A First Look at Communication Theory (6th edition)

Griffin also finds it useful to share with students the “Need for Cognition Scale” he discusses
on p. 200. (Footnote 5 in the textbook directs you to the source.) A fruitful exercise would be to
administer the 18-item scale to your students.
Political pamphlets
When Ed McDaniel teaches this theory, he finds political election pamphlets and
brochures to be effective illustrators for ELM. Election materials can easily be divided into
those directing the reader toward the central or peripheral routes, and those focusing on the
peripheral route can be used to point out persuasive cues (e.g., the brochure contains only a
list or organizations endorsing the candidate).
Adapting a social judgment exercise for ELM
Ron Adler’s social judgment exercise (see our treatment of social judgment, Chapter
14) could easily be adapted for ELM. What does ELM elucidate in this communicative situation
that social judgment theory does not consider? Likewise, what does social judgment theory
make clear that ELM cannot address?
Further Resources
• For a brief history of social influence research, see William Crano’s article, “Milestones
in the Psychological Analysis of Social Influence,” Group Dynamics 4, 1 (2000): 68-80.
• For studies that follow in the tradition of Petty and Cacioppo, see:
o Satish Joseph and Teresa L. Thompson, “The Effect of Vividness on the
Memorability and Persuasiveness of a Sermon: A Test of the Elaboration
Likelihood Model,” Journal of Communication and Religion 27, 2 (2004): 217-
45.
o Arjun Chaudhuri and Ross Buck, “Affect, Reason, and Persuasion: Advertising
Strategies that Predict Affective and Analytic-Cognitive Responses,” Human
Communication Research 21 (1995): 422-41.
• Perloff’s Persuading People to Have Safer Sex: Applications of Social Science to the
AIDS Crisis applies ELM to disease prevention (80-81).
• For a discussion of persuasion resistance see B.J. Sagarin, R.B. Cialdini, W.E. Rice, and
S.B. Serna’s 2002 article, “Dispelling the Illusion of Invulnerability: The Motivations and
Mechanisms of Resistance to Persuasion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
83, 3 (2002): 526-41.
Other relevant articles by Richard Petty
• Wheeler, S.C., Petty, R.E., and Bizer, G.Y., “Self-Schema Matching and Attitude Change:
Situational and Dispositional Determinants of Message Elaboration,” Journal of
Consumer Research 31, 4: 787-97.
• Tormala, Z.L. and Petty, R.E., “What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger: The Effects of
Resisting Persuasion on Attitude Certainty,” Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology 83, 6 (2002): 1298-1313.
• Petty, R.E., Wheeler, S.C., and Bizer, G.Y, “Attitude Functions and Persuasion: An
Elaboration Likelihood Approach to Matched versus Mismatched Messages,” in G. Maio
and J. Olson, eds., Why We Evaluate: Functions of Attitudes (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 2000), 133-62.
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