This investigation examined the effectiveness of three distinct television news “adwatch” formats in deflecting the influence of targeted political attack ads during the 1992 North Carolina gubernatorial campaign. The study featured three treatment groups and two control conditions. Those subjects assigned to the treatment groups viewed a newscast containing one of three adwatch formats: full screen, boxed, or verbal; they then viewed the targeted attack ad, which was edited into an entertainment program that followed the newscast. Those subjects assigned as controls either viewed the newscast without the adwatch and then the entertainment program containing the attack ad, or viewed the newscast without the adwatch and then the entertainment program without the ad. The results partially supported the hypotheses (1) that use of the full-screen adwatch produces a boomerang effect, further enhancing the influence of targeted attack ads, and (2) that this effect is most pronounced among female viewers. The results also suggest that adwatches do not affect viewer ratings of sponsoring news shows.
Thirty-two pairs of strangers were videotaped during a 15-minute interaction during which one of the pair, acting as a 'confederate' of the experimenters, inserted a pre-designated 'boast' into the conversation. Male and female confederates were observed to differ significantly on some aspects of their approach to the task: Women were significantly more likely to be calculating, top-down planners, while males were more likely to offer boasts as 'answers' to unprompted questions from their partners. Although there were trends for women to use more reciprocal questions and more topical control strategies than men, the obtained differences were not significant.
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