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engage the thought processes from the exi- gencies of daily life\" (p. 623). Thus, persons must choose which stimuli should be scru- tinized carefully and which are not worthy of extensive thought.' Recent research has indicated that the level of personal involvement with an issue is one variable that influences the extent to which issue-relevant arguments will be con- termined primarily by the source Of the message (expert sources produce internalization, attractive sources pro- duce identification, and powerful sources produce com- pliance), According to the central/peripheral distinc- tion, the central route is followed when issue-relevant argumentation is responsible for inducing change re- gardless of the message source. A person who changes simply because an expert, attractive, or powerful source endorses a particular position (without engaging in is- sue-relevant thought) would be following the peripheral route. ARGUMENT-BASED PERSUASION source, under either high- or low-involve- ment conditions. She found that the message manipulation had a greater impact on per- suasion under high involvement but that the source manipulation had a greater impact on attitude under low involvement. Although these data are highly suggestive, they do not provide definitive support for the two routes to persuasion because the particular message manipulation employed by Chaiken (num- ber of arguments) has the ability to serve as a simple cue much in the same way that a source manipulation (likable or dislikable source) can serve as a cue, In other words, even if subjects did no thinking about the message arguments at all, it is likely that they would have realized that the message they heard had either relatively few or rel- atively many arguments. A simple desire to identify with a side that has many rather than few arguments may have been suffi- cient to produce the differential persuasion for the two- and six-argument messages un- der the high-involvement conditions. Thus, both the source manipulation and the mes- sage manipulation may have provided simple cues for message acceptance, making a cog- Nitivea avaluatian af tha maccare rantant un_ 849 eliminated. For the manipulation of message cogency to have an impact on persuasion, communication recipients must actually think about the merits of the arguments pre- sented. Of course the expertise of the source of the communication could stili provide a simple cue for message acceptance. Our hy- pothesis was that under conditions of high personal involvement, persuasion would be affected more by the quality of the message arguments employed but that under low-in- volvement conditions, persuasion would be tied more strongly to the expertise of the source. Method Procedure One hundred forty-five male and female undergrad- uates at the University of Missouri participated in order to earn extra credit in an introductory psychology course. The design was a 2 (issue involvement: high or low) X 2 (argument quality: strong or weak} X 2 (source expertise: high or low) factorial. Subjects were tested in groups of 3 to 16 in cubicles designed so that no subject could have visual or verbal contact with any other subject. During any one session, it was possible to conduct all eight experimental conditions (if enough weell natn worn enn nee \\