analyze an advertising campaign (could be a series of ads, or just a single ad; could be either print or television, or both) aand discuss the persuasion tools and methods the advertising
Mcm 380: Persuasive Communication
Processing Persuasive Communications III
Motivation to Process
Involvement
Can you think of an issue that has important implications for your own life? Perhaps it is a university proposal to raise tuition, a plan to change requirements in your major, or even a proposal to ban using cell phones while driving.
Now think of an issue that has little impact on your day-to-day routines. This could be a proposal to strengthen the graduation requirements in a city school, or a plan to use a different weed spray in farming communities.
You will certainly process the first issues differently than the second.
Different persuasive appeals are likely to be effective in these two circumstances as well.
Motivation to Process
Involvement (contd.)
The topics cited differ in their level of personal involvement, or the degree to which they are perceived to be personally relevant to individuals.
Individuals are high in involvement when they perceive that an issue is personally relevant or bears directly on their own lives.
They are low in involvement when they believe that an issue has little or no impact on their own lives.
Motivation to Process
The ELM stipulates that when individuals are high in involvement, they will be motivated to engage in issue-relevant thinking.
They will recognize that it is in their best interest to consider the arguments in the message carefully.
Even if they oppose the position advocated in the message, they may change their attitudes if the arguments are sufficiently compelling to persuade them that they will benefit by adopting the advocated position.
Under high involvement, people should process messages through the central route, systematically scrutinizing message arguments.
Motivation to Process
By contrast, under low involvement, people have little motivation to focus on message arguments.
The issue is of little personal consequence; therefore, it doesn’t pay to spend much time thinking about the message.
As a result, people look for mental shortcuts to help them decide whether to accept the communicator’s position.
They process the message peripherally, unconcerned with the substance of the communication.
Motivation to Process
In order to discover if these hypotheses were correct, researchers tested them empirically (Petty, Cacioppo, Goldman; 1981)
Findings:
There were three conditions:
Involvement (high or low)
Argument quality (strong or weak)
Expertise (high or low)
Motivation to Process
Petty, Cacioppo, Goldman experiment (1981)
Petty and his colleagues found that the impact of arguments and expertise depended to a considerable degree on level of involvement.
Under high involvement, argument quality exerted a significant impact on attitudes.
Regardless of who the source of the message was, strong arguments led to more attitude change than did weak arguments.
Under low involvement, the opposite patterns of result emerged (who the source is plays a crucial role).
A highly expert source induced more attitude change than did a low-expert source, regardless of whether the arguments were weak or strong.
Motivation to Process
It may seem as if the main principle is that under high involvement, “what is said” is most important, and under low involvement, “who says it” is the key.
There is some truth to this, but it greatly oversimplifies matters.
The key point is not that message appeals are more effective under high involvement and communicator appeals are more compelling under low involvement.
Instead, the core issue is that people engage in issue-relevant thinking under high involvement, but under low involvement, they focus on simple cues that are peripheral to the main issues.
Need for Cognition
Do you enjoy thinking? Or do you think only as hard as you have to?
Do you prefer complex to simple problems? Or do you gravitate to tasks that are important, but don’t require much thought?
These questions focus on the need for cognition (NFC), a personality trait that influences persuasion
Need for cognition is “a stable individual difference in people’s tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive activity” (Cacioppo et al., 1996, p.198)
Need for Cognition
People high in NFC
Enjoy thinking abstractly, deliberate about issues even when they do not affect them personally, and prefer tasks that are intellectual and difficult
Individuals low in NFC
Do not enjoy deliberating about issues that do not affect them personally, do not gravitate to intellectually demanding tasks, and “feel relief rather than satisfaction after completing a task that required a lot of mental effort” (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984)
Need For Cognition
Need for cognition is not the same as intelligence
The two are related: you have to be somewhat intelligent to enjoy contemplating issues; thus, there is a modest relationship between verbal intelligence and need for cognition.
However, two people could score high on verbal intelligence tests, yet one individual could find abstract thinking appealing, while the other could find it monotonous
Need For Cognition
What does NFC have to do with persuasion?
Individuals high in NFC recall more message arguments, generate a greater number of issue-relevant thoughts, and seek more information about complex issues than those low in NFC
Given that people high in need for cognition like to think, they should be more influenced by quality of message arguments than those low in NFC. Cogent issue arguments do carry more weight with high-NFC individuals.
Need For Cognition
What does NFC have to do with persuasion?
By contrast, those low in NFC are more influenced by cues that save them from effortful thought. They are generally swayed more by such simple cues as source credibility, communicator attractiveness, and celebrity endorsements.
Of course, there are times when individuals who are low in NFC will pay close attention to the message (for e.g., when the issue bears on their personal lives, low-NFC individuals will process arguments centrally)
Need for Cognition
Implications for persuaders
When persuaders direct messages to individuals who they know are high in NFC, they should make certain that they employ strong arguments or make cogent appeals to respondents’ values
If on the other hand, messages are directed at low-NFC individuals, persuaders should develop appeals that do not tax their mental capacities. Simple, clear appeals – the simpler, the better – are advisable
Ability
A second determinant of processing strategy (besides motivation) is the person’s ability to process the message.
Situations can enhance or hamper individuals’ ability to process a message.
For example, people are less able to process a message when they are distracted.
More interestingly, we centrally or peripherally process messages depending on our cognitive ability, or knowledge.
Ability
Knowledge is a particularly important factor – when people know a lot about an issue, they process information carefully and skillfully.
They are more capable of evaluating the cogency of information and are adept at identifying shortcomings in message arguments.
Knowledgeable people process information centrally and are ordinarily tough nuts for persuaders to crack.
By contrast, people with minimal knowledge on a topic lack the background to differentiate strong from weak arguments. They also may lack confidence in their opinions.
They are the peripheral processors, more susceptible to persuasion in most situations.