Fear is often used to persuade and encourage people to do something. The fear message has to be quite severe, but is also has to include a way to get rid of the fear. If the message does not include a plan to get rid of the fear, then the recipients of the message will not be persuaded to do anything about it. Instead, without a remedy for the fear, the recipients may ignore the message or pretend like the fear is not real (Kenrick, 166-7).
This political ad by President Lyndon Johnson from 1964 is a great example of how fear is used to encourage people to motivate people to do a certain action or behavior. In this case, Johnson visualized to Americans how they would all be killed by nuclear weapons if they did not vote for him. That most likely created a considerable amount of fear in the American public. If the ad did not include instructions for reducing the threat of nuclear destruction, the political ad would have been a complete waste of time. However, the high level fear message was followed by ways to make that fear go away, making the fear-inducing ad more effective. This effectiveness most likely created more voter turn out for Johnson in 1964, and may have contributed to his win.
This ad was also most likely played more than once across cities in America. This would mean that the American people would have encountered that message several times, making the message and the remedy for nuclear destruction much more salient to them. Also, at that time, the majority of Americans still trusted Johnson and his leadership. They were not aware of his secret escalation of the Vietnam War, and they still associated him with Kennedy. To the American public, President Johnson was a trustworthy communicator. This most likely only made the message all the more credible to the public.
The elaboration likelihood model stresses that people will either take one of two routes in their thinking: the peripheral route, which focuses on surface qualities of the argument, like how pretty it is or what color it is; or the central route, which focuses more on the quality of the arguments. This model states that we automatically think in the peripheral route, and to move into the central route, we have to be motivated and we have to have the ability to do so (Kenrick, 157).
This political cartoon is an example of how people use the elaboration likelihood model to process information. In this particular cartoon, central and peripheral routes that voters would potentially use to evaluate the candidates are being showcased. In Clinton's case, she is shown with a dunce cap stating how she voted for the Iraq war. The dunce cap represents someone taking the peripheral route, only focuses on the surface elements. But most likely, voters would be taking the central route here, because they would be paying close attention to the arguments of the candidates, thinking about which candidate was best based on their previous decisions in the Senate. To combat the negative influence of these arguments, Senator Clinton is seen trying to switch the voter's back into the peripheral route of thinking. This switch would not focus on the quality of the argument, but more on surface features of the argument, such as the claim that Obama has ties with radical Islam, as shown with his turban. And if the voters were back in the peripheral route of thinking, and they were not motivated or did not have the ability to go back into the central route of analyzing the arguments (which is partly due to her distracting them with her arguments), they would find her argument more compelling.
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