Page 85 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

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In summary, it seems reasonable to think that media consumption—
whether it be the frequency, recency, or the content features of viewing—
may serve to enhance the accessibility of particular constructs. This
“media effect” is an example of the interrelatedness of the Heuristic/
Sufficiency Principle and the Accessibility Principle: Media consumption
enhances accessibility, which influences the information that becomes a
part of that small subset of available information.

Consequences of Accessibility

Simply demonstrating that media information may play a role in enhanc-
ing the accessibility of particular constructs is not sufficient to provide an
explanation of media effects. It is also necessary to show that enhanced
accessibility in turn produces effects that are consistent with the media
effects literature.
The consequences of accessibility are directly related to Principle 2: The
information that is most accessible is that which is most likely to be used
to construct a judgment. Moreover, the way in which the most accessible
information is used is a function of the type of judgment that is made.

Judgments about Persons. One of the more consistent findings in the
social cognition literature is that when people make judgments about
other persons, they tend to use the constructs that are most readily acces-
sible from memory (Accessibility Principle). In the now-classic priming
studies (e.g., Higgins et al., 1977; Srull & Wyer, 1979, 1980), when partici-
pants were required to form trait judgments based on the ambiguous
behaviors of a target person, they tended to use the trait concepts that
had been “primed” (i.e., made more accessible) to interpret those
ambiguous behaviors (for a review, see Higgins, 1996). The interpreta-
tions influenced participants’ judgments about the target’s behaviors
(e.g., reckless, persistent) as well as judgments about how much they
liked the target. These results have been replicated numerous times, even
under conditions of subliminal presentation of the prime (Bargh &
Pietromonaco, 1982).

Attitude and Belief Judgments. Evaluations of an object may be con-
structed from beliefs that are most accessible (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). In
the Fishbein and Ajzen model, attitude construction is a function of par-
ticular beliefs and the evaluations of those beliefs. It follows, then, that
which beliefs are put into the attitude construction equation may be a
function of which beliefs are most accessible at the moment. In a series of
experiments, Wyer and colleagues (Henninger & Wyer, 1976; Wyer &
Hartwick, 1984) examined the relation between accessible beliefs and