Two Routes to Persuasion 

    Central route: Build strong "central" arguments.     

    Peripheral route: Use simple rule of thumb heuristics, such as "trust the experts".     

                                                      Elements of Persuasion     

Who says what by what means to whom?     

Primary Ingredients of Persuasion     

     1. the communicator 

      •  The effect of source credibility (perceived expertise & trustworthiness) diminishes after a month or so. There is 
          a delayed persuasion of the message content after people forget who said it. This phenomenon is called the 
          sleeper effect. 
  
      •  Physical attractiveness increases the communicator's influence & people respond better to messages that come from an 
         in-group member. 

      2. The message 
  
          Reasonable or emotional? 
  
        •  You can marry passion & logic in a message to target all the audience. 
  
        •  Well educated, analytical, thoughtful, involved audiences travel the central route 
           of persuasion. Disinterested audiences follow the peripheral route, & are 
           more affected by how well they like the communicator. 
  
          The effects of good feelings: 
  
        •  Good feeling enhance persuasion! - partly by increasing positive thinking & 
           partly by linking good feelings with the message. 
  
          The effects of arousing fear: 
  
        •  By evoking negative emotions, a fear arousing message can be potent. 
  
     3. The media - how the message is communicated 
  
     4. The audience 
  
          How old are they? 
  
              People tend to have different social & political attitudes depending on their age, 
  
             •  Life cycle explanation: Attitudes change e.g. become more conservative, 
                as people grow older. 
  
             •  Generational explanation: The attitudes older people adopted when they 
                were young persist largely unchanged; because young people adopt 
                different attitudes now, a generation gap develops. 
  
          Is their thinking favorable or not? 
  
          Forewarned is forearmed - if you care enough to counter argue. 
  
          Distraction disarms counter arguing. 
  
          Uninvolved audiences use peripheral cues.     
          
Ψ  The Two Routes in Therapy             
          
          •  The peripheral route opens the door to reason, the center route then provides a more enduring attitude 
          & behavior change.
 
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                 Social Psychology
                      Robert C. Gates