The elaboration likelihood model: Implications for the practice of school psychology

Understanding the formation and change of attitudes is important to the practice of school psychology. The review a contemporary theory of attitude change, the Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion (ELM, Petty & Cacioppo, 1981, 1986), and address its relevance to school psychology. The ELM provides an integrative framework for understanding the antecedents and consequences of attitude change and specifies the various processes by which source, message, recipient, channel, and context variables have an impact on attitudes. A key postulate in the ELM is that attitude change can result from relatively thoughtful (central route) or nonthoughtful (peripheral route) processes. The ELM also holds that the more thoughtful the change, the more likely the new attitude is to persist, resist counterpersuasion, and influence behavior. illustrations of the utility of the ELM for school psychology are presented along with some caveats and research suggestions. (C) 1997 Society for the Study of School Psychology.