Page 147 - The Social Animal

Social Cognition 129

coincided precisely with the amount of coverage of those issues in the
local media. In a similar vein, vast numbers of heterosexuals first be-
came deeply concerned about the dangers of AIDS immediately fol-
lowing the extensive media coverage of basketball superstar Magic
Johnson’s announcement that he was HIV-positive. 21
In an interesting series of experiments, the political psychologists
Shanto Iyengar, Mark Peters, and Donald Kinder demonstrated the
importance of priming on the relationship between repeated media
exposure and issue importance. In one experiment, the researchers
22
edited the evening news so that participants received a steady dose
of news reports about a specific problem facing the United States.
For example, some participants watched reports of the weaknesses of
U.S. defense capabilities; others watched reports emphasizing pollu-
tion concerns; a third group watched accounts of inflation and eco-
nomic matters.
The results were clear. After a week of viewing the edited pro-
grams, participants emerged from the experiment convinced that the
target problem— the one primed by extensive coverage in the pro-
grams they watched—was more important for the country to solve
than they did before viewing the programs. What’s more, the re-
search participants acted on their newfound perceptions, evaluating
the president’s performance on the basis of how he handled the tar-
get problem, and were more positively disposed toward candidates
who stated strong positions on those issues. As the political scientist
Bernard Cohen observed:

The mass media may not be successful much of the time in
telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in
telling its readers what to think about .... The world will look
different to different people, depending . . . on the map that is
drawn for them by the writers, editors, and publishers of the pa-
pers they read. 23

Framing the Decision Another factor influencing how we con-
struct our social world is decision framing—whether a problem or
decision is presented in such a way that it appears to represent the
potential for a loss or for a gain. To illustrate the power of decision
framing, let’s imagine that you are the president of the United States
and the country is bracing itself for the outbreak of an unusual