"Human-interest Frames, Competing Attitude Objects, and Understanding
Political Policies"
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American
Political Science Association, Atlanta GA, September 2-5, 1999.
Panel:
5-7 Theories of Framing
Abstract
Given our social nature and keen propensity to
attend to information about others, how does the presence of the person
in the human-interest media frame influence our understanding of
political policies? An experiment tests hypotheses that the person in
the frame will (1) distract the audience and hinder efforts to encode the
issue information, and (2) lead to issue attitudes that are shaped by
one's feelings for the person. The results support the latter--overall
approval of the policy and tendencies for bias toward it are linked
considerably to attitudes about the person. However, no evidence of
a distraction was found--both person-centered and person-less narratives
facilitated accurate understanding of the issue. Implications and future
refinements are discussed.