The Effects of Argument Quality and Quantity to Persuasion

Cho, Jae-Hyun(Department of Journalism, The Graduate School, Chung-Ang University)

Petty and Cacioppo, Social psychologists, have proposed two different mechanisms, central and peripheral routes to persuasion in thier Elaboration likelihood Model(ELM).

According to the model, people should follow the central route to persuasion when their motivation and ability to think about the issue-relevant arguments presented are relatively high, the perpheral route should be followed when either motivation or ability to scrutinize the message arguments is relatively low.

The purpose of this study was to measure the effects of manipulating the number of argument and the quality of argument to attitude and cognitive response of subject under high or low involvement conditions respectively.

Results of this study showed that,

Argument Quality manipulation had stronger impact on attitude under high involvement conditions than under low involvement conditions. The number of argument manipulation had a stronger effect under low involvement conditions than under high involvement conditions. The argument quality manipulation had a stronger impact on subject's cognitive response under high involvement conditions, both argument quality and quantity were of no effect under low involvement conditions.

Consequently, this findings indicate that

When increasing the people's motivation and ablity to think about issue- relevant arguments, elaboration likelihood is high, the more likely is the argument quality in a message to affect persuasion.

As motivation or ablity to process arguments decreases, elaboration likelihood is low, the more likely is the number of argument in a message to affect persuasion by serving as a pheripheral cue.