Polarizing Organizations and Image Repair: The Effects of Extreme Disposition and Ego-Involvement on ELM Processing Routes for Organizational Responses

ABSTRACT

This study examined elaboration likelihood model (ELM) processing routes used by audiences to evaluate image repair messages for two organizations that often provoke polarizing dispositions in audiences: the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the New England Patriots football team. Involvement is a key concept in the ELM paradigm, yet studies have overlooked issues on the extreme ends of the dispositional spectrum, especially where ego-involvement motivates individuals. In order to test this largely unexplored idea, participants in the study were presented with post-incident message responses for the Columbine and Sandy Hook school shootings and the Spygate and Deflategate cheating scandals. Results indicated that the relationship between disposition and peripheral processing was curvilinear, with an increased use of peripheral processing at dispositional extremes. Ego-involvement fully mediated this relationship for most messages. Study items measuring reaction to the message source also showed statistical similarities to central processing variables. Although message source is often treated as a peripheral cue in ELM studies, the results of this analysis suggested that the message source was not used as a peripheral cue here. These findings are consistent with several other past studies on dual process models that align message source more closely with a likelihood to elaborate.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual process
• disposition
• crisis communication
• reputation management
• central processing
• peripheral processing

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All Materials in the online repository are available at https://osf.io/7rph9/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen C. P. McDermott

Karen C. P. McDermott earned her PhD in Communication at the University of Connecticut in 2019. Her interests span a broad array of topics in persuasion and interpersonal communication, and she has conducted research on topics in sport communication, crisis and image repair, and motivation and emotion. In particular she has presented on the effects of trash talk in a competitive setting, persuasion and message strategies in image repair, humor and entertainment in the motivation to follow politics, and the experience and expression of romantic jealousy among non-conventional relational populations.

Kenneth A. Lachlan

Kenneth A. Lachlan is a Professor and Department Head in the Department of Communication at the University of Connecticut. Prior to his appointment at UCONN, he was the Founding Chair of the Communication Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He also holds research affiliations with UCONN’s Center for Health Intervention and Prevention, and the Communication and Social Robotics Laboratory at Western Michigan University. He was identified in a Communication Education citation analysis as ranking in the top 1% of the field in publication record between 2007 and 2011. His current research interests include the functions and effects of social media during crises and disasters, and the use of social robotics in delivering risk messages.