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Headlines win elections: Mere exposure to fictitious news media alters voting behavior.


ABSTRACT: 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.

SUBMITTER: Pfister R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10393126 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Headlines win elections: Mere exposure to fictitious news media alters voting behavior.

Pfister Roland R   Schwarz Katharina A KA   Holzmann Patricia P   Reis Moritz M   Yogeeswaran Kumar K   Kunde Wilfried W  

PloS one 20230801 8


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 infr  ...[more]

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