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

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., ) visually depict Obama more negatively than moderate sites (e.g., ), 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 were rated more negatively than images of him from . In Study 2 ( n = 215), participants with weaker attitudes exposed to 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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