The Psychological Price of Media Bias

Media bias was investigated through the effects of a TV interviewer's preferential behavior on the image of the interviewee in the eyes of the viewers. Judges viewed a political interview with either a friendly or a hostile interviewer then rated their impressions of the interviewed politician, whose behavior was identical in all conditions. The preferential nonverbal behavior of the interviewer (controlling for recognition and comprehension of verbal content) systematically influenced viewers' ratings of the politician. The effect consisted mainly of damage to the politician in the hostile interviewer condition. Describing the interviewee as a professor yielded a similar preferential behavior effect. A strong halo effect was identified, but it was ruled out as the mechanism accounting for the interviewer effect.