Examples Of The Elaboration Likelihood Model

Advertisers persuade and manipulate consumers by utilising models of persuasion. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is a “dual-process” model created by Petty and Cacioppo in 1986. The Elaboration likelihood model proposes that people put in more effort to assess the arguments in a message when the motivation and the ability to process the message are high compared to when they are low, and this processing is labelled as systematic processing.
The strongest feature of this “dual-process” model is the fact that they use motivation and ability as determinants of the way in which people process persuasive messages. This approach overlaps with the evidence of the differences between quick, shallow processing and deep, elaborate processing

An example is that a cue might consist of an emotional state, like happiness, that associates itself with the message’s advocated position in a positive way or perhaps the consumer might agree with a message without and thoughtful consideration of the arguments but due to the fact that it is being delivered by an expert of some sort, which in turn activates a mental shortcut based on ‘experts are generally correct’. Another shortcut is that people often count the number of arguments rather than the actual strength and power of each argument, or observing the responses of the other people who are exposed to the exact same message as a cue to see how most people respond to that message. To this end, due to the peripheral route, the strength of the arguments in a message can be of little use or consequence to forming or changing attitudes.(“The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion,” n.d.)
Although these mental shortcuts do not consist of thoughtful consideration of the message, the peripheral route can nevertheless be effective in leading to persuasive impacts on attitudes and behaviour, in the short term (“Petty, Barden, et al.,”