Headlines win elections: Mere exposure to fictitious news media alters voting behavior.
Journal
PloS one
ISSN: 1932-6203
Titre abrégé: PLoS One
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 101285081
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
2023
2023
Historique:
received:
20
10
2022
accepted:
17
07
2023
medline:
3
8
2023
pubmed:
1
8
2023
entrez:
1
8
2023
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
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.
Identifiants
pubmed: 37527255
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289341
pii: PONE-D-22-29025
pmc: PMC10393126
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e0289341Informations de copyright
Copyright: © 2023 Pfister et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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