Persuasion According to the Unimodel: Implications for Cancer Communication

This study describes a unimodel of persuasion offered as an alternative to the dual-process models (the elaboration likelihood model and the heuristic-systematic model) in which the term persuasion has been understood over the past two decades. The unimodel asserts that information previously referred to as (peripheral or heuristic) cues and that referred to as message or issue arguments are functionally equivalent in the persuasion process: Both serve as an evidence for conclusions that recipients may reach, and neither is necessarily privileged by recipients’ (low or high) processing resources. The unimodel highlights several parameters of persuasion that have been relatively neglected in prior formulations. Attention to those parameters serves to integrate previous persuasion models and to offer suggestions for tailoring health communications about cancer-related issues.