Attitudes and Persuasion: Classic and Contemporary Approaches

Petty and Cacioppo argue that persuasion research has produced seven distinct theoretical approaches—conditioning, message-learning, judgmental, motivational, attributional, combinatory, and self-persuasion—and that each contributes a partial explanation but none accounts for the full range of attitude change phenomena. They reject the implicit assumption that any single theory can be sufficient. Chester Insko's foreword to the book notes that it 'calls our attention to neglected theories, such as variable perspective theory, which are far more deserving of attention than the present level of research activity would indicate' . The book's concluding chapter integrates these approaches into a two-route framework that became the ELM.

The epilog presents what Petty and Cacioppo call a general framework for understanding attitude change processes, organized around two distinct routes to persuasion. The central route involves careful consideration and analysis of argument quality and implications, most likely when the topic holds personal significance for the individual. The peripheral route relies on simple, superficial cues such as source characteristics, requiring relatively little cognitive processing . This framework provided a method for organizing the commonalities and differences among the seven approaches surveyed in the preceding chapters. It served as the direct precursor to the Elaboration Likelihood Model formally named in their 1986 monograph.

Attitudes and Persuasion (1981) is a comprehensive survey of seven theoretical traditions, written primarily as a textbook for upper-level undergraduates and graduates . It covers each approach in a separate chapter before synthesizing them in the epilog. Communication and Persuasion (1986) is a focused monograph that develops the Elaboration Likelihood Model in full detail, with chapters on methodological factors, biased elaboration, message elaboration versus peripheral cues, and the consequences of the route to persuasion . The 1981 book establishes the theoretical landscape and gestures toward integration; the 1986 book completes that integration into a testable research program.

Chester Insko's foreword praised the book as 'a competent and important book' deserving attention from both beginning and advanced students of attitude and belief change . He situated it within a broader resurgence of interest in attitude research, noting that the field had moved past skepticism about whether attitudes predict behavior and past concerns about laboratory external validity. Insko attributed this renewed interest partly to the cognitive revolution in social psychology and partly to the decline of anti-establishment attitudes that had made attitude research seem aligned with commercial advertising. He predicted the book would contribute to that renewal.

Petty and Cacioppo explain in their preface that the subtitle does not mean some approaches are old and others new. Instead, all seven approaches are contemporary in that each has current advocates conducting research, and all are classic in that each has made and will continue to make vital contributions to explaining certain attitudinal phenomena . The point is that theoretical diversity is not a sign of a field that has failed to converge but reflects the genuine complexity of persuasion. Different approaches illuminate different aspects of the process, and the concluding framework shows how they fit together rather than competing for sole explanatory rights.

A frequent misconception treats Attitudes and Persuasion as simply an early version of the ELM. The book is more accurately understood as a theoretical survey that culminates in a preliminary integration. The two-route framework appears only in the epilog; the bulk of the text examines conditioning, message-learning, judgmental, motivational, attributional, combinatory, and self-persuasion approaches on their own terms. The ELM's full development—including its treatment of elaboration likelihood as a continuum, its specification of motivation and ability determinants, and its predictions about attitude persistence and resistance—came in the 1986 monograph. The 1981 book provides the intellectual foundation, not the finished model.