PhiloPsycho Freedom

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As related note to the last post, I probably should have done this one first. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is a model of persuasion proposed by Petty and Cacioppo back in the 80's. It says that we have two routes to persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route.

Two factors dictates which route we take: our knowledge/ability to think about a topic, and our motivation to think about the topic. If you are high in both of these factors, you will engage in the high-elaboration, central route. If  you're missing either of these factors, or both, you'll default to the peripheral route. The central route is known as the high-elaboration route because we're more likely to want more elaborative information and to think about the information more thoroughly. So, if someone were to approach an existential nihilist and start making claims about the meaning of life, they would most likely consider the arguments and have the motivation to think about it. Once the motivation is there, we consider the argument: if we have favourable thoughts (according to the theory), we will accept the argument in whole, or in part; if unfavourable thoughts are evoked during the argument, we will reject the argument.

Alternatively, if you've never really considered the meaning of life and someone starts making these claims, you may not understand what the hell they're talking about, or you might just not care. In either case, you'd likely have to take the low-elaboration, peripheral route and judge off of external cues: does this person appear persuasive in the way they present the argument? do they look like they know what they're talking about? how many arguments have they presented (more arguments make it appear stronger in low-elaboration)? Commercials where they have an "expert" wearing a lab coat (no name or credentials listed) are trying to exploit this. Most of us don't know or care that much about toothpaste, for example, so because this "impressive-looking professional" appears and promotes it, hey, good enough for me, right? Sure.

No moral or lesson to this story outside of learning what way we process information. It wouldn't be practical to approach information in any other way, or else we'd be wasting a lot of time and effort.