Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (1)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (1)
Year of publication
- 2023 (1)
Document Type
- Journal article (1)
Language
- English (1)
Keywords
- India (1)
- Twitter (1)
- United States (1)
- behavior (1)
- elections (1)
- metaanalysis (1)
- personality (1)
- political theory (1)
Institute
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.