on what people can do rather than telling them what they should not do (e.g. ‘you
can choose to be smoke free’, ‘you can choose to eat a healthy diet and feel and look
better’) (Knowles and Rinner, 2007). Presenting health advice as choice has been
widely adopted by the UK NHS. For example, it has established a ‘choices website’
described as ‘the new service that helps you to make the most of your health and get
the best out of the NHS’ (www.nhs.uk/pages/homepage.aspx). While the intention
here is to promote health behaviour change, the persuasive attempt is presented as
offering new opportunities and increasing the recipient’s freedom.
CHANGING MOTIVATION 177Design a brief set of arguments that could be used to persuade young people to
donate blood, drawing on evidence-based principles of persuasion.ACTIVITY 8.2ATTITUDE CHANGE
Did you think about a health-related behaviour you feel you should change? Have
you not changed because you expect this change to result in negative outcomes?
Evaluating action positively, that is, holding a positive attitude towards it is critical to
change. Consequently, attitude change is a key target for those wishing to persuade
others to adopt healthier lifestyles.
Message processing and attitude change
Attitude change is dependent on how a recipient responds to a persuasive message.
For example, some evaluative responses are based on superficial impressions while
others are the result of systematic consideration. This has important implications for
persuasive techniques. Petty and Cacioppo (1986) argue that although we are all
motivated to hold valid attitudes, which help us make reliable predictions about our
reality (hence the power of informational influence), we can have more or less
motivation and capacity to devote to the systematic processing of messages we receive.
They refer to the amount of systematic processing devoted to a message as ‘cognitive
elaboration’ and, consequently, their model is known as the ‘elaboration likelihood
model’ (ELM).
The ELM refers to systematic processing of messages as central route processing and
processing of messages in a superficial manner as peripheral route processing. Central
route processing involves greater cognitive elaboration and the meaning of the message
is critical to persuasion. By contrast, peripheral route processing involves little systematic
processing (low cognitive elaboration) and other characteristics of the message are more
likely to determine whether or not it is persuasive.
When people are under time pressure, do not understand a message, think that the
issue is not relevant to them or are distracted by something else they may evaluate a
message on the basis of simple cues rather than considering its meaning in detail. For