Page 25 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

14 McCOMBS AND REYNOLDS

PRIMING

The link between agenda-setting effects and the subsequent expression of
opinions about public figures or other objects is called priming. This con-
sequence of agenda-setting is diagrammed on the right side of Fig. 1.1.
The psychological basis of priming is the selective attention of the public.
People do not and cannot pay attention to everything. Rather than engag-
ing in a comprehensive analysis based on their total store of information,
citizens routinely draw on those bits of information that are particularly
salient at the time they must make a judgment.
Strong causal evidence of priming was found during the 1986 Iran-
Contra scandal (Krosnick & Kinder, 1990). On November 25, 1986, the
U.S. Attorney General announced that funds obtained by the U.S. govern-
ment from the secret sale of weapons to Iran had been improperly
diverted to the Contras, a group attempting to overthrow the Sandinista
government in Nicaragua. The story received major news coverage. By
coincidence, the National Election Study’s post-1986 presidential survey
was in the field at the time of these announcements, creating a natural
before-and-after comparison of the specific elements that influenced
Americans’ assessment of President Reagan’s overall performance. The
study showed that two elements, the public’s opinion about the impor-
tance of providing assistance to the Contras and about U.S. intervention
in Central America, played substantially increased roles in overall assess-
ment of the president after the Attorney General’s announcement.
Evidence of priming also exists in the public’s assessments of President
Clinton’s job performance in the early months of the Monica Lewinsky
sex scandal. A survey of Oregon residents found significant links between
the frequency of media use, the formation of attribute agendas among the
public, and assessments of Clinton’s job performance (Wanta & Chang,
1999). Frequent newspaper readers and infrequent television viewers
were more likely to describe Clinton in terms of public issues. There was
no relationship between the frequency of media exposure and descrip-
tions of Clinton in terms of the scandal, perhaps because of the saturation
coverage in all media. In turn, there was a substantial link between the
salience of issue positions as the president’s dominant attribute and posi-
tive opinions about his overall job performance. Among people who
believed that the president’s involvement in the scandal was the most
salient attribute, opinions about the president were negative.
An even more basic form of priming is the link between the salience of
objects and their attributes in the mass media and the very existence of
opinions among the audience. Media salience primes the creation and
expression of opinions. Extensive analysis of election-year news about
U.S. presidential candidates in all five elections between 1980 and 1996