Switching Routes

Hey everyone!

First off just to get everyone in a good mood here is a song that I like!

The reason I chose this particular song is that I seriously have never met a person who is not a fan of it. Similarity has consistently been shown to make people more likable so I figured I could not go wrong with this choice (Montoya, Horton, & Kirchner, 2008).

But anyway, this week I am talking about routes to persuasion! The two routes are the peripheral route to persuasion and the central route to persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

Which of these two routes people will use depends on both their ability and their motivation (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). The peripheral route is distinguished by individuals relying on heuristics, rules of thumb, or generally superficial information to arrive at a decision (Chaiken, 1987; Chen & Chaiken, 1999) whereas the central route uses rationality and logic to arrive at a decision and individuals are therefore influenced by the content and strength of arguments when using this route (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

I know I personally would rather be able to say that I always use the central route as I think of myself as someone who is generally thoughtful and has good reasons for the way I act or for what I believe. However, this unfortunately is not always true as I am definitely not always motivated and therefore sometimes use the peripheral route when making a decision.

A good example of me using these two routes was when I was recently hearing about the Southwestern presidential candidates. Originally, I did not care very much who won as, on the surface, I had little investment in the next president of Southwestern as I would be graduating soon (a sentiment I heard echoed by other senior students). I was content to simply side with my friend's evaluations and trust their decisions without much research. However, upon hearing some good arguments from different individuals, including a few professors, I was quickly persuaded to care about who was elected as president as the quality of the president would affect Southwestern's direction as an institution and would also affect how valuable my degree would be in the long term. Upon hearing this, I realized that decision did matter and I became much more involved in learning about the candidates. I read about their accomplishments and qualifications online and listened much more attentively to when others were making an argument for a candidate. Furthermore, I engaged much more actively in discussion with my peers regarding the candidates. My critical outlook on the arguments that were being presented (pro or con) were indicative of my switch to the central route. Therefore, because I became motivated to care about the decision because of my realization that the decision would affect me, I transitioned to a central route when evaluating information related to the candidates. 

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Chaiken, S. (1987). The heuristic model of persuasion. In M. P. Zanna, J. M. Olsen, & C. P. Herman (Eds.), Social influence: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 5, pp. 3-39). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Chen, S., & Chaiken, S. (1999). The heuristic-systematic model in its broader context. In S. Chaiken & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual-process theories in social psychology (pp. 73-96). New York: Guilford.

Montoya, R. M., Horton, R. S., & Kirchner, J. (2008). Is actual similarity necessary for attraction? A meta-analysis of actual and perceived similarity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 25, 889-922.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T., (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.