The evening news and presidential evaluations

Examined the effects of TV news accessibility, relevance, and expertise on presidential evaluations in 2 experiments. In each, Ss viewed TV news programs in which the amount of attention given to various national problems was manipulated. In Exp I, 73 undergraduates were divided among 3 conditions d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of personality and social psychology 1984-04, Vol.46 (4), p.778-787
Main Authors: Iyengar, Shanto, Kinder, Donald R, Peters, Mark D, Krosnick, Jon A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior. Attitude
Biological and medical sciences
Evaluation
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Politicians
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social psychology
Television
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Summary:Examined the effects of TV news accessibility, relevance, and expertise on presidential evaluations in 2 experiments. In each, Ss viewed TV news programs in which the amount of attention given to various national problems was manipulated. In Exp I, 73 undergraduates were divided among 3 conditions defined by level of exposure to stories about energy. Ss viewed 40 mins of news taken from 1979-1980 newscasts before answering questions about President Carter's performance, competence, and integrity. In Exp II, 140 Ss from the community watched newscasts that varied with regard to exposure level to particular national problems. After rating Carter's performance, Ss also completed a political expertise questionnaire. Results show that by drawing attention to certain national problems while ignoring others, TV news programs can define the standards by which presidents are evaluated. As predicted, this effect was greater for evaluations of general performance than for judgments of his competence and integrity, and it was more pronounced among novices than among experts. (25 ref)
ISSN:0022-3514
1939-1315
DOI:10.1037/0022-3514.46.4.778