Headlines win elections: Mere exposure to fictitious news media alters voting behavior
- 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.
Verfasserangaben: | Roland PfisterORCiD, Katharina A. Schwarz, Patricia Holzmann, Moritz ReisORCiD, Kumar YogeeswaranORCiD, Wilfried Kunde |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:385-1-21123 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289341 |
Titel des übergeordneten Werkes (Deutsch): | PLoS ONE |
Verlag: | Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
Verlagsort: | San Francisco |
Dokumentart: | Wissenschaftlicher Artikel |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Datum der Fertigstellung: | 01.08.2023 |
Datum der Veröffentlichung: | 01.08.2023 |
Veröffentlichende Institution: | Universität Trier |
Beteiligte Körperschaft: | The publication was funded by the Open Access Fund of Universität Trier and the German Research Foundation (DFG) |
Datum der Freischaltung: | 12.12.2023 |
Jahrgang: | 2023 |
Ausgabe / Heft: | Band 18, Heft 8 |
Seitenzahl: | 14 |
Institute: | Fachbereich 1 / Psychologie |
Lizenz (Deutsch): | CC BY: Creative-Commons-Lizenz 4.0 International |