News Media Depictions of Obama Influence Automatic Attitudes: Implications for the Obama Effect

What is it about?

Positive media depictions of Obama likely contribute to the so-called “Obama effect.” However, like any attitude-object, effects of those depictions can depend on contextually positive or negative portrayals. We hypothesized that politically conservative news web sites (e.g., FoxNews.com) visually depict Obama more negatively than moderate sites (e.g., CNN.com), and that incidental exposure to such dissimilar depictions can differentially impact perceivers' attitudes toward Obama, particularly when pre-existing attitudes are weak. In Study 1 (n = 111), images of Obama from FoxNews.com were rated more negatively than images of him from CNN.com. In Study 2 (n = 215), participants with weaker attitudes exposed to FoxNews.com images (versus all other images) evinced the most negative SC-IAT bias toward Obama. Thus, incidental exposure to valenced media portrayals can impact attitudes toward public figures. Implications for the Obama effect are discussed.

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