TY  - JOUR
A1  - Pfister, Roland
A1  - Schwarz, Katharina A.
A1  - Holzmann, Patricia
A1  - Reis, Moritz
A1  - Yogeeswaran, Kumar
A1  - Kunde, Wilfried
T1  - Headlines win elections: Mere exposure to fictitious news media alters voting behavior
T2  - PLoS ONE
N2  - Repeatedly encountering a stimulus biases the observer’s affective response and evaluation of the stimuli. Here we provide evidence for a causal link between mere exposure to fictitious news reports and subsequent voting behavior. In four pre-registered online experiments, participants browsed through newspaper webpages and were tacitly exposed to names of fictitious politicians. Exposure predicted voting behavior in a subsequent mock election, with a consistent preference for frequent over infrequent names, except when news items were decidedly negative. Follow-up analyses indicated that mere media presence fuels implicit personality theories regarding a candidate’s vigor in political contexts. News outlets should therefore be mindful to cover political candidates as evenly as possible.
Y1  - 2023
UR  - https://ubt.opus.hbz-nrw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/2112
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:385-1-21123
VL  - 2023
IS  - Band 18, Heft 8
PB  - Public Library of Science (PLoS)
CY  - San Francisco
ER  -