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Little attention has been paid to the mental processes and the story elements that influence perceived reality judgments of media stories. People often lack the motivation or ability to be thoughtful about perceived reality judgments. This is particularly true when the stimulus controls the pace of the story (e.g., television). It is possible that people use the typical and atypical elements of a story as a heuristic for making simple judgments about perceived reality of media narratives. In 2 studies, the careful manipulation of atypical and typical information in a soap opera and a news story predicted about half the variance in perceived reality. As the typicality of the stories increased, so did the participants' ratings of the perceived reality of the stories. In a 3rd study, while viewing entertainment television shows, participants used dials to continuously rate the selected programs for perceived reality, typicality, interest, and liking. Results indicate that viewers can make moment-tomoment reality judgments, and these judgments are strongly related to typicality. Interest-liking was related to typicality and perceived reality for drama. For comedy, however, situations with low reality produced greater interest and liking. Typicality appears to be a key psychological characteristic of media stories.Investigators have long recognized that the perceived reality of a media presentation may influence mental processes, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors (Potter, 1988). These studies can be classified in a number of ways. Many studies investigate global measures of television reality as modifiers of other effects. A second group of studies manipulates beliefs about the reality of a story in an attempt to modify the effects of media, particularly media effects on aggression. Finally, otherRequests for reprints should be sent to Michael A.

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