A strong message recall-attitude relationship was predicted when participants were induced to use memory-based processing to form their attitudes but not when induced to use on-line processing after exposure to a persuasive message. The recall-attitude correlation in the memory-based conditions was expected to be positive when the arguments were strong and negative when they were weak; 240 participants participated in a study to test these predictions. An ample and positive recall-attitude relationship was found when participants were exposed to strong arguments in both processing conditions. A small but negative relationship was found in the weak arguments, on-line processing condition but not the memory-based condition. Parallel findings were obtained when need to evaluate was used to measure processing type.

Media-based fact checking contributes to more accurate political knowledge, but its corrective effects are limited. We argue that biographical information included in a corrective message, which is often unrelated to the inaccurate claim itself, can activate misperception-congruent naïve theories, increasing confidence in a misperception's plausibility and inducing skepticism toward denials. Resistance to corrections occurs regardless of initial belief accuracy, but the effect is strongest among those who find the contextual information objectionable or threatening. We test these claims using an online survey-embedded experiment (N = 750) conducted in the wake of the controversy over the proposed Islamic cultural center in New York City near the site of the 9/11 attacks, and find support for our predictions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Framing scholarship on policy issues has primarily focused on how competitive message environments alter framing effects or how individual differences moderate the impact of frames. This study combines both of these focal areas by examining how individual open-/closed-mindedness moderates framing effects about climate change within competitive and noncompetitive framing contexts. Contrary to previous scholarship, our experimental study finds effects on attitudes in the competitive framing condition, but not the noncompetitive framing condition. The framing effects found in the competitive condition were contingent upon individual differences in open-/closed-mindedness. Analysis shows that individual open-/closed-mindedness influences framing effects in part by altering the effects of frame exposure on the perceived costs and benefits of government climate policies.

Previous research has implicated alexithymia as a psychological impairment to accurately decode emotional messages. This study attempted to explore potential neurological reasons for this impairment. Using functional brain imaging procedures, an experimental design was undertaken to assess group differences between individuals high and low in alexithymia on brain activation while viewing images of individuals displaying neutral or positive affect. While controlling for activation due to neutral affect images, results showed less activation for alexithymic versus nonalexithymic individuals due to positive affect images in several areas of the brain, including the amygdala and the hippocampus. Several implications and directions for future research are also discussed.

Using a probability-based sample of young Danish adults and a randomized experimental design, this study investigated effects of past pornography consumption, experimental exposure to nonviolent pornography, perceived realism of pornography, and personality (i.e., agreeableness) on sexist attitudes (i.e., attitudes toward women, hostile and benevolent sexism). Further, sexual arousal mediation was assessed. Results showed that, among men, an increased past pornography consumption was significantly associated with less egalitarian attitudes toward women and more hostile sexism. Further, lower agreeableness was found to significantly predict higher sexist attitudes. Significant effects of experimental exposure to pornography were found for hostile sexism among low in agreeableness participants and for benevolent sexism among women. These experimental exposure effects were found to be mediated by sexual arousal.

This paper seeks to historicize Twitter within a longer historical framework of diaries to better understand Twitter and broader communication practices and patterns. Based on a review of historical literature regarding 18th and 19th century diaries, we created a content analysis coding scheme to analyze a random sample of publicly available Twitter messages according to themes in the diaries. Findings suggest commentary and accounting styles are the most popular narrative styles on Twitter. Despite important differences between the historical diaries and Twitter, this analysis reveals long-standing social needs to account, reflect, communicate, and share with others using media of the times.

Abundant media outlets allow for much diversity of political messages and selective use among citizens. A 2-session online field study examined impacts of attitude consistency, attitude importance, and source credibility on selective exposure to political messages and subsequent attitude accessibility. The first session assessed attitudes and their accessibility. In the second session, participants browsed online search results that featured attitude-consistent and attitude-discrepant messages associated with sources of either high or low credibility; selective reading was tracked. Then attitude accessibility was measured again. Participants spent less time with attitude-discrepant messages compared to attitude-consistent messages; this pattern was particularly pronounced among participants with higher attitude importance. Low importance fostered exposure to high-credibility messages. Exposure to attitude-discrepant, high-credibility messages reduced attitude accessibility.

This study is the first comparative analysis of mediated political personalization in the international arena; its contribution to the research in the field is twofold: (a) through a longitudinal analysis, it shows that media coverage of foreign countries focuses increasingly on state leaders rather than on the countries per se; and (b) it accounts for variations in the level of mediated political personalization between pairs of countries: the greater the distance between a pair of countries, in terms of values, political interests, economic relations, and geographical distance, the more their news coverage of each other focuses on the foreign country's leader at the expense of other political aspects.

Building on tenets from transactive memory (TM) theory and expectation states (ES) theory, this study examined how communication styles influenced expertise recognition and perceived influence in intercultural groups of Chinese and American members. Controlling for the impact of actual expertise, we found that confident communication did not affect expertise recognition, but affected perceived influence; task-oriented communication had significant positive impact on both expertise recognition and perceived influence; and finally, talkativeness and dominance did not predict either expertise recognition or perceived influence. These results highlight the importance of shared ES, which people from different cultures may not develop, in expertise recognition and influence inferred from a group interaction, thus, contributing to understanding the role of culture and communication in TM development.

This study examined whether the positive or negative valence of a news story, and the race of the character portrayed in the story, would influence Black or White readers' selection of a story. The study employed selective exposure methodology to unobtrusively measure story selections among Black and White readers as they browsed a news site. The results demonstrated Black newsreaders were more likely to select and read positive and negative stories featuring their racial ingroup, and more likely to select and read negative vis-à-vis positive stories about their outgroup. In contrast, Whites' story preference was not affected by story valence or character race. Theoretical assumptions from social identity, social comparison, and social cognitive theories are used to explain the findings.

This approach conceptualizes the hostile media effect (HME) as an intergroup phenomenon. Two empirical studies, one quasi-experimental and one experimental, examine the HME in the context of the abortion debate. Both studies show that ingroup identification and group status qualify the HME. Pro-choice and pro-life group members perceived an identical newspaper article as biased against their own viewpoint only if they considered their ingroup to have a lower status in society than the outgroup. In addition, only group members with a stronger ingroup identification showed a HME, particularly because of self-investment components of ingroup identification. Taken together, the findings confirm the important influence of ingroup status and ingroup identification on the HME.

Believability has been proposed as a factor influencing the persuasiveness of narratives. A measure of narrative believability was developed and validated. Study 1 details the construction and evaluation of the Narrative Believability Scale (NBS-12) in terms of internal consistency. Study 2 evaluates the criterion-related and construct validity of the scale. Study 3 tests the predictive validity of the measure for identifying juror verdicts and verdict confidence over and above the influence of other measures, including presentation order, attorney credibility, bias, and transportation. The NBS-12 was found to be a psychometrically robust measure of narrative believability and was able to predict variance in verdicts and verdict confidence. These results have implications for narrative persuasion research and understanding juror decision making.

The readback/hearback protocol is a radio procedure intended to reduce communication errors in technical industries. It consists of the delivery of an instruction to a receiver, and the readback of that instruction by the receiver to confirm to the sender that it has been heard accurately. It does not, however, ensure that the receiver has understood the instruction. Using 2 samples within electricity transmission control, the present research explored whether the prosodic cues that listeners use to interpret uncertainty are also used to judge whether a receiver is perceived to have understood an instruction. Rising intonation and filled interturn delays were identified as prosodic cues that operators use to identify nonunderstandings. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are considered.