The message design logics, therefore, represent “internally consistent and developmentally ordered stages in the acquisition of working knowledge about the systematic properties of verbal messages.” [3] As O’Keefe describes further, each premise is “associated with a constellation of related beliefs: a communication-constituting concept, a conception of the functional possibilities of communication, unit formation procedures, and principles of coherence.”[3] The underlying idea behind O’Keefe's work is that “communication is not necessarily a uniform process.”[3] The three components of Message Design Logic are based on "individuals’ levels of cognitive complexity," and are expressed in messages that vary in organization, content, and effectiveness.
Due to the extreme straightforwardness of expressive messages they may contain multiple facets that can be viewed as negative when discussing communicative effectiveness, such as pointless content (excessive knowledge of what the speaker feels or wants), redundancies (due to a thought being recycled), noncontingent threats or insults (simple announcements of punishments), or inoffensive but inappropriate comments (complimentary personal remarks inappropriately delivered).
Rhetorical message producers always “seek to achieve consensus and social legitimation for the reality they speak,” thus having the possibility of negotiation always available.
[3] Rhetorical messages also normally contain “elaborating and contextualizing clauses and phrases that provide explicit definitions of the context.”[3] Lastly, O’Keefe summarizes the internal coherence of rhetorical designed messages as deriving from “the elements being related by intersubjectively available, goal-oriented schemes.”[3] Many other scholars have verified and used O’Keefe's work for their own research.
[4] Likewise, another study done explored the relationships among individuals’ message design logics and their levels of social well-being.
[3] O’Keefe's Message Design Logic has also been used in a study done in 2005 by Carmen Cortes, Chad Larson, and Dale Hample.
[7] What Cortes, Larson, and Hample found is that “differentiation reflects the sophistication with which a person perceives others, and a Message Design Logic is a knowledge structure regarding communication.” [7] While critics of this theory are hard to find, Joy Hart of Louisville University reviews and examines O’Keefe's work, including a full critique of assumptions she believes are being made.
Hart claims that O’Keefe “assumes a developmental continuum for communication skill.” [2] She examines the assumption that individuals may progress to the rhetorical message design logic, which is the highest level of development.