Increase personal relevance to shift the audience to the central route

Show people what is personally at stake before presenting your argument.

Why it works

Personal relevance is a primary driver of motivation to elaborate. When an audience perceives that a message directly affects their outcomes, health, finances, or identity, elaboration increases and they engage with argument quality rather than cues. This means you can effectively move someone from peripheral to central processing by making the topic feel personal — which is more ethical and more durable than manipulating them through cues.

How to do it

1. Open by explicitly connecting the topic to a goal, value, or concern the other person has already expressed.
2. Use second-person framing ("for you, this means…") rather than abstract or third-person descriptions.
3. Ask a question that makes them reason through the personal implications themselves.
4. After establishing relevance, present your strongest arguments — they will now receive genuine evaluation.

Evidence

Experiments manipulating personal relevance (e.g., "this policy will affect your university next year" vs. "another university in ten years") reliably shift audiences toward central processing, increasing sensitivity to argument quality. (rct)

Artificially manufactured relevance can feel manipulative; the technique works best when the link to personal stakes is genuine.

Sources

• Petty & Cacioppo (1979), issue involvement and persuasion, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Common mistake

Stating the relevance for them ("you should care about this") rather than asking questions that let them discover it themselves — the former is often dismissed.