The ELM At Work
When we communicate, we often don’t think much about how we do it, or what means we use to get our points across. Knowing more about how we communicate others helps us to craft our arguments and conversations and get our ideas across effectively. When looking to craft a persuasive appeal, one communication theory worth keeping in mind is the elaboration likelihood model (ELM).
The ELM looks at what happens during the message-processing part of the process of persuasion. It depicts two routes, the central route and the peripheral route. Both routes relate to different levels of engagement with an argument and therefore different outcomes. With the central route, the one processing the information is highly involved in elaboration and pulls from their own personal experiences and opinions to form an outcome and position. With the peripheral route, the one processing the information is not highly involved in elaboration and forms positions more passively and less objectively, such as through a celebrity endorsement or other outside interference. People are more likely to be involved in the central route when they have more of a connection to and care about the content being processed, and more likely to be involved in the peripheral route the they do not.
When crafting a persuasive appeal, it is important to keep this model in mind as it will affect how one will respond to persuasion. In the end, it will essentially all come down to their connection to the content being processed and any external factors that would persuade them otherwise. If it were me, I would craft a persuasive appeal that appeals to an emotional core, as even if the person I am trying to persuade has no connection to the content, the emotional appeal may help to persuade them. Any kind of connection would help them to go along the central route of the ELM and to be persuaded by an appeal.
