Part Five: Theory Behind EE

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Let’s review the theories and models from the behavioral and social sciences that are relevant to EE, perhaps most directly being the “Two path to persuasion” frameworks, like the Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion (ELM) by Petty and Cacioppo. As a reminder, ELM posits that there are two routes to persuasion (e.g., the desired behavior or action): the central route and the peripheral route​​.​

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The central route (i.e., high issue involvement) is effective when someone already cares about the topic and is able to pay attention to and process information about it, i.e., when they are ‘highly involved’ with the topic. It is a highly cognitive and conscious state targeting people who are already invested in the health issue, so there is ‘high elaboration likelihood.’ The term “elaboration” refers to the extent to which an individual carefully thinks about the message presented through persuasive communication and, hopefully, leads to the desired destination.

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​The peripheral route (i.e., low issue involvement) can be effective when someone does not already care about the topic and/or is unable to pay or not paying attention to information about it, i.e., when they have ‘low involvement’ with the topic. The utility of the peripheral route is in getting people to become aware of the health issue without requiring them to think deeply about it. However, using the peripheral route to encourage behavior change is more difficult, because it is not a proactive cognitive process. Given its peripherality, people are not very involved in the argument being presented (i.e., they have low involvement). Thus, there is ‘low elaboration likelihood’ because it is largely relying on people’s heuristic cues to make quick decisions. Peripheral route processing is less likely to result in behavior change.

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Using entertainment to move people from low involvement (the peripheral route) to high involvement (the central route) is sometimes referred to as “issue involvement conversion.”

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ELM is related to the Communication Contracts discussed above, because if we go through persuasion, we want the audience to be highly involved. If we want high involvement, the audience will have to consciously think about the information and make a rational decision. This usually requires the issue or topic to be important or relevant to the receiver and/or a high need for cognition (i.e., think through ideas, even if it is not personally relevant). However, many people often do not have high receiver involvement or high need for cognition, especially related to public health messages. Therefore, it is possible to go through the entertainment route, where the audience can initially have low-involvement with the topic. Then the topic or issue is subsequently subtly woven in while audience members are being entertained and thus are less likely to be actively guarding against a direct pitch.

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Another way to think about messaging to those with high issue involvement is by envisioning a message going through the front door. These are messages that the audience finds personally relevant. In contrast, messages sent through the back door target those with low issue involvement. The goal here is simply to engage the audience, at least minimally. Not everyone agrees that messaging through the back door is the 'right reason' for promoting health, as it can encourage people to become interested in the health or pro-social information or behavior because of a superficial reason not directly tied to that behavior change (e.g., wanting to exercise to "look good in a bathing suit" rather than in order to boost cardiovascular health). Just as with channels, the back door message approach is about meeting people where they are and not operating off of the assumption that everybody should care about something simply because health professionals care about it. 

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Television and sports have led the American culture (ever so slowly) into a greater sense of our diversity and its value. See an episode or two of Will and Grace, The Good Place, and/or Abbott Elementary. Are these primarily comedy shows with back door social messages? To the extent that they convey the latter, what are the subtle messages presented?