Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (23)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (23)
Year of publication
Document Type
- Journal article (19)
- Doctoral Thesis (4)
Keywords
- behavior (23) (remove)
Institute
- Institut für Psychologie (7)
- Theodor-Boveri-Institut für Biowissenschaften (7)
- Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie, Psychosomatik und Psychotherapie (4)
- Graduate School of Life Sciences (2)
- Physiologisches Institut (2)
- Augenklinik und Poliklinik (1)
- Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology (1)
- Institut für Humangenetik (1)
- Institut für Medizinische Strahlenkunde und Zellforschung (1)
- Institut für deutsche Philologie (1)
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.