Page 116 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

5. MEDIA PRIMING 105

evidence of priming effects influencing judgments after 24 hours. How-
ever, we are aware of no replications of this latter effect. Most research on
the influence of priming on subsequent judgments involves a maximum
delay of 15 to 20 minutes. As mentioned previously, priming effects are
consistent at these time delays.
Along these lines, it is important to differentiate priming effects, which
temporarily increase the accessibility of a concept from memory, from
chronic accessibility. Chronic accessibility refers to concepts that are
always highly accessible from memory (see research by Bargh, Bond,
Lombardi, & Tota, 1986; Fazio et al., 1986; Higgins, King, & Mavin, 1982).
In the attitudinal domain, someone’s attitude toward cockroaches is prob-
ably chronically accessible from memory. On the other hand, someone’s
attitude toward Tibetan food is probably not chronically accessible. As
one would expect, chronically accessible concepts have more persistent
effects on people’s judgments and behavior than do other concepts that
are not chronically accessible. However, chronically accessible concepts
can be primed so that they are temporarily even more accessible from
memory (Bargh et al., 1986; Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., in press). Neverthe-
less, without some form of reinforcement, even chronically accessible con-
cepts eventually become less accessible across time (Grant & Logan, 1993).
Returning to the characteristics of priming, Roskos-Ewoldsen et al. (in
press) addressed the two main characteristics in their meta-analysis of the
media priming literature. In particular, they investigated whether more-
intense primes produce larger priming effects, and whether the priming
effect fades across time. First, none of the studies included in the meta-
analysis directly tested the time course of priming effects. As already dis-
cussed, Josephson (1987) found that when boys had been primed with
aggressive media and then played field hockey, most of the boys’ aggres-
sive behavior occurred within the first three minutes of play. Although
this finding has been interpreted as consistent with the time course of
priming (Geen, 1990), no study has manipulated the time between the
media violence prime and aggressive behavior to determine if aggressive
behavior decreases at longer intervals from the media prime. Neverthe-
less, in Roskos-Ewoldsen et al.’s (in press) meta-analysis, they found that,
across all media priming studies, media priming effects appear to fade
with time. However, the decrease in media priming effects was not statis-
tically significant. Second, none of the studies directly tested the effect of
prime intensity on later aggression. The meta-analysis provided mixed
support for the supposition that media primes should become stronger
when they are of greater intensity. For example, media primes that lasted
5 to 20 minutes in length had stronger effects than did media primes that
were less than 5 minutes in length. On the other hand, media priming
effects that resulted from media campaigns (e.g., coverage of the Gulf