Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee.
School of Journalism and Electronic Media, University of Tennessee.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2016 Nov;111(5):665-673. doi: 10.1037/pspa0000065. Epub 2016 Sep 22.
In democracies where multitudes yield political influence, so does broadcast media that reaches those multitudes. However, broadcast media may not be powerful simply because it reaches a certain audience, but because each of the recipients is aware of that fact. That is, watching broadcast media can evoke a state of shared attention, or the perception of simultaneous coattention with others. Whereas past research has investigated the effects of shared attention with a few socially close others (i.e., friends, acquaintances, minimal ingroup members), we examine the impact of shared attention with a multitude of unfamiliar others in the context of televised broadcasting. In this paper, we explore whether shared attention increases the psychological impact of televised political speeches, and whether fewer numbers of coattending others diminishes this effect. Five studies investigate whether the perception of simultaneous coattention, or shared attention, on a mass broadcasted political speech leads to more extreme judgments. The results indicate that the perception of synchronous coattention (as compared with coattending asynchronously and attending alone) renders persuasive speeches more persuasive, and unpersuasive speeches more unpersuasive. We also find that recall memory for the content of the speech mediates the effect of shared attention on political persuasion. The results are consistent with the notion that shared attention on mass broadcasted information results in deeper processing of the content, rendering judgments more extreme. In all, our findings imply that shared attention is a cognitive capacity that supports large-scale social coordination, where multitudes of people can cognitively prioritize simultaneously coattended information. (PsycINFO Database Record
在民主国家，民众的数量会影响政治影响力，同样，能够覆盖这些民众的广播媒体也会产生影响。然而，广播媒体的影响力可能不仅仅在于其受众规模，还在于每个接收者都意识到这一事实。也就是说，观看广播媒体可以唤起一种共同关注的状态，或者是与他人同时关注的感觉。虽然过去的研究已经调查了与少数几个社交关系密切的人（例如朋友、熟人、最小的内群体成员）共享注意力的影响，但我们在电视广播的背景下，研究了与众多陌生他人共享注意力的影响。在本文中，我们探讨了共享注意力是否会增加电视政治演讲的心理影响，以及较少数量的共同关注者是否会减弱这种影响。五项研究调查了在大规模广播政治演讲中，共同关注的感知（即同步共同关注）是否会导致更极端的判断。结果表明，同步共同关注的感知（与共同异步关注和单独关注相比）会使有说服力的演讲更有说服力，没有说服力的演讲更没有说服力。我们还发现，对演讲内容的回忆记忆在共同关注对政治说服的影响中起中介作用。这些结果与这样一种观点一致，即对大规模广播信息的共同关注会导致对内容的更深入处理，从而使判断更加极端。总之，我们的发现意味着共同关注是一种认知能力，支持大规模的社会协调，使众多人能够同时关注共同关注的信息。
