The importance of high levels of involvement in counseling has been related to theories of interpersonal influence. To examine differing effects of counselor credibility as a function of how personally involved counselors are, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of attitude change was applied to counseling pretreatment. Students (N=256) were assessed as either highly ego involved or less ego involved with respect to dating and social skills counseling or career counseling. Subjects were then exposed to a counseling pretreatment intervention promoting participation in either a dating and social skills counseling group or a career planning program. The quality of the intervention and the credibility of the counselor presenting it were varied. Results showed that as ego involvement increased, so did attitudes regarding the personal benefit that subjects would receive from the counseling. As intervention quality increased from weak to strong, so did attitudes regarding personal benefit. Subjects exposed to the low credibility counselor differentiated strong from weak argument interventions better than subjects exposed to the high credibility counselor. As intervention quality increased, so did intent to participate, although overall intention scores suggested that subjects did not intend to sign up. The overall pattern of data is consistent with the ELM, but does not easily explain Strong's (1968) Interpersonal Influence Model, which is currently the theory most often applied to the counseling context. (JAC)