Ability and motivation have been shown to be important in determining whether a person adopts a central or peripheral route.
If the audience has high motivation and/or the ability to think about the message then they will engage in deep processing and will focus on the quality of the message arguments, leading to a lasting change that resists fading and counterattacks.
If the audience has low motivation and/or low ability to think about the message then they will engage in superficial processing, focusing on surface features of the person persuading them or the number of arguments presented than the message itself. This will lead to temporary change as attitude is susceptible to fading.
5 factors have been identified that influence ability and motivaton:
Message repetition (increased exposure even to meaningless material can increase motivation) Prior Knowledge (the more you have the mor likely you are to use central route processing) Self-Referencing (the more they can relate the more likely they are to use the central route) Arousal (arousal affects processing so highly aroused people less likely to use central) Media Type (TV is highly effective as it affects different senses)
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