Trivializing the News? Affective Context Effects of Commercials on the Perception of Television News

Abstract

This study examined whether affect induced by television commercials influences the perception of news programming. An experiment showed that viewers in positive moods generated by television commercials perceive news stories viewed both after and before watching the commercials as more entertaining, relaxing, realistic, and more credible than viewers exposed to neutral commercials do. Of interest, viewers in positive mood, as compared to neutral mood, perceived the topic presented in the news story as less important and serious.

Notes

¹Yang and Oliver (2004) found context effects only for Internet novices as opposed to experts. Their argument is that expertise reduces the susceptibility to adverse context effects. We tested whether affective context effects on news evaluations, credibility, and issue importance were stronger for light relative to heavy media users. The results suggested that affective context effects did not vary as a function of frequency of news media use (Fs < 1). Therefore, we do not consider the effect of news media consumption in the remainder of this article. However, due to the low sample size this test lacks power and conclusions from this finding should be regarded with caution.

†p < .10. **p < .01.

Note. Entries are means, standard deviations are in parentheses. Different subscripts in a row indicate significant differences (p < .05).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Werner Wirth

Werner Wirth (Ph.D., University of Leipzig, 1994) is Professor in the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research at University of Zurich. His research interests include media psychology and effects, media and emotions, online and mobile communication, and empirical methods.

Christian Schemer

Christian Schemer (Ph.D., University of Zurich, 2010) is PostDoc in the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research at University of Zurich. His research focuses on public opinion formation, media and emotions, and empirical methods.

Jörg Matthes

Jörg Matthes (Ph.D., University of Zurich, 2007) is Assistant Professor in the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research at University of Zurich. His research interests include public opinion formation, media effects, and empirical formation.