Page 44 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

2. EXEMPLIFICATION THEORY OF MEDIA INFLUENCE 33

FIG. 2.1. Perception of the public’s evaluation of locally produced wine as a function
of radio interviews of four wine drinkers who confessed to either like or dislike the
wine of the last harvest. The ratio of likers to dislikers varied from 0:4 through 4:0.
The shaded area indicates the respondents’ estimates of the proportion of wine
drinkers liking the wine. The close correspondence between exemplification ratio and
population estimates was not affected by the revelation that in a survey only a dwin-
dling number of wine drinkers had given the wine a favorable rating. From Exemplifi-
cation in communication (p. 71), by D. Zillmann and H.-B. Brosius, 2000, Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Copyright 2000 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Adapted with permission.

Working with print-news reports, Zillmann et al. (1992) manipulated a
series of interviews of dieters who either had managed to keep their
weight down or failed to do so. Perceptions of the effectiveness of keeping
weight under control were in line with the distribution of exemplars (i.e.,
9 vs. 0, 6 vs. 3, and 3 vs. 6), the provision of base-rate information proving
inconsequential again.
Zillmann et al. (1996), moreover, explored the effects of such exemplar
distributions in print-news reports on family farming. Interviews with
successful, rich farmers and interviews with poor farmers fearing bank-
ruptcy were arranged in the indicated ratios. Base-rate information was