Social and Cultural Bases of Behavior

Affective (feelings), Behavioral (action tendencies), and Cognitive (beliefs) components.

A high-effort path where the listener carefully scrutinizes the quality of argument content; attitude change tends to be durable and resistant to counterarguments.

A low-effort path relying on superficial cues (e.g., source attractiveness, message length, number of arguments) rather than argument quality; produces weaker, less durable attitude change.

Motivation (e.g., personal relevance) and ability (e.g., absence of distraction, sufficient cognitive resources) to process the message.

An uncomfortable psychological tension that arises when a person holds two inconsistent cognitions, or when behavior conflicts with attitudes, motivating efforts to reduce the inconsistency.