.

Motivation

Attitudes towards a message can affect motivation. Drawing from cognitive dissonance theory, when people are presented with new information (a message) that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values, they will be motivated to eliminate the dissonance, in order to remain at peace with their own thoughts.

thumb|351x351px|Motivation and ability

Personal relevance can also affect an individual's degree of motivation. For instance, undergraduate students were told of a new exam policy that would take effect either one or ten years later. The proposal of the new exam policy was either supported by strong or weak arguments. Those students who were going to personally be affected by this change would think more about the issue than those students who were not going to be personally affected. Factors related to ability to think includes: time pressure, message repetition, distraction, knowledge, fatigue, social pressure, etc.

Message repetition enables more argument scrutiny. If the argument is strong, repetition leads to more change in attitude. For example, in marketing research, advertising leads to a favorable brand attitude as long as the arguments are strong and tedium is not induced. However, it is noticeable that repetition does not always lead to more attitude change. The effect of repetition also depends on other factors such as content of argument, and previous knowledge and attitude.

When Distraction is high, elaboration is lower due to limited mental power. In this case, people are less influenced by the quality of the argument in a persuasive message. Rather, they focus on simple source cues. Keeping other factors constant, a stronger argument leads to more attitude change when distraction is low; and a weak argument could lead to more attitude change when distraction is high.

Variables

A variable is essentially anything that can increase or decrease the persuasiveness of a message. Attractiveness, mood and expertise are just a few examples of variables that can influence persuasiveness. Variables can serve as arguments or peripheral cues to affect the persuasiveness of a message. According to the ELM, changing the quality of an argument or providing a cue in a persuasive context could influence the persuasiveness of a message and affect receivers' attitudes.

thumb|Figure I shows under high elaboration arguments have strong impact on the persuasiveness. Figure II shows under low elaboration cues serve as factors affecting attitudes. Figure III shows under moderate elaboration variables can affect motivation and ability to process in an objective manner and enhance or reduce persuasion. Figure IV illustrates that under moderate elaboration variables can affect motivation and ability to process in a biased manner and motivate or inhibit subjects to respond in a certain way.

Under high elaboration, a given variable (e.g., expertise) can serve as an argument (e.g., "If Einstein agrees with the theory of relativity, then this is a strong reason for me to as well") or a biasing factor (e.g., "If an expert agrees with this position it is probably good, so let me see who else agrees with this conclusion"), at the expense of contradicting information. Under low-elaboration conditions, a variable may act as a peripheral cue (e.g., the belief that "experts are always right"). While this is similar to the Einstein example above, this is a shortcut which (unlike the Einstein example) does not require thought. Under moderate elaboration, a variable may direct the extent of information processing (e.g., "If an expert agrees with this position, I should really listen to what they have to say"). If subjects are under conditions of moderate elaboration, variables might enhance or reduce the persuasiveness in an objective manner, or bialy motivate or inhibit subjects to generate a certain thought. with another concept self-validation: to affect the extent to which a person trusts their thoughts in response to a message (self-validation role). A person not only needs to have an attitude towards a message, but also needs to trust their own attitude as correct one so this message can influence their behaviors. If they do not deem themself as correct, they will mentally abandon their own thought. Because of its metacognitive nature, self-validation only occurs in high-elaboration conditions. The ELM posts that variables (credulity, happiness, etc.) can influence the amount and direction of processing, and self-validation postulates that those variables can affect how people use their thoughts as well. For example, when people are generating favorable thoughts about a new idea, they will be more self-affirmed if they are nodding their heads (a variable). Conversely, if they are shaking their heads, they will be less self-affirmed about their thoughts. (See more examples in Postures)

Consequences

For an individual intent on forming long-lasting beliefs on topics, the central route is advantageous by the fact that arguments are scrutinized intensely and that information is unlikely to be overlooked. However, this route uses a considerable amount of energy, time, and mental effort.

It is not worthwhile to exert considerable mental effort to achieve correctness in all situations and people do not always have the requisite knowledge, time, or opportunity to thoughtfully assess the merits of a proposal. Also, people are persuaded in peripheral routes based on import cues such as credibility of the information source. However, the sleeper effect could influence the strength of persuasion.

It is noteworthy that high elaboration does not necessarily lead to attitude change. Resistance to persuasion occurs when someone feels their freedom to perform a certain behavior is threatened. A famous study on reaction is conducted by Pennebaker and Sanders in 1976. The experimenters placed placard in campus toilets to discourage graffiti. The result of experiment suggests the amount of graffiti written on the threatening placards was significantly positively related to both authority and threat level. Findings are interpreted as reflecting reactance arousal.

In addition, inoculation theory must also be taken into account when it comes to persuasion.

Applications

Researchers have applied the elaboration likelihood model to many fields, including advertising, marketing, consumer behavior and health care, just to name a few.

In advertising and marketing

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The elaboration likelihood model can be applied to advertising and marketing.

In 1983, Petty, Cacioppo and Schumann conducted a study to examine source effects in advertising. It was a product advertisement about a new disposable razor. The authors purposefully made one group of subjects highly involved with the product, by telling them the product would be test marketed soon in the local area and by the end of the experiment they would be given a chance to get a disposable razor. Whereas, the authors made another group of subjects have low involvement with the product by telling them that the product would be test marketed in a distant city and by the end of the experiment they would have the chance to get a toothpaste. In addition to varying involvement, the authors also varied source and message characteristics by showing a group of the subjects ads featuring popular athletes, whereas showing other subjects ads featuring average citizens; showing some subjects ads with strong arguments and others ads with weak arguments. This experiment shows that when the elaboration likelihood was low, featuring famous athletes in the advertisement would lead to more favorable product attitudes, regardless of the strength of the product attributes presented. Whereas when elaboration likelihood was high, only the argument strength would manipulate affected attitudes. Lee et al. supported the studies on that product involvement strengthens the effects of "endorser–product congruence on consumer responses" when the endorsers expertise is well related with product to create source credibility. Lee's finding also helps to understand celebrity endorsement as not only a peripheral cue but also a motivation for central route.

Later in 1985, Bitner, Mary J., and Carl Obermiller expand this model theoretically in the field of marketing. They proposed in the marketing context, the determinant of routes is more complex, involving variables of situation, person, and product categories.

It is widely acknowledged that effects of ads are not only limited to the information contained in the ad alone but are also a function of the different appeals used in the ads (like use celebrities or non-celebrities as endorsers). In a study conducted by Rollins and Bhutada in 2013, ELM theory was the framework used to understand and evaluate the underlying mechanisms describing the relationships between endorser type, disease state involvement and consumer response to direct-to-consumer advertisements (DTCA). The finding showed while endorser type did not significantly affect consumer attitudes, behavioral intentions and information search behavior; level of disease state involvement, though, did. More highly involved consumers had more positive attitudes, behavioral intentions and greater information search behavior. However, high interactivity without the perceived informativeness would generate negative attitudes and low purchase intentions.

Authors Alexis Campbell and Jee Young Chung published an article in the spring of 2022 that explored how consumers reacted to social media advertisements featuring alcohol across the platforms of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The ELM was used to conduct the study. The ads would feature 12 of the most popular beer brands in the world, and in the ads, they would be linked to other activities that consumers would enjoy. For example, if an ad attempted to gain the attention of consumers who enjoy the season of summer, the ad would say "Coors Light: A cool drink for the summer." Technical and interpersonal quality of doctors' medical service were regarded as cues to the central route. In contrast, electronic word-of-mouth was regarded as a cue to the peripheral route of the ELM. Interaction quality and electronic word of mouth had a significant impact on the first adoption of physician services; however, information quality did not, which proved inconsistent with the ELM. Researchers concluded these inconsistencies may have been caused by users' lack of knowledge in specific fields, including the validity of certain health-related information. The quality of the physicians in online health communities impacts the patient's perception of the physician. This study is just one example of the ELM being used in advertising.

In a 2023 report on promotional messages for trust within mobile banking was deemed that individuals with more privacy and security concerns in regard to mobile banking tend to rely more on central route processing to evaluate whether or not to trust the mobile banking service. Trust is the vital area in deciding whether or not to sign up for and adopt to mobile banking. In order to accommodate for those hesitant to adopt, the advertisers need to use promotional messages to address the potential customers concerns by giving quality and persuasive messages to alleviate their fears.

Sigal Segev and Juliana Fernandes published a study in January 2023 to evaluate the use of the ELM and its central and peripheral processing routes to evaluate viral advertisements between 2009 and 2019. Similarly, Piao Pan and Hao Zhang published "Research on Social Media Advertising Persuasion Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model" based on 309 valid questionnaires collected as empirical data and found that when advertisements tried to be more persuasive, consumers were more likely to take the central processing route and become more involved in the content. On the other hand, when advertisements tried to be more informative, consumers were more likely to take the peripheral processing route and be less involved.

Playing into the trust of the adopters into the mobile banking, advertisers should not take the same approach to get different demographics of individuals to sign up for their mobile banking services. If they decide to advertise in a social media environment, they should tailor ads to individuals. In general, the message source credibility is a more impactful than electric word of mouth with an emotional appeal. However, women respond more to an emotional appeal, while men rely more often on source credibility, more of a central route approach. Alongside the gendered specific approach, there is also an age approach. More mature users are more responsive in overall than younger users. Possibly due to the desensitization of younger users due to more exposure to social media and the marketing that comes along with it. A way that the advertisers can gain more source credibility is by utilizing opinion leaders in their advertisements. Opinion leaders bolster information spread through central route processing. Fans/followers of the opinion leaders are more likely to forward messages and engage in depth. The choice of what opinion leader is to be utilized in the advertisement needs to be deliberate as well. The influencer's originality, uniqueness, and informativeness of posts directly influence purchase intention according to a 2023 study. The more that the opinion leader stands out, the more likely the audience is to engage in whatever is being advertised, in depth. It would also be useful to target an audience with different knowledge levels with different strategies to get them to adopt. In a 2024 study about how social media influenced wine tourists' decision making it was determined that individuals with greater knowledge of wine were more driven by messages with perceived utility. Individuals with lesser knowledge of wine were more driven by opinion leaders, in this case mostly social media influencers. Those more knowledgeable and assumingly more engaged in a given topic may be more likely to be motivated as to what they can get out of a product or experience. Those with less knowledgeable are more likely to listen to those they trust when making the decision rather than their own analysis of the situation. In order to get the most interaction from an advertisement or a marketing scheme, the look of the spokesperson may be more influential then you would think. The "attractiveness" of the influencer has interaction and purchase effects. Trustworthiness also helps.

Source credibility is paramount in marketing anything. The viewer is drawn to credibility and is more likely to take that message to heart as displayed in a 2023 study on source credibility in reviews. Another 2023 study emphasizes how source credibility is used as a way to sell products, and it had effects in particular on experimental products. While source credibility may help with thought out purchases (central cues), impulse purchases can be influenced by emotion (peripheral cues). It is important to tailor these approaches to the consumer groups desired to purchase the product. Understanding the pathways of ELM can optimize the advertising.

An example of what not to do is found in a 2025 study of the messaging behind antimicrobial resistance. The information on it is hard to find, its not integrated into medical practices, poorly promoted, and the terminology is too technical. Those alongside contradictory messaging and no emotional punch or cultural relevance result in low elaboration and minimal attitude changes. Low argument quality and lack of persuasive cues hurt central and peripheral processing. Some messages are not acceptable in different places or to some people. Without attaining peoples trust, or at least gaining their attention, and keeping it, the result will be low elaboration and small attitude changes toward the company or product. This suggests that the advertising geared toward a specific ethnic group (in this case African Americans specifically) enhances brand love and loyalty among the ethnic group targeted by the advertisement. Ad cues relating to social identities can enhance brand relationships. Different communities represented allows for more emotional engagement and persuasive impact. Central cues include loan scheme quality, reputation of lending institution, structural assurance, and peripheral cues include social influence, and inclination to trust. These all enhance trust in the ai loan schemes. With trust in central and or peripheral routes, it increases likelihood of adoption

Although using peripheral cues is a persuasive choice, advertisers need to be extremely careful in addressing some issues to avoid controversy, such as using sacred symbols as peripheral cues in advertising.

In healthcare

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Recent research has been conducted to apply the ELM to the healthcare field. In 2009, Angst and Agarwal published a research article, "Adoption of Electronic Health Records in the Presence of Privacy Concerns: the Elaboration Likelihood Model and Individual Persuasion". This research studies electronic health records (EHRs), (an individual's) concern for information privacy (CFIP) and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM). The two researchers aimed to investigate the question, "Can individuals be persuaded to change their attitudes and opt-in behavioral intentions toward EHRs, and allow their medical information to be digitized even in the presence of significant privacy concerns?"

When the COVID-19 pandemic first broke out in 2020, authorities relied heavily on persuasion tactics for the population to adopt behavior changes so they could control the outbreak. Mark W. Susmann et al. published a study in the European Review of Social Psychology that described the use of the elaboration likelihood model to organize persuasion tactics used to conclude which ones led to behavior change based on the level of interest and motivation to respond. The study described the theory as, "useful" when using it to analyze persuasion amidst the pandemic "as it allows health communicators to identify variables that are likely to lead to the greatest amount of persuasion depending on whether recipients are likely to process the message deeply.".

Denise Scannell et al. published a study in the Journal of Health Communications that looked specifically into the discourse surrounding vaccines on Twitter by using the elaboration likelihood model to study the differences between pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine messages. The study found that pro-vaccine messages relied heavily on the central processing route while anti-vaccine messages used the peripheral processing route more, but the difference wasn't as drastic. Studies have shown programs regarding diet and nutrition for people living with multiple sclerosis have had a positive impact, as they assist with acceptance and allow people to feel they are in control. Studies in the United States have also shown that up to 70% of people living with MS will try diet as a form of therapy for MS. The ELM was used to sort findings into targeted messages based on three categories with the most substantial evidence: Vitamin D, fatty acids, and dietary diversity, which were used to create persuasive messages using practical examples and motivators. These messages used the Australian National Dietary Guidelines, which specify what types of foods to eat, not what nutrients to eat, as it was determined people associate eating with foods and not with nutrients.

In 2009, another study about the effects of consumer skepticism on online shopping was conducted by Sher and Lee. Data on young customers' attitudes about a product were acquired through an online experiment with 278 college students, and two findings emerged after analysis. First, highly skeptical consumers tend to stick with their original impression than been influenced by other factors (Central Route); which means, they are biased against certain types of information and indifferent to the message quality. Second, consumers with low skepticism tend to adopt the peripheral route in forming attitude; that is, they are more persuaded by online review quantity. Lee indicated, "these findings contribute to the ELM research literature by considering a potentially important personality factor in the ELM framework". Bilibili is a Chinese service that functions like a cross between Twitch and YouTube, using aspects of both platforms. This study examined how the success of a video contributed to a product's purchase. The study analyzed 511 science-related videos on Bilibili, employing ELM to examine factors such as video thumbnails, creator identity, and production. The study applied the ELM to online livestream shopping by looking at how millennials would react to other customers' impulsive spending tendencies, ways the people got persuaded, and how different information influenced decisions. With the advancements in live streaming, it's become a more prominent aspect of everyday life. Streamers can make a living and impact people's lives from the comfort of their own homes. The streamers engagement levels, viewership, and credibility are all examined to see how the ELM affects consumers buying habits. The study showed streamers with a higher viewership, more engagement, and more credibility were more likely to sell a product. Whereas a smaller creator would struggle to sell a product. The study also showed that online shopping, mainly due to streaming, caused an increase in impulse buys. Impulse buying is significantly more prevalent in developing economies like China and India. Because of all the exposure to new items from social media, online shopping has grown exponentially over the past couple of years. The streaming market has become oversaturated because of this, it is clearly shown in the study which, concluded that "approximately 1.23 million streamers are struggling with low conversion rates on selling products."

An eye-tracking study of online shopping to understand how customers use ELM in their e-commerce experience.
Using an elaboration likelihood approach to better understand the persuasiveness of website privacy assurance cues for online consumers.
Multichannel retailing's use of central and peripheral routes through Internet and cross-channel platforms.
Using ELM and signaling theory to analyze Internet recruitment.

In media

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Scholars have studied whether media modalities will serve as variable to affect which processing route to take. The previous researches by Chaiken suggested that audio and video modes tended to led receivers to heuristic processing (taking the peripheral route) rather than engage in systematic processing (taking the central route). Bootb-Butterfield and Gutowski have studied how media modalities, argument quality, and source credibility interact to influence receivers to process messages. Bootb-Butterfield and Gutowski conducted an experiment by providing students with strong or weak arguments from high or low credible sources in print, audio, or video modes. By giving participants with negative thought topics, experiment results shows that media modalities, source credibility, and argument quality have significant interactions in attitudes change and elaboration mounts: Within the print mode, the interaction between source credibility and argument quality was the least, partly confirmed that print mode would generate systematic processing. And participants generated more unfavorable thoughts towards weak arguments than strong arguments. Within the audio mode, there was no difference between weak and strong arguments with low credible sources; But, weak arguments with high credible sources generate more unfavorable thoughts than strong arguments. Within the video mode, arguments with low credible sources had no difference in elaboration mounts, while strong arguments with high credible sources produced more thoughts. "Structured evaluations of 12 smoking prevention messages based on three strategies derived from the ELM were conducted in classroom settings among a diverse sample of non-smoking middle school students in three states. Students categorized as likely to have higher involvement in a decision to initiate cigarette smoking, are reported relatively high ratings on a cognitive processing indicator for messages focused on factual arguments about negative consequences of smoking than for messages with fewer or no direct arguments. Message appeal ratings did not show greater preference for this message type among higher involved versus lower involved students. Ratings from students reporting lower academic achievement suggested difficulty processing factual information presented in these messages. The ELM may provide a useful strategy for reaching adolescents at risk for smoking initiation, but particular attention should be focused on lower academic achievers to ensure that messages are appropriate for them." Their hypotheses were based on restraint theory and the ELM. From the research, they found participants' attention (advertent/inadvertent) toward the images was manipulated. Although restrained eaters' weight satisfaction was not significantly affected by either media exposure condition, advertent (but not inadvertent) media exposure triggered restrained eaters' eating. These results suggest that teaching restrained eaters how to pay less attention to media body ideal images might be an effective strategy in media–literary interventions.

With the development of the internet and the emerging new media, L. G. Pee (2012) has conduct interesting research on the influence of trust on social media using the ELM theory. The findings resulted that source credibility, the majority influence, and information quality has strong effect on the trust for users.

Scholars have also studied on how the ELM functions on Connective-collective action on social media. "Connective-collective activities" means ones are able to receive other's personal opinions and add responses to them, so the information will be accumulated and turned into a collective one. On social media there four types of activities are considered as connective-collective: 1) commenting; 2) uploading materials; 3) relaying information received; 4) affiliating (i.e. Liking, following, etc.). By presenting experiment participants with Facebook posts and comments (civil or uncivil), they found that: civil comments will encourage more elaboration and therefore generate more willingness to engage in a discussion than uncivil comments; the more elaboration participants generate, the more they are willing to participant in the discussion. Social media has one variable that relates closely to the ELM, that being its algorithm. In a study titled, More Accounts, Fewer Links: How Algorithmic Curation Impacts Media Exposure in Twitter Timelines by Jack Bandy he examined how Twitter's algorithm was created. Jack determined that Twitter more recently changed their algorithm to be curation timeline based. Meaning that when buyers are interested and symmetric, then they are most likely to purchase. This algorithm takes a central route approach with the way it showed how a viewer with more interest would be more likely to purchase. Whereas the peripheral route within this study was with what he described as influence-and-exploit strategies. They used it as a framework by using the two distinct pathways of central and peripheral. The research they did was on WeChat, which is a popular social media for their research. They only used research from two years or earlier to ensure it was relevant to the current day. They determined how people processed the articles through a few characteristics. These were IQ, if they were positive, or if they were negative. They show this through experimentation using ELM to see how people make their decisions, and Elm helps clarify. They found that the quality of shared information affected how people responded. The lower the quality of information the more likely to have harmful emotional responses. They also found that people with depression are more likely to share harmful emotional content compared to other day-to-day users, to share opposing beliefs. They also found that people with a higher IQ are more likely to share information than those with a lower IQ. Also the higher the quality of information the likelier it will be shared. Similarly to another study done by Xiaoyi Zhang, Angelina Lilac Chen, Xinyang Piao, Manning Yu, Yakang Zhang, and Lihao Zhang who go into the innovation of Ai chatbots with a framework of ELM had some similar results. Similar results were that people do not respond positively depending on whether they are willing to accept the new Ai innovations. Similarly to the people who do not share positive content due to a depression.

On YouTube

YouTube has been a dominant form of social media since its creation in the early 2000's. Youtube had a monthly viewer base of 2 billion in the year 2020. With its constant popularity and dominance within the social media field, there have been countless studies and research that aim to find why it is so popular. A survey by Ana Munaro looked at how the ELM contributes to the success of YouTube. Her research is aimed to find out what features drive popularity on YouTube. Another important part when regarding language is the usage of function vs content words. By researching the impact of function words when compared to content words, Ana saw videos with more function words had more positive results, like more comment engagement, virality, and likes/dislikes. Function words are easier to understand and generally more entertaining, these aspects are similar to the peripheral route of the ELM. Whereas content words are longer and more confusing, which is similar to the central route of the ELM. Objectivity and emotion is another area within YouTube videos that can be interpreted in either the central or peripheral route. This study showed that if a video contained more objectivity or emotion it would be more popular, have more views, and more engagement. These findings play further into the ELM because a viewer is likelier to pay attention and be interested in a more animated and seemingly engaging work. Aside from the linguistic side of the study, further research consisted of posting time throughout the day and its impact. For example, weekend posts and non-business hour posts were the best times to have positive engagement. Overall the study showed the many different implications of how the ELM profoundly affects how a person reacts with videos across YouTube.

A study done by Ritik Raushan and Dr. Akansha Dubey researched how they use ELM to help examine what viewers on YouTube are drawn towards in terms of advertisements while using the site. ELM was helpful for them because it shows the two ways of processing information. Gary C. Woodward and Robert E. Denton, Jr. who wrote "Persuasion and Influence in American Life" describe ELM saying, "We process information in different ways, depending on our levels interest the amount of time available"(Denton, Woodward 117). In a similar study done by Qiang Liu, Fei Fei Su, Aruhan Mu, and Xiang Wu who researched how social media affects people's psychological well-being through ELM saw some similarities. They mainly had the emotional outcomes being similar such as a depressed person to share more harmful emotional content, and others showing negative signs through higher decision products such as a car. study of voters in the 2004 and 2008 elections for President of the United States.

Continuing on that thread, the work of Wood and Herbst found that, "family and significant others were more influential than celebrities in engendering support for a political candidate." This indicates that peripheral route processes may have some influence on some voters; however, family and friends are likely to be more influential than those who do not have a personal connection to specific voters.

Hans-Joachim Mosler applied ELM to study if and how a minority can persuade the majority to change its opinion.

The study used Agent-based social simulation. There were five agents, three (or four) of whom held a neutral opinion on some abstract topic, while the other two (or one) held a different opinion. In addition, there were differences between the agents regarding their argument quality and peripheral cues. The simulation was done in rounds. In each round, one of the agents had an opportunity to influence the other agents. The level of influence was determined by either the argument strength (if the central route was taken) or the peripheral cues (if the peripheral route was taken). After two rounds of persuasion, the distance between the majority's original opinion to its new opinion was studied. It was found that, the peripheral cues of the minority were more important than the argument quality. I.e, a minority with strong arguments but negative cues (e.g., different skin-color or bad reputation) did not succeed in convincing the majority, while a minority with weak arguments and positive cues (e.g., appearance or reputation) did succeed. The results depend also on the level of personal relevance – how much the topic is important to the majority and to the minority.

Partisan Media impact on Persuasion

Scholars also studied how partisan cues in media content will affect elaboration direction and mount. Jennings combined social identity theory and elaboration likelihood model to study whether identities will motivate audience to only rely on partisan cues on media to process information, and whether partisan cues would inhibit audience from learning. Jennings's experiment provided participants with a nonpartisan or partisan article at first and used questionnaires to test their elaboration and learning outcomes. The results supported Jennings hypotheses: articles with partisan cues would prevent partisans from learning more information in the article, compared to articles without partisan cues. Besides, nonpartisan articles would relatively generate more positive thoughts than partisan articles. Also, partisan members tend to elaborate more negative thoughts when exposed to out-group's information, and partisan members will elaborate more positive thoughts when exposed to in-group's messages. For instance, Republicans will come out of more negative reasons why a Democrat senator should not be elected, while Democrats will generate more positive reasons to elect a Democrat senator.

Social and Political Movements

In addition to politics, advertisements, and media, the ELM has been used also for social and political movements. A study published in 2017 used the ELM to discover who cares about the Black Lives Matter Movement the most. In the study, 541 participants from across the United States (black and white) analyzed news articles that were written by an African American professor, African American high-school student, a Caucasian American professor, and a Caucasian American high-school student, all whom are in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Participants were lied to when revealing the author of a specific article. The findings suggest that the black participants cared more about the Black Lives Matter Movement than the white participants by a significant margin. Besides, violent ideological groups used more fear appeals to their audience, and interacted less with their audience. Dunbar et al. speculated that some extreme groups desired to have tight control over their content so they had low tolerance for other's opinions. This stigma, which was prevalent 30 years ago, still exists today. Fortunately, an implementation of the ELM can help increase the positive perceptions of counseling amongst the undergraduate student population. Students that repeatedly watched a video that explained the function and positive outcomes of mental health counseling demonstrated a significant and lasting change in their perception to counseling. Students who watched the video once or not at all maintained a relatively negative view towards counseling. Thus, repeated exposure towards the positive elements of counseling lead towards a greater elaboration and implementation of the central route to combat negative social stigma of counseling. Most negative intuitions exist within the realm of the peripheral route, and therefore to work against stigmas the general public needs to engage their central route of processing .

Counselor credibility

The more credible a counselor is perceived to be, the more likely that counseling clients are to perceive the counselor's advice as impactful. However, counselor credibility is strongly mediated by the degree to which the client understands the information conveyed by the counselor. Therefore, it is extremely important that counseling clients feel that they understand their counselor. The use of metaphor is helpful for this. Metaphors require a deeper level of elaboration, thereby engaging the central route of processing. Kendall (2010) suggests using metaphor in counseling as a valid method towards helping clients understand the message/psychological knowledge conveyed by the client. When the client hears a metaphor that resonates with them, they are far more likely to trust and build positive rapport with the counselor.

There is a lot of digital health related content on the internet, in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a study conducted that examined how website designs and content influences users' attitudes and engagement with health information during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study suggests that if the site is easy to navigate and connects socially, it will be predicted to have positive effects, and argument quality does not appear to have a significant impact. Also, prior knowledge significantly boosts involvement. Issue involvement strongly predicts attitude. Designers of websites should prioritize ease of navigation on the websites as emotional and social cues are more persuasive than factual content here. Using strong peripheral cues can override weak arguments with positive feelings toward the ease of access to the information.

In Organizations

Li has expanded the theoretical frame of the ELM and applied it to information system acceptance. Li conducted a research on persuasive tactics for managers who needed to persuade staff to adopt new information systems within firms by integrating the ELM, social influence theory (It studies how a person is influenced by others in a network to conform to a community, and there are two types of social influences: informational and normative influences), and affective and cognition responses (or emotional responses and rational responses). Li's experiment suggested that: 1) managers should tailor their persuasive strategies according to various elaboration abilities of staff. For staff who have higher levels of elaboration likelihood, managers should emphasize benefits and values of new systems; For staff who have lower levels of elaboration likelihood, managers should provide expertise and credible sources; 2) Commonly speaking, providing strong arguments is more effective than relying on credibility; 3) Since normative influences lead to more affective responses and informational influences lead to more cognition responses, managers should implement different strategies to provoke staff's reaction, while 4) cognition responses are more important than affective responses when accepting a new system. <sup>This study specifically targeted Information Security researchers. The goal of the study was to allow them to create messages to make people comply with security measures, especially those that use fear as a tactic. It shows the style of messages which change the perceptions of those who view the messages. This study aimed to interpret how the rhetoric of a message affects fear appeal. Using the ELM, they combined fear-based messaging research with leadership styles. Similar studies have also used fear appeal cues in communication to motivate security protection behaviors.</sup> <sup>Transactional leaders focus on surface-level details in security messages, while transformational leaders consider them more deeply. Fear-based messages work better for transactional leaders when appealing to emotions and credibility, while logical reasoning is more effective for transformational leaders.</sup>

Methodological considerations

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In designing a test for the aforementioned model, it is necessary to determine the quality of an argument, i.e., whether it is viewed as strong or weak. If the argument is not seen as strong, then the results of persuasion will be inconsistent. A strong argument is defined by Petty and Cacioppo as "one containing arguments such that when subjects are instructed to think about the message, the thoughts they generate are fundamentally favorable." An argument that is universally viewed as weak will elicit unfavorable results, especially if the subject considers it under high elaboration, thus being the central route. Test arguments must be rated by ease of understanding, complexity and familiarity. To study either route of the elaboration likelihood model, the arguments must be designed for consistent results. Also, when assessing persuasion of an argument, the influence of peripheral cues needs to be taken into consideration as cues can influence attitude even in the absence of argument processing. The extent or direction of message processing also needs to be taken into consideration when assessing persuasion, as variables can influence or bias thought by enabling or inhibiting the generation of a particular kind of thought in regard to the argument.

Misinterpretations of the theory

Some researchers have been criticized for misinterpreting the ELM. One such instance is Kruglanski and Thompson, who write that the processing of central or peripheral routes is determined by the type of information that affects message persuasion. For example, message variables are only influential when the central route is used and information like source variables is only influential when the peripheral route is used. In fact, the ELM does not make statements about types of information being related to routes. Rather, the key to the ELM is how any type of information will be used depending on central or peripheral routes, regardless of what that information is. Petty and Cacioppo (1981) stated "If the issue is very important to the person, but the person doesn't understand the arguments being presented in the message, or if no arguments are actually presented, then elaboration of arguments cannot occur. ... Nevertheless, the person may still be able to think about the issue." Therefore, issue-relevant thinking is still a part of the central route and is necessary for one to think about the message content.

Lastly, a third instance of misinterpretation by Kruglanski and Thompson is the disregard for the quantitative dimension presented by the ELM and more focus on the qualitative dimension. This quantitative dimension is the peripheral route involves low-elaboration persuasion that is quantitatively different from the central route that involves high elaboration. With this difference the ELM also explains that low-elaboration persuasion processes are qualitatively different as well. as well as Petty and Wegener (1999) suggest that persuasion findings can be explained by a quantitative dimension without ever needing a qualitative one.

Descriptive nature of the model

The first critique concerns issue of the model's initial development. Considering that the ELM was built upon previous empirical research and a diverse literature base to unify disparate ideas, the model is inherently descriptive because of the intuitive and conceptual assumptions underlying.

Role of emotions

In 2005, Morris, Woo and Singh asked why emotion was not considered in the cognitive processing described by ELM. The authors state the theory claims attitude change is mostly attained through cognitive (central) cues and not through affective (peripheral) cues. Morris, Wood and Singh claim that every message has an emotional aspect as well. They argue that those emotions play a bigger role in attitude change than which route is used to process the information.

Continuum questions

The elaboration likelihood continuum ought to show that a human can undergo a natural progression from high involvement to low involvement with the corresponding effects. This continuum can account for the swift between the central and the peripheral routes, but has yet been lack of comprehensive and empirical testing since the beginning. However, researches has been done under three distinct conditions: high, low, and moderate. On top of Stiff's questioning, alternative models have been raised. Mackenzie et al (1986) advocated a dual mediation hypothesis (DMH) that allow receivers to process the ad's content and its execution at the same time with reasonable vigilance. Lord et al. (1995) proposed a combined influence hypothesis which argues that the central and peripheral cues worked in combination despite the variables of motivation and ability. Kruglanski et al. (1999) proposed a single cognitive process instead of the dual-process model. Although drawing on the fundamental conception from ELM, such as motivation, ability and continuum, the unimodel suggests a normative and heuristic rules for human to make judgement based on the evidence. The heuristic systematic model (HSM) is another alternative model concerning this issue. The authors set out to determine which of these competing models better explains how attitude change happens. They found that ELM is a more precise instrument and more accurately explains often inconsistent results in persuasion attempts. Hedhli and Zourrig say ELM cannot only explain persuasion but can also, in some cases, predict attitude change. Because of this the authors say ELM is a very useful tool for professionals in the marketing, advertising and communication fields.

Analysis of the different variables which mediate elaboration likelihood

Many studies have been expanding and refining the model by examining and testing the variables, particularly in advertising research. For example, Britner and Obermiller (1985) were among the first to expand the model to new variables under the peripheral processing. They proposed situation, person, and product categories as new variables under the context of marketing. Findings indicate that central and peripheral route processing and trust in the AI chatbot were significant motivators of continued intention to use the chatbot for recommendations.

Researchers Srivastava and Gurme advanced the understanding of prior studies regarding people's receptiveness to AI virtual assistants.

A study conducted in China by ZhengDong Hou explored the ramifications of AI utilization. Findings indicate how relying on AI-generated content reshapes human information processing.

Extended transportation-imagery model