Michael A. Shapiro

Comparing Positive and Negative Political Advertising on Radio

Compared to positive political ads, negative political ads presented on radio appear to be a two-edged sword that can sometimes cut the sponsor more than the target. In an experiment with college students, negative issue ads were perceived as relatively fair and resulted in a competitive advantage for the sponsor of the ad over the target of the ad. But negative image ads were seen as relatively unfair and resulted in a backlash against the sponsor. Negative ad arguments were remembered more than were arguments from positive ads.

Making Television Reality Unconscious Processes in the Construction of Social Reality

One psychological mechanism that people may use to construct social reality is a reality-monitoring procedure with which they may relatively automatically and unconsciously select relevant event memories in constructing a picture of the world. Contextual information stored with the event memories is one element used to determine the relevance of a memory. Both preattentive psychophysiological responses and higher-order cognitive responses to the stream of television events are likely to be stored with television event memories. Both psychophysiological and cognitive processing of television events are examined to see what kinds of contextual information might be stored as a result of both real and fictional television events and mediated and unmediated television events. Then the decision processes that use this information are examined. It seems likely that television may result in contextual information that is potentially confusing to the reality-monitoring process. The resulting reality-monitoring errors may explain how memories of some fictional or irrelevant television events come inadvertently to influence a persons judgments about the real world. Several suggestions for testing this theory are made.

Memory and Decision Processes in the Construction of Social Reality

This study investigates the suggestion that when constructing social reality, a person weighs and balances information from different sources to determine the situational usefulness of a memory. This relatively automatic and unconscious mechanism is proposed as one of a number of conscious and unconscious mental processes influencing the construction of social reality. According to the proposed model, each remembered event is stored relatively automatically as a separate memory trace. In at least some situations, a person constructs a worldview in real time based on relevant memory traces. Information about the perceived source of the communication is one of the cues used to decide which memories are relevant. An experiment supports key elements of the model. Individual memory traces predicted a significant amount of the total variance in answers to worldview questions in two domains, independent of several measures of communication exposure. Information about the communication source appeared to be associated with event memories in both domains. Communication source seemed important in predicting worldview about crime.

Predicting intentions to adopt safe home food handling practices. Applying the theory of planned behavior

While most home cooks know about safe home food handling procedures, compliance is generally low and has not been much improved by campaigns. Foodborne disease is a common cause of illness, hospitalization and even death, and many of these illnesses are caused by unsafe home food practices. Using the theory of planned behavior as a model, survey data were analyzed. Perceived behavioral control was the strongest predictor of behavioral intentions for both hand washing and food thermometer use. Subjective norm was the next strongest predictor for thermometer use, while attitude towards the behavior was the next strongest predictor for hand washing. This is consistent with earlier focus group results for thermometer use and suggests some possible strategies for designing future home food safety messages.

Narrative Persuasion, Causality, Complex Integration, and Support for Obesity Policy

Narrative messages have the potential to convey causal attribution information about complex social issues. This study examined attributions about obesity, an issue characterized by interrelated biological, behavioral, and environmental causes. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of three narratives emphasizing societal causes and solutions for obesity or an unrelated story that served as the control condition. The three narratives varied in the extent to which the character in the story acknowledged personal responsibility (high, moderate, and none) for controlling her weight. Stories that featured no acknowledgment and moderate acknowledgment of personal responsibility, while emphasizing environmental causes and solutions, were successful at increasing societal cause attributions about obesity and, among conservatives, increasing support for obesity-related policies relative to the control group. The extent to which respondents were able to make connections between individual and environmental causes of obesity (complex integration) mediated the relationship between the moderate acknowledgment condition and societal cause attributions. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this work for narrative persuasion theory and health communication campaigns.

Using theory to identify beliefs associated with support for policies to raise the price of high-fat and high-sugar foods.

Public policies designed to dramatically raise the price of high-fat and high-sugar foods have received substantial attention from researchers and the media. Although econometric studies suggest that these policies could reduce obesity rates, they are likely to face substantial public opposition. This study used the theory of perceived responsibility and social motivation as a framework to analyze data from a politically diverse convenience sample of 500 adults in upstate New York. The authors examined associations between attribution beliefs and policy support to identify what types of scientific evidence and accompanying messages appear most likely to generate public support for price-raising policies. Results suggest that public health advocates and health communicators could benefit from an increased emphasis on advertising for unhealthy foods as a cause of obesity and the food industrys (manufacturers, advertisers, markets, and restaurants) responsibility for addressing the problem.

Science Information in Fictional Movies: Effects of Context and Gender

The National Science Board and others are concerned that movies often miscommunicate science to the public with negative effects on science literacy and attitudes toward science. However, very little is known about the specific impact of movie science on audiences. This experiment examines the influence of narrative transportation, role of science within the movie, and gender of the viewer on evaluation of incorrect scientific information in fiction. Results show that incorrect science facts accepted as true after seeing identical segments from movies depend on the gender of the participant and a manipulation of the perceived centrality of science to the plot. Men tended to detect more inaccurate science facts when they thought science was central to the plot. Women detected more inaccurate science facts when they thought science was peripheral to the plot, which was presented as a relational story. The results may have implications for research on media effects, public understanding of science, and gender differences in learning.

Acknowledging Individual Responsibility while Emphasizing Social Determinants in Narratives to Promote Obesity-Reducing Public Policy: A Randomized Experiment

This study tests whether policy narratives designed to increase support for obesity-reducing public policies should explicitly acknowledge individual responsibility while emphasizing social, physical, and economic (social) determinants of obesity. We use a web-based, randomized experiment with a nationally representative sample of American adults (n = 718) to test hypotheses derived from theory and research on narrative persuasion. Respondents exposed to narratives that acknowledged individual responsibility while emphasizing obesity’s social determinants were less likely to engage in counterargument and felt more empathy for the story’s main character than those exposed to a message that did not acknowledge individual responsibility. Counterarguing and affective empathy fully mediated the relationship between message condition and support for policies to reduce rates of obesity. Failure to acknowledge individual responsibility in narratives emphasizing social determinants of obesity may undermine the persuasiveness of policy narratives. Omitting information about individual responsibility, a strongly-held American value, invites the public to engage in counterargument about the narratives and reduces feelings of empathy for a character that experiences the challenges and benefits of social determinants of obesity.

Realism Judgments and Mental Resources: A Cue Processing Model of Media Narrative Realism

Based on research on truth claims in the psychology literature, many scholars believe that readers and viewers of narratives start with an assumption of realism and adjust that judgment to the extent mental resources are available. Three studies reported here investigate the relationship between mental resources and realism judgments. Experiment 1 shows that realism depends on what kinds of cues to realism are in a story and the mental resources available to process those cues. Using hierarchical linear modeling, Experiments 2 and 3 indicate that the relationship between mental resources and realism judgments for commercial advertisements depends in systematic ways on initial judgments about realism so that increasing resources sometimes increase perceptions of realism and sometimes make ads seem less realistic. The results support a model in which initial expectations anchor realism judgments that may be modified away from the anchor if there are sufficient mental resources to process cues in the story.

Deeper Processing Is Associated With Support for Policies to Reduce Obesity

Health communication researchers have become increasingly interested in factors that predict support for health-related policy. Previous studies have shown that judgments about issues that are influenced by political ideology can be modified by the depth with which receivers process messages related to that issue. In this study, we test whether the same pattern is found for causal attributions about obesity and, ultimately, support for policies to reduce obesity. A national, random sample of U.S. adults read a story about both individual and societal causes of obesity. The longer the time participants spent on the study, and the more words they generated in a thought-listing procedure (operationalizations of depth of processing), the more likely participants were to support policies to reduce obesity, a traditionally liberal position. The same measures of depth of processing did not influence causal explanation of obesity overall, but the more time political moderates spent on the study, the more likely they were to both attribute societal explanations for obesity’s causes and to support policies to combat obesity. We conclude with a discussion of this study’s application to health communication campaigns and future research directions.