In 1980, John T. Cacioppo and Richard E. Petty created the Elaboration Likelihood of Persuasion Model in order to clarify how a convincing message could change the position of the recipient. Cacioppo and Petty proposed that a message was given and received through two different courses of persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route.

The central route tends to work if a person is more knowledgeable of the topic and if they are likely to think about the message expansively. If they are motivated to think about the message and the given message is strong, they are likely to be swayed in agreement to the message. The peripheral route of ELM says that if a person is uninformed of the topic, or if they cannot think of the message at length, they might still be convinced by factors that don't really have to do anything with the message itself. These individuals can be persuaded towards the message in the short term and inadequately.

The first step in the ELM is actually to determine whether or not the message is persuasive. If the message is neutral, for example, it has failed to be persuasive and the recipient will take whatever meaning they want from the argument. So,

If the message has failed in any of the ways so far, there might still be a way to persuade the receiver through a peripheral route. This happens usually when the recipient is incapable of processing the message, isn't motivated to think of it, or if the case in general is weak. Sometimes just the sheer number of arguments or the fact that the speaker is likeable is enough to grab the attention of the receiver. This persuasion route can be just as effective as the central route, although the connection made here is weaker and therefore not as reliable.

Next, according to ELM, I must be motivated in someway to process the message. In this case, I find myself motivated due to my experiences as a student, and my obvious need to save money while I’m in college. Therefore, the college savings argument has some bearing in my decision to contemplate this ad further. Because I was not distracted from reading this article in any way, this factor really did not play a role in determining the worth of this ad. At this point, I did a review of the pros and cons in my head to determine whether I was persuaded by the commercial. I concluded that this argument was indeed persuasive, and that maybe the next time I was looking into getting a credit card I might just use Citi. Had I not used the central route as my line of thinking, the peripheral route might have proved to be just

Some topics in this essay:
Cacioppo Petty, According ELM, Persuasion Model, Model Citi, central route, peripheral route, persuasive argument, Elaboration Likelihood, elaboration likelihood, Model Persuasion, Richard Petty, Likelihood Model, elaboration likelihood model, message message, line thinking, topic message, message strong, receiver motivated, according elm, receiver motivated process,