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| Spokesperson for the Christian Children's Fund with Michelle |
I remember constantly watching a 1 hr Christian Children’s Fund (now called ChildFund International) TV program when I was 10 years old. This program, along with the short commercials, was designed to convince people to sponsor a child by donating 80 cents a day. With this donation the child would receive food, clothes, and necessary medical treatment. During the 1 hr program the audience was guided through the lives of two or three impoverished children by a voice-over (i.e., the voice of the man in the above picture). For example, I remember being shown that the little girl in the above picture spends her days collecting cans and plastics at a landfill as a way to earn a few cents to help her family. I also remember seeing a story about a little girl, who lived with an ailing grandmother and who had to walk miles to get water and to go to school all while not having shoes to wear and having minimal food to eat. Of course, being the empathetic 10 year old I was, I was thoroughly moved by these children’s plight; I kept wishing that I had the money to donate. In fact, one time I asked my mom if we could donate, and I remember being so angry when she said, “No”. She then tried to explain to me all the logical reasons that we could not donate. For example, we were struggling financially and we could not be sure that all the money was going to the children or even if they were really going to get the resources they needed.
After today’s lecture, I realized that the contrast between
my response and my mom’s response to the program could be viewed in term of the
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). The
ELM states that there are times when people are motivated to process messages
carefully, and there are times when people are not motivated to do so (Petty,
1983). This processing of messages falls
on a continuum of elaboration in which level of personal involvement is one
moderating variable. Specifically,
people who are low in involvement and elaboration are likely to take the peripheral
route to persuasion (i.e., they are more influenced by superficial cues),
whereas people who are high in involvement and elaboration are likely to take
the central route to persuasion (i.e., they are more influenced by the quality
of the argument) (Petty, 1983).
When applied to my experience with the TV program, I would
argue that I was low in involvement and in elaboration, whereas my mom was high
in involvement and in elaboration. When
watching these programs I took the peripheral route to persuasion in that I was
immediately persuaded to help these children simply because I saw their
‘sob-story’ (i.e., a peripheral cue), and I never once considered the validity
of such a program. Furthermore, despite
wanting to donate, I personally did not have the financial means. Therefore, I went to my mom who was my
financial mean for a donation. It was at
this point that level of involvement came into play, such that, I was low in
involvement when it came to the actual process of donating because it wasn’t
necessarily my money that was being donated.
However, because it was my mom’s money, she would be considered as being
high in involvement for the process of donating. Because she was high in involvement, my mom
took the central route to persuasion. That
is, compared to me, she critically analyzed the quality of the program’s
argument/agenda before making her decision.
I will admit that once I began earning my own money, I also became very
critical of programs such as ChildFund.
However, till this day, I have to change the channel every time one of
the commercials appears because there is still a small part of me that is
tempted to call and ‘sponsor a child’.
n = 649
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Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Schumann, D. (1983).
Central and peripheral routes to advertising effectiveness: The moderating role
of involvement. Journal of consumer research, 135-146.
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