ORIGINAL ARTICLE Persuasion According to the Unimodel: Implications for Cancer Communication Arie W. Kruglanski 1 , Xiaoyan Chen 1 , Antonio Pierro 2 , Lucia Mannetti 2 , Hans-Peter Erb 3 , & Scott Spiegel 4 1 Department of Psychology, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD 20742-4411 2 Dipartimento di Psicologia dei Processi die Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Universita di Roma ‘‘La Sapienza,’’ Rome, Italy 3 Lehrstuhl Sozialpsychologie, Universita ¨ t Bonn, Bonn, Germany 4 Psychology Department, Columbia University, New York 10032 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 unimo- del 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 per- suasion 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 previ- ous persuasion models and to offer suggestions for tailoring health communications about cancer-related issues. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00285.x How many fundamentally different ways are there to being persuaded? Two, accord- ing to views prevalent in social psychology today. One way is thorough and based on a meticulous consideration of message and issue information. It represents the ‘‘high road’’ to persuasion afforded only under ample processing resources. The other way is relatively superficial and based on information exogenous to the message or the issue. This is a ‘‘low road’’ resorted to when the recipient’s processing resources are limited. Two influential models, differing in conceptual details, feature such a dual- mode approach to persuasion, Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and Chaiken’s (e.g., Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989) heuristic- systematic model (HSM). Over the past 2 decades, both models inspired consider- able research generally viewed as supportive of their implications (for reviews, see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). In this study, we offer an alternative Corresponding author: Arie W. Kruglanski; e-mail: arie@psyc.umd.edu. Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916 Journal of Communication 56 (2006) S105–S122 ª 2006 International Communication Association S105