A Communicative-Perspective: ELM, Cognitive Dissonance, and Persuasion in Argumentation/debate

Communication has always been a natural occurrence within the human race.  We were all born with voices to tell stories, give orders, persuade, and if we were lucky enough sing.  Sometimes however, when conflict emerges we use these voices to argue in the hopes of resolution.  To specify, argumentation is indeed a process of communication that we are all known to.  The argumentation-process is said to have a persuasion aspect where one person tries to persuade another into justifying the opposite’s opinion/message.  The most intriguing part of argumentation is its channel of persuasion.  Effective communication is persuasive, for example: politicians argue, or rather, debate all the time by channeling persuasion into their messages/propositions.  When we argue or debate issues with another individual we process messages.  This aspect of processing is called the Elaboration Likelihood Model where two specific types of processing contribute to the retention of a certain message.  The two types of message processing are the central route and the peripheral route.  You could even say that message retention may contribute to persuasion, which again is effective communication.  The peripheral route is where the masses of what we hear are processed and not stored for long-term memory.  The central route is where we apply cognitive effort and carefully attend to important messages that are then stored for long-term use.  Argumentation/Debate if practiced appropriately is centrally routed according to the ELM because it requires able attention and able motivation.  However, when two conflicting opinions collide theories like Cognitive Dissonance and Selective Exposure come into play alongside the ELM. Cognitive dissonance is defined as the distressing mental state that people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other existing opinions they hold.  For example, imagine an individual who knows the entirety about the health issues that smoking can cause yet still smokes which inevitably gives his/her child lung cancer due to second-hand smoking.  When arguing/debating with their spouse, their spouse will predictably express opinions that will cause mental distress or cognitive dissonance in the individual that smoked.  For natural reasons, this distress or discomfort will want to be avoided which is where selective exposure becomes significant.  Selective exposure is almost self-explanatory but is defined as the avoidance of situations that are likely to cause dissonance and acts as a preventive measure.  Politicians experience selective exposure and cognitive dissonance frequently while in a debate. 

Of course it wouldn’t be much of a blog without a signature Bond video depicting the theories we’ve just learned.  Here is a video where Bond attempts to read the body language of the villain in a very significant poker game.  According to the ELM, Bond processes his opponents bluff and body language centrally by applying cognitive effort and attention to his reads.  Cognitive dissonance begins to occur when Bond believes his opponent is bluffing but isn't a hundred percent sure.  This distress causes selective exposure in his reads triggering Bond to debate against himself.  Ultimately Bond decides to go “all-in” and loses everything.  

From a communicative-perspective, his opponent used effective and purposeful communication through the use of non-vocal persuasion and interpersonal-influence to defeat Bond.  Enjoy!