Page 124 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

5. MEDIA PRIMING 113

bility of the mental model (or that component of the mental model of
President Bush that dealt with the crisis). Consequently, when asked to
judge the effectiveness of President Bush, the recently constructed model
should be relatively more accessible and exert more influence on judg-
ments of President Bush’s performance. Likewise, when the downturn in
the economy became a major issue in late 1991 and 1992, the extensive
media coverage resulted in the further development of mental models rel-
evant to President Bush. In this way, mental models can explain the long-
term consequences of political priming. Josephson’s (1987) study of the
influence of exposure to a violent TV program on young boys’ level of
aggression provides another example of this process. We argue that view-
ing the violent TV program activated a mental model that included vio-
lence as one of the relationships between the entities in the model. Conse-
quently, when the boys were first put into a situation in which they were
interacting with other boys, the mental model from the TV program was
still active and influenced how the boys viewed the situation (i.e., they
were more likely to view relationships with others as involving violence).
In addition, when the boys were interviewed with a cue from the violent
TV program (a walkie-talkie), the cue would further activate the mental
model, because the walkie-talkie would be part of the model. This further
activation would increase the likelihood that the boys used the mental
model to guide their behavior.
A second way that mental models can relate to media priming involves
the ability to prime specific information within a mental model. Research
has demonstrated that the accessibility of particular information in men-
tal models can vary, depending on the immediate task that a person is
performing (Morrow, Bower, & Greenspan, 1989; Morrow et al., 1987;
Radvansky & Zacks, 1997; cf. Wilson, Rinck, McNamara, Bower, & Mor-
row, 1993). In other words, the media could prime specific information
within a particular mental model, making that information more accessi-
ble, in addition to priming mental models. However, the focus of the men-
tal model will influence the ease with which information can be primed
and retrieved from memory. For example, when watching the movie Blue
Velvet, one could create a mental model concerning the story of the movie
(e.g., an idyllic town where a number of bizarre and disturbing events
occur) or the main character, Frank (played by Dennis Hopper), a psy-
chotic drug dealer. If the mental model is structured around Frank, seeing
Dennis Hopper in any other situation would activate the mental model of
Frank. Indeed, such a occurrence happened to one of the authors who had
seen Blue Velvet and then, less than a week later, the movie Hoosiers. In
Dennis Hopper’s first scene in Hoosiers, the author had an extreme reac-
tion because Hopper’s appearance activated the mental model of Frank
from to Blue Velvet, and there was concern about what he was going to do