Theoretical approaches The Yale attitude change approach is a method of making persuasive communications effective, a study begun by Carl Hovland based on his experiences during World War II attempting to boost morale in US soldiers with propaganda. This study focused on communication-bound predispositions to accept (or reject) appeals and unbound attributes, such as tendencies to particular responses to all communications. The Yale group's  research "stemmed from a variety of theoretical approaches, including, among others, Hull's learning theory, some motivational hypotheses of Freud and other psychoanalysts, and some of the formulations of Lewin, Sherif, Newcomb, and others". The Yale group developed a theoretical structure linking individual attributes and persuasion based on three major factors: the source of the communication, the nature of the communication and the nature of the audience. Influences on McGuire William McGuire ( 1968 ) further broke down Hovland et al. (1953) message processing stages (attention, comprehension, acceptance) into six stages: presentation, attention, comprehension, yielding, retention, and behavior.McGuire, W. J. (1968). Personality and attitude change: An information-processing theory. In A. G. Greenwood, T. C. Brock, & T. M. Ostrom, Psychological Foundations of Attitudes. New York: Academic Press, 171–196. In summary, McGuire proposed that a message must first be presented, drawn attention to, and then understood and comprehended by the audience. This would cause an attitude change, that must be remembered at a later time to actually influence behavioral changes. McGuire emphasized the importance of reception (the attention and comprehension stages of the Yale group) and yielding (anticipation and critical-evaluation steps) in his study of individual differences in influenceability. According to McGuire reception was positively related to ability and motivational attributes. Individual attributes also contributed to the yielding stage (acceptance of the opinion). One weakness of the approach is the nature of its steps—specifically, the yielding step . The approach assumes that the audience's attitude will change by learning a new message, yet learning does not always result in persuasion.Benoit, W. L. (n.d.). The yale approach. In Electronic Encyclopedia of Communication. Communication Institute for Online Scholarship. Retrieved from URL This Information processing paradigm's heritage lays in the message learning theme and theories that guided the work done on persuasion and attitude change by the Yale Communications program. McGuire is best known for his inoculation theory of exploring resistance to persuasion, which was influenced by the Yale school's research on the resilience of two-sided messages on opinion acceptance. Influences on elaboration likelihood model Another model that stems from the Yale attitude change approach is the elaboration likelihood model which is a contemporary approach to persuasion. Developed by R.E. Petty and J.T. Cacioppo during the late 1980s, the model describes two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change: centrally and peripherally. The central route to persuasion occurs when people have the ability and motivation to listen to a message, think about its arguments and internalize the information. The recipient relies on cognititive responses instead of heuristics when using the central route. The peripheral route to persuasion is used when the recipient has little to no motivation or effort and people are swayed not by the argument itself but by elements secondary to the message (such as the length of the communication or the attractiveness of the communicator). Under the peripheral route, the recipient relies on the context of the situation rather than the information at hand (i.e. they look at attractiveness in this case or if the person speaking is famous or not).
Theoretical approaches The Yale group's original research "stemmed from a variety of theoretical approaches, including, among others, Hull's learning theory, some motivational hypotheses of Freud and other psychoanalysts, and some of the formulations of Lewin, Sherif, Newcomb, and others". The Yale group developed a theoretical structure linking individual attributes and persuasion based on three major factors: the source of the communication, the nature of the communication and the nature of the audience. Influences on McGuire In 1968 , William McGuire further broke down Hovland 's message processing stages (attention, comprehension, acceptance) into six stages: presentation, attention, comprehension, yielding, retention, and behavior.McGuire, W. J. (1968). Personality and attitude change: An information-processing theory. In A. G. Greenwood, T. C. Brock, & T. M. Ostrom, Psychological Foundations of Attitudes. New York: Academic Press, 171–196. McGuire proposed that a message must first be presented, drawn attention to, and then understood and comprehended by the audience. This would cause an attitude change, that must be remembered at a later time to actually influence behavioral changes. McGuire emphasized the importance of reception (the attention and comprehension stages of the Yale group) and yielding (anticipation and critical-evaluation steps) in his study of individual differences in influenceability. According to McGuire reception was positively related to ability and motivational attributes. One weakness of the approach is the nature of the yielding step , which assumes that the audience's attitude will change by learning a new message, yet learning does not always result in persuasion.Benoit, W. L. (n.d.). The yale approach. In Electronic Encyclopedia of Communication. Communication Institute for Online Scholarship. Retrieved from URL McGuire is best known for his inoculation theory of exploring resistance to persuasion, which was influenced by the Yale school's research on the resilience of two-sided messages on opinion acceptance. Influences on elaboration likelihood model Another model that stems from the Yale attitude change approach is the elaboration likelihood model which is a contemporary approach to persuasion. Developed by Petty and Cacioppo during the late 1980s, the model describes two ways in which persuasive communications can cause attitude change: centrally and peripherally. The central route to persuasion occurs when people have the ability and motivation to listen to a message, think about its arguments and internalize the information. The recipient relies on cognititive responses instead of heuristics when using the central route. The peripheral route to persuasion is used when the recipient has little to no motivation or effort and people are swayed not by the argument itself but by elements secondary to the message (such as the length of the communication or the attractiveness of the communicator). Under the peripheral route, the recipient relies on the context of the situation rather than the information at hand (i.e. they look at attractiveness in this case or if the person speaking is famous or not).
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