hello and welcome to today's lesson where we're looking at the elaboration likelihood model so the elaboration likelihood model is a theory of persuasion or attitude change that proposes that people can be persuaded in one of two ways so what does elaboration mean in terms of the model well you can think of elaboration as referring to how much conscious thought you put into making a decision so according to the model if you have high elaboration then you're going to weigh up information carefully before you make a decision and conversely if you have low elaboration then you're going to invest very little conscious thinking time if any at all into making your decision now the model was developed by richard e petty and john cachiopo in 1980 and they noticed that previous persuasion theories gave conflicting results and so they developed the model to better explain how people are persuaded so let's jump in and take a look at the model now as you can see in the diagram if elaboration is high then you will process the decision through what's called your central route processing and conversely if elaboration is low you'll process your decision through what the model calls your peripheral root processing now to determine which route to use then the model says that we must look at three factors and these are motivation ability and opportunity and if all three of these things are high we'll use central route processing and if one or more of them is low then we'll use peripheral route processing so let's take a look at motivation so if you have a high desire to process the message you're receiving then your motivation's going to be high so for example imagine the government announced new tax reliefs for recently married couples now if you think your finances might be positively affected by this then you're probably going to be motivated to think about this issue and certainly much more motivated than someone who isn't personally affected by this tax change next we look at ability now even if you want to elaborate if you're receptive to the message it can be difficult to do so if you don't have the ability so that can happen for example when you're in a noisy environment or when you don't have enough knowledge about a subject to be able to think deeply about it and the final factor is opportunity so having the opportunity means that you have the time available to receive the message and process it and then make your decision so let's talk a little bit more about the two processing routes so as we've mentioned already central route processing happens when elaboration is higher and using central root processing you listen carefully to the message and evaluate the pros and cons before making a decision central root processing requires your conscious thought and it requires critical thinking to be able to process in this way you must be motivated have the ability and have the opportunity now views that you form through central root processing tend to be long lasting when you create a view in this way you're less likely to change your mind about it later and more likely to behave in ways that match your new formed position now peripheral route processing is different and like we said when one or more of motivation ability or opportunity is missing or low then you're going to process via this route now using the prohibitor route you're not consciously examining information and so you'll often make your decision based on things like positive or negative cues you've picked up from others rules of thumb or even just what you've directly observed others do so in essence you're trying to decide without investing any real thinking time at all now peripheral route processing is really important because you simply don't have the time to consider every single decision in your life carefully so by making the minor decisions on autopilot as it were you free up more time to think about the more significant decisions in your life now because you haven't invested any real effort into the decision-making process you don't cling to attitudes formed using this route as strongly as you would if the central route had been used now one important thing to note before we move on is that the two roots are not binary you can use both at the same time so sometimes we might mostly use the central root processing with a little bit of peripheral reprocessing thrown in and conversely sometimes we might use peripheral reprocessing with a little bit of central route thrown in both exist on a sliding scale they're not mutually exclusive so let's take a look at an example now imagine that you are a marketing executive tasked with selling a new brand of shampoo so you decide to use the elaboration likelihood model to develop a marketing campaign that uses both the central and peripheral processing routes so you do this by first deciding to create an ad targeting central route processors now people who are considering a shampoo via the central route might be particularly conscious of their image or whether there are any artificial ingredients contained within the shampoo so to appeal to these people you decide to create a set of ads highlighting both the unique formula of the shampoo which makes your hair appear shiny as well as adds highlighting it's all natural ingredients now to target peripheral processors you do something different so you decide to work with celebrities and social media influencers to create a set of ads showing these people enjoying and simply being satisfied and happy using the product now the personalities and influencers that you choose to use are individuals that your target demographic looks up to and admires and the hope is that people processing their shampoo purchase using a lower level of elaboration might be persuaded by seeing someone they admire using your shampoo now there are several pros and cons associated with the elaboration likelihood model in terms of advantages then the model gives you a framework by which you can assess how best to persuade someone it is possible to use both the central route and peripheral persuasion at the same time they exist on a sliding scale in terms of disadvantages then the model doesn't tell you which route of persuasion to use merely that the best model to use will be dependent on the elaboration level of the recipient now also more of a criticism than a disadvantage but the model is based on the assumption that attitudes formed through the central route will be stronger and harder to alter and finally when wishing to persuade a low elaborator there is no indication of what's the best way to do this so for example if we look at our shampoo example again you know seeing your favorite celebrity might nudge you towards buying the product but perhaps if you dislike the music that's being played in the ad then it might nudge you away from buying the product so in summary the elaboration likelihood model is a theory of persuasion that explains that you can motivate people via one of two processing roots now when elaboration is higher then people use central root processing requiring conscious thought or conscious cognition and conversely when elaboration is lower people use peripheral root processing where they are influenced by rules of thumb and what they have observed others doing so that's it for this lesson really hope you enjoyed it and i look forward to speaking to you again soon