Page 112 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

5. MEDIA PRIMING 101

Participants in both experiments completed a questionnaire both
before and after viewing the newscasts. The questionnaire asked partici-
pants to rate eight national problems in terms of national importance, per-
sonal concern, the need for more government action regarding each prob-
lem, and their estimated amount of interpersonal discussion with friends
about the problem. In addition, participants rated then-President Carter’s
overall performance either in tackling defense (Experiment 1) or in tack-
ling defense, pollution, and inflation (Experiment 2), as well as Carter’s
competence and integrity.
Results showed that participants in the experimental conditions
became more concerned with their inserted issue (i.e., defense prepared-
ness for Experiment 1; defense, pollution, or inflation for Experiment 2)
compared with their concern before the newscasts and compared with the
control groups. No other issue demonstrated an increase in importance.
The second experiment also provided evidence that persistent coverage of
an issue results in a stronger correlation between evaluations of Carter’s
performance concerning that issue and Carter’s overall performance as
president. These two experiments, in addition to Krosnick and Kinder’s
(1990) study, demonstrate that media coverage of a topic serves as a prime
in influencing how the public formulates political opinions, including
how they evaluate the effectiveness of the country’s leader. Next, we dis-
cuss priming in other areas of the media.

Media Priming in Other Domains

Media priming has been studied within other contexts besides media vio-
lence and the political domain (Malamuth & Check, 1985; Schleuder,
White, & Cameron, 1993; Wyer, Bodenhausen, & Gorman, 1985; Yi, 1990a,
1990b). One area that has received a fair amount of research concerns the
potential for the media to prime various stereotypes (Hansen & Hansen,
1988; Hansen & Krygowski, 1994; Power, Murphy, & Coover, 1996). For
example, exposure to rock music videos that portrays stereotypical images
of men and women results in more stereotypical impressions of a man and
a woman interacting in another videotape (Hansen & Hansen, 1988). In
particular, participants perceived the woman as less dominant after expo-
sure to these rock videos than after exposure to rock videos that included
no stereotypical portrayals. Likewise, Power et al. (1996) found that
reading stereotypical information in a newsletter about either African-
Americans or women influenced judgments of later unrelated media events
concerning the target group. For example, counterstereotypical depictions
of women resulted in higher ratings in Anita Hill’s credibility in the
Clarence Thomas sexual harassment hearings, whereas stereotypical depic-
tions lowered ratings of Hill’s credibility. Finally, several studies found that