Personal Involvement as a Determinant of Argument-Based Persuasion

It was suggested that there are two basic routes to persuasion. One route is based on the thoughtful consideration of arguments central to the issue, whereas the other is based on peripheral cues in the persuasion situation. To test this view, undergraduates expressed their attitudes on an issue after exposure to a counterattitudinal advocacy containing either strong or weak arguments that emanated from a source of either high or low expertise. For some subjects, the communication was high in personal relevance, whereas for others it was low. Interactions of the personal relevance manipulation with the argument quality and expertise manipulations revealed that under high relevance, attitudes were influenced primarily by the quality of the arguments in the message, whereas under low relevance, attitudes were influenced primarily by the expertise of the source. This suggests that the personal relevance of an issue is one determinant of the route to persuasion that will be followed.