TV was more effective than newspapers in the creation of negative preconceptions – N + 1

Scene from the movie “Pulp Fiction» Photo: «Pulp Fiction» / Miramax

Researchers at Houston and Munich University found that long-term viewing of television news is capable of forming unconscious negative attitude towards members of certain races and ethnic groups. Print news have the same effect, but they are not “forced” nature – people are free to choose what they read, so there are only negative attitudes on the part of the audience. The work is published in the International Journal of Communication .

According to previous studies of media content in the news many provincial dominated American television reports of crimes committed by blacks. Moreover, the percentage remains high despite the fact that the proportion of crimes in general statistics blacks can be quite low. A similar phenomenon is observed in Austria, where local newspapers, tabloids constantly publish articles about violations of migrants who do not correlate with their actual crime statistics. In both cases, the media paint a shape “born criminal” for other races and ethnic groups.

To check whether the broadcast media affect the attitudes of the local population with respect to African Americans and migrants, researchers conducted three studies. In the first, held in the United States, 316 participants carried the implicit association test (IAT) – special techniques aimed at identifying unconscious or hidden evaluation and treatment for various groups of people. Then they filled out questionnaires, which have deliberately answered questions about his attitude toward blacks, and also noted the number and frequency of viewing television news of local channels. A similar study, but with 489 participants was held in Austria. The only difference was that the subjects answered – how often they read the local tabloids.

It was found that the more people watched the local television news depicting blacks as “criminals by nature”, the higher was their unconscious (or hide) a negative attitude towards them. At the same time, in Austria, there was no relation between negative attitudes and reading tabloids. Scientists have explained this by saying that if you look at the TV news unit, the crime scene, you’ll have to see, along with other news items, whereas in the newspaper (or online), you can choose what to read.

In order to confirm or refute this explanation researchers conducted additional research in Austria, with the other 470 subjects. His procedure was almost identical to the previous two, except that now the respondents also answered – how many times per week they read it the criminal chronicle and relevant articles. It turned out that the constant reading the news about crimes leads to a similar effect in the unconscious shift towards migrants, as well as viewing television news in the United States on attitudes toward African Americans.

Implicit association tests (Implicit-association test) appeared in the arsenal of psychologists and social scientists since 1998. The procedure for carrying out their rather complex. For example, it may be presented sequentially couple categories of “African American” and “White American”, and they are two attributes – “pleasant” and “unpleasant.” The subject must quickly select the appropriate category of the attribute. Suppose that in both cases he chose “pleasant”, but the time he spent on it to tie a pair of “White” – “Nice” was much less than the time spent on the binding of a pair of “African American” – “Nice.” That means implicitly (neosoznavaemo) “White” he really is associated with pleasant as established associative connections are realized much faster, but the “African American” – no.