General Psychology, Trier University, Trier, Germany.
Institute for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (ICAN), Trier University, Trier, Germany.
PLoS One. 2023 Aug 1;18(8):e0289341. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289341. eCollection 2023.
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.
反复接触刺激会影响观察者对刺激的情感反应和评价。在这里，我们提供了一个证据，证明仅仅接触虚构的新闻报道与随后的投票行为之间存在因果关系。在四个预先注册的在线实验中，参与者浏览了报纸网页，并在潜意识中接触了虚构政治家的名字。在随后的模拟选举中，曝光预测了投票行为，对于频繁出现的名字，参与者普遍比不频繁出现的名字更有偏好，除非新闻内容是明确的负面信息。后续的分析表明，仅仅是媒体的存在就会助长关于候选人在政治环境中活力的内隐人格理论。因此，新闻媒体应该尽可能公平地报道政治候选人。
