STATUS CONFERRAL: THE MODIFICATEON OF SOURCE CREDIBILITY BY THE ACT OF PRESS COVERAGE Thesis for the beam of Ph. D‘ MECHEGAN STATE UNIVERSITY farms Bolton Lem-art 1964‘ THESIS mumnimmmmmmmuim I? 3 1293 01087 7110 This is to certify that the thesis entitled STATUS CONFERRAL: THE MODIFICATION OF SOURCE CREDIBILITY BY THE ACT OF PRESS COVERAGE presented bg James Bolton Lemert has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph.D. degree in Communication & m 0.0.. / Dateimw 0-169 J I“ I“ I“ I LIB MR 1' I‘ 2 Mich; .31 State University STATUS CONFERRAL: THE MODIFICATION OF SOURCE CREDIBILITY BY THE ACT OF PRESS COVERAGE By James Bolton Lemert A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Communication 196“ ABSTRACT STATUS CONFERRAL: THE MODIFICATION OF SOURCE CREDIBILITY BY THE ACT OF PRESS COVERAGE by James Bolton Lemert The question of whether the appearance of persons, groups and concepts in the mass media enhances their status has stirred much speculation. The question has important implications for mass media responsibility, and it has important theoretical implications. However, there has been little empirical evidence of such a status conferral effect. The purpose of the present undertaking was to investigate the effect of the act of press coverage on the credibility of sources given the coverage. Theoretical rationale for the study centered about the Lazarsfeld- Merton expression of the status conferral notion and Osgood's theory of meaning deve10pment. A form of the Semantic Differential, which has been useful in Osgood's studies of meaning development, was used to measure source credibility. A series of eight status conferral propositions govern the way the two experiments were conducted and lead to the experimental hypotheses. Rokeach's personality theory was thought to have special relevance to the conferral of credibility upon propaganda sources, and a number of hypotheses were developed concerning his theory 0 James Bolton Lemert The conferral of credibility upon sources was studied by varying the credibility of the news agency providing the coverage. Stimulus materials were news stories attributed to news agencies. Testing materials included the Berlo-Lemert credibility scales and Semantic Differential measures of attitudes toward the topics of the news stories. Subjects for the first experiment were 62 Michigan State University students; for the second experiment the subjects were 216 Lansing area residents interviewed individually in their homes. In the first experiment, two fictitious sources discussed topics in two separate stories; they did not take overt attitudinal positions on the topics. Experimental variables were the relative Openmindedness or closedmindedness of the respondent and the relative positive credibility of the news agency providing the coverage. The sources were initially unknown to the respondents. There were very large increases in credibility ratings for both sources, regardless of treatment con- dition and for one of the two stories the source was rated significantly Safer and more Dynamic when quoted by the more credible of two news agencies. Means for the other credibility dimension (Qualification) and the other story were generally in the direction of hypotheses but not significantly so. However the prediction, derived from Rokeach's personality theory, that closedminded persons would rate sources as more credible than openminded persons was not supported. In the second experiment, sources differed in initial credibility but were still fictitious. They also made overt propaganda assertions. Each source was quoted by one of three news agencies differing in initial credibility (positive, neutral, negative). Mean credibility change James Bolton Lemert scores again were in the direction of the relative status conferral hypotheses, especially for the Safety and Dynamism dimensions. In addition, in one of two stories the initial credibility of the source and the news agency was related to the amount of attitude change. There was no support in the principal analysis for the prediction that closedminded respondents would be differentially affected by source and news agency credibility in their ratings of sources and concepts. Results of the two studies were seen as confirming the hypothesis that credibility conferred upon sources is related to news agency credibility. However, while the existence of status conferral was supported, the results raised a number of questions about how the process' operates. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to a number of people for aid, advice and encouragement. First, Malcolm S. MacLean, who is now at the University of Iowa, was my chairman and thesis advisor through the completion of all ex- perimental work and through the first draft of this dissertation. Most of the strong points of this thesis stem from Dr. MacLean. The weak points stem fromflw'stubbornness. I am indebted to David K. Berlo for agreeing to fill the void left by Dr. MacLean's departure. He agreed to do this even though, in effect, he was handed a Ziifi accompli. I am also grateful for Dr. Berlo's help in securing funds for a large- scale field study, a study which could not have been done without this support. Erwin Bettinghaus was quite helpful during all phases of the dissertation work but especially in the final stages, during Dr. Berlo's illness. I am also grateful to the other members of my guidance committeeo-Milton Rokeach, Frederick Waisanen, V. C. Troldahl and Hideya Kumata-ofor affording consultation and abiding my stubbornness. A number of other inhabitants of the intellectual stress bin also merit a word of thanks. Colleagues Dan Costley, Fred Selak, Al Talbott, Gordon Whiting, Luciano Bozzini and Jerry Durlak were most helpful-osome in little, some in big ways--at critical stages in my work. May you all prosper. The secretarial staff provided indispensable assistance many times. This was especially true of Shirley Sherman, Virginia McIntosh, Ruth Langenbacher and Annette Leckart. Finally, I thank my crew of inter- viewers, eSpecially Dee-Dee Couch and Maxine Wilkins, who obtained some interviews for me when I most needed them. ii TABLE 0? CONTENTS ACKI‘XONEDCSHENTSeoeeeeeeoooeeoeoeeoeo LIST OF TABLES O O C O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O 0 0 CHAPTER I II III IV VI INTRCDUCTI 02‘ O O O O O O O 0 O O O I O 0 O O O O O 0 Advertising Implications Implications for the Press BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY AND THEORETICAL FORMULATION Introduction Status Conferral Status Conferral - Major Propositions Status Conferral and Rokeach's Personality Theory Summary and Hypotheses THE FIRST EXPERIMENT: METHOD AND EESULTS . . . . . . Introduction Method Results THE SECOND EXPERIMENT: METHOD . . . . . . . . . e . Introduction Pre-testing Method of the Study Summary THE SECOIID EXFEQII‘lENT: RESULTS 0 o e o e o o o o o 0 Introduction Sample Characteristics Experimental Assumptions Tests of Hypotheses suuuspv’ DISC'GSIOW ANn COWCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . General Summary Discussion Conclusion REFERENCESOOOOOOOOQOooeoeeeooooooo ADPEII’IICES o e e e e e e o o o e e e o o O 0 e O 0 0 0 0 0 ~22 14-.L *u Pom me 16 39 63 83 105 LIST OF TABLES Table Page 3.1 Design of the First EXperiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . “0 3.2 Cell Frequencies of Subjects Passing Criterion Test . . #6 3.3 Chi-Square Tests of Hypotheses that Patterns of Perceived Assertions Differed Among Treatment C3113, by Story 0 e o e e o e o e e o e o o o e e e o 51 3.“ Mean Attitude Change Scores, Cell Sizes and Analysis of Variance Results for Ritchie- Legislative Reapportionment Story . . . . . . . . . . 53 3.5 Ritchie: the Safety Dimension. Before-test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells . . . . . . . 5H 3.6 Ritchie: the Qualification Dimension. Before-test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells . . . . 55 3.7 Ritchie: the Dynamism Dimension. Before-test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells . . . . . . . 55 3.8 Kendall: the Safety Dimension. Before-test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells . . . . . . . 56 3.3 Kendall: the Qualification Dimension. Before-test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells . . . . 57 3.10 Kendall: the Dynamism Dimension. Before-test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells . . . . . . . S7 3.11 Analysis of Variance, Cell and Main Effects Means for Kendall: the Safety FaCtOr e e a a e e e o e e e e 58 3.12 Analysis of Variance, Cell and Main Effects Means for Kendall: the Qualification Factor . . . . . . . . 59 3.13 Analysis of Variance, Cell and Main Effects deans for Kendall: the Dynamism factor . . . . . . . . . . . J‘ I» I 3.1% Analysis of Variance, Cell and Main Effects Weans for Ritchie: the Safety Pactor . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 3.15 Analysis of Variance, Cell and Main Effects Means for Ritchie: the Qualification Factor . . . . . . . . 60 F 3.16 Analysis of Variance, Cell and Main effects Means For Ritchie: the Dynamism Factor . . . . . . . . . . . 60 iv Table 5.1 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 Educational Achievement of Sample COMpared with BXClUdCdSUbjECtSeeoeoeeeeaceeeooo Distribution of Educational Achievement Among TreatmentCellS........o......... Relation between Relative Wpenmindedness and Closedmindedness and Educational Achievement . . . Distribution of Educational Achievement Among Treatment Cells, Considered Separately for Openminded and Closedminded Groups . . . . . . . . Initial Source Credibility Ratings by ReSpondents YthO Were to Receive Sources Rated 0 o e e e e o o 0 Initial Credibility Ratings of News Agencies by Respondents Who Were to Receive Agencies Rated . . Mean Credibility Increase for C. P. Ritchie, Red ChinaStOI‘y.................... Mean Credibility Increase For C. P. Ritchie, Nuclear TeSt Ban Story 0 e o a e e o o o e e e o o e e e 0 Mean Credibility Change for Roger Prank, Red China Story O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O Mean Credibility Change for James Hinton, Test BanstorYOO0.00000000000000000 Mean Attitude Change toward Recognition of Red China Mean Attitude Change toward the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O Mean Ranks for Six American News Agencies . . . . . . Credibility Ratings of Three News Agencies . . . . . Relation Between News Agency Rank and Credibility Ratings.eeoeoeeeeooeeeeoooeoo Credibility Ratings of Initially Neutral Source--No Label O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O Credibility Ratings of Sources with "Positive" and "Negative"LabelS........oo....... Page 85 87 87 88 90 90 97 98 99 100 103 10“ 150 150 151 152 153 9.1 0.2 Initial Attitudes toward Recognition 0? Red China and Nuclear Test Ban Treaty . . . . . . . . . Comparison of Sample with Excluded Respondents Distribution 0? Demographic Characteristics and Other Characteristics Among Treatment Cells . Cell and Total Frequencies, Four DOgmatism Scale Quartiles o o o o a Mean Attitude Change, Condition . . . . . Mean Attitude Change, Mean Attitude Change, Condition 0 o o o a Mean Attitude Change, Treatment Cells . . Mean Attitude Change, Treatment Cells . . O O O O O O O O O O O O O Regardless oF Treatment O O O O O O O O O O O O O by Source Treatment Condition by News Agency Treatment Red China Story, by O O O O O O O O O O O O O Test Ban Story, by Mean Safety-”actor Change, by Treatment Cells . Mean Qualification-Factor Change, by Treatment Cells Mean Dynamism-Factor Change, by Treatment Cells . . . Page 154 19k 195 197 198 198 198 199 199 200 201 202 APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX P1 LIST OF APPENDICES Page : THE FIRST EXPERIMENT: STIMULUS AND TEST ‘1.ATERT.ALS . 5J1“! I: STPUCTI 03:8 Q o o o o o o 0 o o o o 126 . PRE-TESTING RESULTS: THREE STUDIES . . . . . . . . . 148 ° THE SECOND EXPERIMENT: ST MULUS AWO TEST MATERIALS, WITH INSTRUCTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 : DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS, THE SECOND EXPERIMENT o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 193 : DOGMATISM AND STATUS COMPERRAL: SOME EXPLORATORY ANALYSES o o o o o o o o o o o o o o a o 136 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION There's an American folk saying, generally attributed to a "star" of some sort, to the effect that "I don't care what they (newspapers) say about me, as long as they spell my name right." This nearly sums up what is known of a communication area of considerable practical and theoretical importance. Two sociologists, Lazarsfeld and Merton, say essentially the same thing (1952, p. 76): "...enhanced status accrues to those who merely receive attention in the [mass] media, quite apart from any editorial support." Others, including Doob (lens). Hovland (195s) and Klapper (1960), also suggest that an individual's status is enhanced by his appearance in the mass media. Many of these authors argue further that enhancement occurs for ideas, topics and concepts. But direct empirical support for these intuitions is almost nonexistent, as Klapper (1960, pp. Ion-6) and Adams (196s) have pointed out. It is the purpose of this thesis to investigate, under experi- mental conditions. some relations between the act of press coverage and the status or credibility of the person covered. Literature relevant to this investigation runs the gamut from sociological theory to the conditioning of meanings to nonsense syllables. we shall run this gamut in Chapter II. In Chapter III we shall look at the first of two experiments testing hypotheses developed in Chapter II. Chapter IV will present the methodology of the second experiment and Chapter V,vthe results. The final chapter will contain discussion and interpretation of the results of both studies, suggestions for further studies and summary and conclusions. The present chapter is concerned with the implications and significance of the status conferral notion. First, though, how would status conferral occur? Under what sorts of conditions would it be maximized? These are questions which will be considered in detail in the next chapter, but it is necessary to consider them briefly now in order to place a discussion of status conferral's implications into perspective. If the mass media attend only to those things which they consider ‘ "worthwhile” or "important," then the appearance of a person as a news source, endorser of a product or guest on the mass media must mean he is important. The time or effort or money involved in the attention to the person must mean he is important. It follows from this that the more prestigious the media agency attending to the person is, the more important the person must be. What is involved is an implicit message about the person. The act of carrying him, and the nature of the media agency, make up the message. There are other considerations. In the case of news coverage, to the extent all the news agencies available to an audience cover a source, to-that extent is there a universal paean to his importance. To the extent already well known individuals comment on what the person covered does or says (probably because the coverage itself requires them to respond), then it also follows that the person must be important or the well known individuals would not have bothered to respond. To the extent coverage continues--partly due to other people's responses to the original story-othe person is important. Otherwise the news agency wouldn't have bothered. The more a person appears in the news, the more newsworthy he must be. To the extent the person covered by most if not all American news agencies is not clearly made a laughing-stock or refuted, then, his status would be enhanced because coverage otherwise serves to legitimize the activity covered. This is a brief statement of how we might expect status con- ferral to operate. If it can be demonstrated that attention by the mass media does confer status on the person covered by the media, this has a number of practical and social implications. Advertising Igplications Since the mass media often serve as carriers of advertisements, status conferral would have dollars-and-cents relevance to the advertising industry. Apparently, such agencies as Good Housekgeping Magazine (with its seal of approval on products advertised) would agree. So would the Farm Journal, which in 1890 published this notice about the advertising it chose to carry: ...He believe, through careful inquiry, that all advertisements in this paper are signed by trustworthy persons, and to prove our faith by works we will make good to subscribers any loss sustained by trusting advertisers who prove to be deliberate swindlers. Rogues shall not ply their trade at the expense of our readers, who are our friends through the medium of these columns. Let this be understood by everybody now and henceforth (quoted by Tobin, 196“, p. “9). Tobin (p. 50) also reports that every one of the 970 members of the American Newspaper Publishers Association has by now set up its own standards of advertising acceptability. All these developments indicate, to a certain extent, that the media agencies recognize the act of carrying an advertisement as an act of affirmation. The next chapter contains some empirical data which-suggests more than intuition is involved in these'decisions. Does carrying the advertisement affirm only the product's status? What about sports, film and television stars who endorse a product in the mass media? ...The operation of this status conferral function may be witnessed most vividly in the advertising pattern of testimonials to a product by "prominent people." within wide circles of the population..., such testimonials not only enhance the prestige of the product but also reflect prestige on the person who provides the testimonials...(Lazarsfeld and Merton, 1’52. 9. 76’s Implications for the Press However, status conferral has other, more pervasive and socially important ramifications. Since virtually all the mass media perform a journalistic function as well as an advertising one, status conferral has considerable relevance to how the press should view and perform its functions in our society. The traditional view of the press connects it with the "free market-place of ideas” notion implicit in much American political and popular thought for two centuries. The general idea is that l) a democracy requires open discussion of all available ideas, 2) the good idea will "win" if it is not prevented from entering the discussion simply because a minority holds it, and 3) it is the vital function of the press to promote this competition by reportigg the ideas of all in the news columns and advancing its_pwn ideas in the editorial columns (e.g., John Stuart Hill, 1856, Ernst, l9u6; Commission on Freedom of the Press, l9n7). It is not the purpose of the present discussion to subject this rationalistic-utilitarian ”free market-place” notion to a general attack. Certainly a free market-place would be desirable in a democracy. But if attention by the press does confer status upon individuals who act as news sources, the experimental-evidence (e.g., Hovland, Janis and Kelley, 1953; Andersen and Clevenger, 1963) clearly indicates the press function to make the market-place 5332 free than it otherwise might be. If attention confers credibility or status upon a source, it will make him more persuasive than if he had not had his status enhanced by attention. Research evidence is that the same idea will be accepted by more people when it is backed by a high-status source than when it is backed by a low-status source. Ironically, the traditional view is that the press is one of the principal means of keeping the market-place free. As Gieber (1960, p. 205) suggests, "One of the greatest flaws in the press is its insensitivity to the injustices to the 'nameless' [source], but a responsible source, or one with a 'name,' may act as champion [of the ideal." This suggests that the market-place is free only to the extent a number of equally-credible sources proffer competitive ideas. A very worthy ideal, but how often does this occur now? It is suggested that, if status conferral occurs, some propounders of ideas will have more leverage than others by virtue of the fact that they have previously received press attention. This leverage is applied bothto the news media, to the extent they are creatures of habit, and to the public, to the extent it is sensitive to the effects of source credibility and to status conferral. Press Habits and Status Conferral What are some of the habits the press sometimes exhibits which could contribute to status conferral? First, the press often-~habitually and repeatedly-seeks out the same news sources, for a number of reasons. Speaking of how reporters covered Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Rovers (1960, p. 16“) states they began to "respond to'his summonses like Pavlov's dogs at the clang of a bell." Second, to the extent newspapers cut the world into regularized, patterned slices ("beats"), some sources will have a better opportunity to receive attention than other potential sources. Third, to the extent the press tends first to use news which is supplied it instead of first seeking news, then sources with press relations machinery aiding them tend to get more attention than sources without this machinery. Fourth, to the extent reporters habitually do ”follow-ups" on people, once they do appear in the news, then these in- dividuals benefit from additional attention. In addition to these habits, status conferral is made an important problem by other tendencies in the press. These other tendencies would include 1) increasing likelihood that the press audience is exposed to a limited number of alternative press services, 2) increasing standardisation of decisions about news treatment and news "play," and 3) the continuation of the view held by journalists and journalism educators that "straight" news should be factually, objectively reported, and that editorial policy decisions are limited to the editorial page. We shall consider each of these tendencies in turn, and then we shall look at the exemplar of all of them-~the McCarthy phenomenon. Monopoly Tendencies For years Nixon and other authors have pointed out that there has been a remarkable loss in the number of press outlets available to publics in the united States. Recently the number of major 0.8. wire services dropped from three to two. In the latest of a series of reports, Nixon and Ward (1961) state that 95.8 per cent of the cities in the United States are without competitive newspapers, regardless of how many papers there are. Cries of alarm have arisen. These cries (e.g., Ernst, lens; Commission on Freedom of the Press, 19u7) arise from the free market-place argument. That is, diversity of ownership is necessary so that the True Idea's chances to enter into the market-place will be maximized. The more independent press voices there are, the greater chance the minority view will have of being entered into the stream of public Opinion. These cries of alarm have been answered in several ways. For example, Nixon and ward (1961) state that other independent press voices are now heardo-those of radio and television. Earlier Nixon-(l9u8) stated that diversity is not needed; what is needed is high quality in the existing institutions, no matter how few. In other words, it's better to have one good paper than two bad ones. A final kind of response to the outcry involves comparing competitive vs. monopoly newspaper on a) their content or b) how their readers like them. Bigman (l9u8) compared the content of two competitive dailies in Pottsville, Pa. He concluded news and advertising content differences were "trivial.” Even makeup, story display and grammatical errors were quite similar. Nilloughby (1955) compared two small Indiana competitive dailies. His conclusions were the same. Nixon and Jones (1956) compared news space allottment of a number of competitive and monopoly papers. There were almost no differences in proportions of space allotted to various news categories, though the total amount of space given to news was larger for competitive than monopoly papers. Finally, Nixon (195u) compared how happy the competitive and monopoly paper readers were with their newspapers. He noted that there was a general tendency for monopoly paper readers to be happier than competitive paper readers on questions about fairness, willingness to correct mistakes, and news coverage in a number of categories. Let us briefly examine these responses to the cries of alarm. First, granted that the news activities of radio and television have increased, most of these activities do not provide much diversity. As Nixon and Ward (1961) admit, most of these activities are "rip 'n' read” news broadcasts, based on news stories supplied by either the wire services or the network news department. Second, the argument apparently regarded as most telling in defense of centralization of press decision- making is that competition makes no difference-~competitive dailies run the same material anyway. In other words, competition does not produce diversity of content. This is hardly a comforting thought for either one who is concerned about ensuringrdiversity_of ideas for the free marketgplace or for one who is concerned with status conferral. (See the next section--Standardization of News Decisionso-for the relation between this and status conferral.) Third, i§_readers like monopoly papers better (Nixon, l9Su)--and there is some question about this, because four outstanding monopoly papers were compared with four less- than-outstanding Boston papers--this can be interpreted in ways other than the author interpreted it. For example, it could mean that with no standards of comparison available to monOpoly readers, they would tend to be less critical than competitive paper readers (see next paragraph for implications of this). So the question of the effects of centralization of ownership and decision-making is not settled. What does status conferral have to do with this question? This is where the free market-place proponents still have the fragments of an idea when they claim that only if there is diversity in the press can a democracy be served. Granted that many factors-~including differential credibility of sources--prevent it from being a Egggpmarket-place, where the idea stands solely on its own merits; at least-diversity of press ownership would allow for more sources to have their credibility or status enhanced by‘coverage to the extent news decision-makipg_has not become completely standardized. In this sense, then, monOpoly would reinforce status conferral because there is less diversity in decision-making about who to cover and how to cover him. Therefore, the more concentrated the news decision-making the fewer different sources would bring conferred credibility to bear in the market-place. Further, if the lack of range of press alternatives results in less critical reactions to monopoly papers, then the status to be conferred upon sources and, consequently, their persuasiveness) would be gggater. It is evident that monOpoly tendencies and standardization of news decision-making are not independent matters. But as the studies of competitive papers indicate, standardization occurs in competitive situations also. The next section considers the implications of news standardization for status conferral. This is the second disturbing tendency in the press. The third tendency--the view that objectivity and factuality obtain in the news and that editorial policy is irrelevant to news decisions--will be considered in the section after the one on standardization. Then we shall look at a possible beneficiary of all these tendencies, Sen. Joseph McCarthy. 10 Standardization of News Decisions As mentioned, competition in some cities, at least, seems to add little to the diversity of available news stories. Nor does the addition of radio and television press voices. One obvious reason for this is that most of the state, national and international news is supplied by the two wire services. Gieber (1956) reports 16 Wisconsin wire editors depended heavily on the news budgets made up by Associated Press to decide what stories to print. They frequently had ill-formed news judgments, Gieber reported, and did little to the wire copy other than what was needed, mechanically, to fill the news space allotted to wire stories. willoughby (1955) reports that two-thirds of the news content of two Indiana dailies was syndicated-oand nearly identical. Further, Nixon and Jones (1956) report that even the proportion of space allocated to different news categories is nearly identical for competing and non- competing papers. Breed (1955), noting the tendency toward standardi- zation of news decision-making, states local editors tend to follow the news judgments of: 1) the wire services, 2) national papers like 11;: mmm and 3) large metropolitan papers in their areas (which tend to follow the judgments of the other two). These are "opinion leaders" for local editors. But since Nixon and Jones and Willoughby also report that 1222; stories are given similar "play" and treatment, the implication is that standardization carries over to local news as well. As Breed suggests, local editors may internalize the news judgment of the ”opinion leaders" and then apply it to local news as well. "What this analysis reveals is a gap between the ideals and the working of democratic information processes...(Breed, 1955, p. 328).” 11 What this means, in terms of status conferral, is that conferral is likely to be national in scope if Breed's "opinion leaders” decide to cover news sources. It also means‘that it is not as likely that al- ternative or competitive sources will have the Opportunity to appear in the news-—even local news. Therefore fewer sources will have enhanced status operating for them in the market-place. Objectivity One of the time-honored dicta of the press is that the news should be reported "objectively." Fact belongs in the news columns, opinion on the editorial page. As the Commission on Freedom of the Press put it (19u7, p. 125), "...the service of news, as distinct from the utterance of opinion" is required so that the reader will have "adequate and un- contaminated mental food." Nixon and Ward (1961) state that the rise of ”objective” reporting is one of the reasons for concentration of press ownership. They state that, through the growth in objective reporting among American newspapers... newspapers have become more and more alike in their reporting of the news...there has come to be little more reason for two competing newspapers than there would be for two competing telephone companies (p. 9). However, there have been some questions raised about 1) the possibility of "objective” reporting (e.g., Wiebe, 195a; Berlo, 1960; Doob, l9u8) and 2) whether ”objectivity" as usually understood should be a standard for judging the adequacy of reporting (Niebe, 195k; Cade, 1952; Davis, 1952; Barth, 1951). These questions have been raised for good reasons, but what about status conferral and objectivity? If by objectivity is meant the accurate recreation of an event, then as Elmer Davis (1951) has said, 12 ”...most American news editors have abdicated their judgment, and decided that news is what is said by somebody of importance--even if it is demonstrably and notoriously false." Whether or not the editor gives a person "straight” news coverage may be just as much an editorial decision with attitudinal overtones as whether to take a positive or negative stance in the editorial columns about the person, if status conferral results from news coverage. Quite apart from the semantic and observational difficulties with the concept of "objectivity" pointed out by Doob (19n8) and Berlo (1960), then, "objectivity" in the news may be an impossible ideal because of the presence in the act of coveragg’ of an implicit message about the status of the person covered in the story. In fact, the closer the message is to the ”objective" kind of treatment, the more Opportunity the implied message about the source would have to act because there would be almost nothing in the explicit message to counteract the implicit message. We have examined several factors which, in interaction with status conferral, make the phenomenon an important one and one which would require reexamination of how the press should function. These factors include centralization of news decision-making, standardization of decisions, four types of habitual reporting behavior, and the time- hallowed icon of ”objectivity." Next we shall look briefly at an exemplar of all of these factors--the rise of the late Sen. McCarthy. McCarthy and the Press--There has been much discussion of the press' role in the rise of Sen. McCarthy. Some of the discussion, such as that by Revere (1960) has conceded McCarthy took advantage of press practice and habits but, in essence, has argued that it was up to other 13 institutions and figures to take care of the Senator. Rovers, while admitting the press responded habitually and slavishly to the Senator's utterances, apparently assumes it was and is the press‘ function to relay what it observes in the news columns. If it were required to wait for a long time until it could relay some negative things about McCarthy, it wasn't the press' fault. Rovers, a Washington staff writer for The New Yorker, recounts that McCarthy was a genius at getting what he wanted from the press: headlines. He timed his releases, topped competitive news stories and blanketed attacks upon him by releasing "bigger” stories to the press at the same time. He "invented the morning news conference to announce an afternoon press conference (Rovers, 1960, p. 162)." Rovers continues (p. 163): "It may have been strange that the papers played it up that way, but McCarthy always knew what he was up to. He knew, in his good days, how to make a story out of nothing, and he knew how to back into somebody else's story.” Now, back to those two competitive dailies in Indiana. Willoughby (1955) reports that the ”chief running [news] story of a controversial nature" over a two—month period in 1953 was concerned with McCarthy‘s activities and utterances. This was true both of the Democratic paper (22 stories, pictures or other items) and of the Republican paper (26). Of all these items, a dozen were identical. So if status conferral occurs, and if the observations of Rovers, Willoughby and a number of others are correct, McCarthy benefitted from massive, continuous enhancement of his credibility through attention by the press. This enhancement was greater with "objective" reporting. 1'4 As Davis (1951) said about ”objectivity" and Sen. McCarthy, ...not a single one of his charges has ever been proved, most of them have been pretty conclusively disproved in public hearings--yet he can repeat those same charges and still get space in the papers...very often in papers whose editors may know that this is old stuff, may know that none of it has been proved and much of it has been refuted, yet who feel that if a United States senator keeps on saying it, it would not be objective to refuse to print it...it makes a difference, a vast difference, to the health of the republic whether what is on that front page is what is so...or only what somebody falsely alleges to be so. This view Of how the press should function, in the face of someone like McCarthy, is considerably at odds with that of Rovers. Barth (1952), also Speaking to a group of newsman as did Davis, agreed with Davis: "When we publish in headlines that Senator McCarthy has spewed out wild charges of treason or espionage...we do this often when there is not the slightest corroboration Of the Senator's charges-~often, indeed, when we know them to be altogether false." In contrast to Rovere's view of the press as a passive, ”objective" relayer of what public figures do and say, Cade, Barth, Wiebe, Davis and others quite clearly feel ”objectivity” should be redefined, habit reexamined and "opinion leaders" disregarded when necessary. They recommend the realization that news can have prepaganda effects, and that decisions as to whether to carry a story at all, where to carry it, and how to treat and follow it up are decisions that have prepaganda consequences. It is not argued that status conferral, if it occurs, was the only factor in McCarthy's rise. Certainly, McCarthy proclaimed himself as against sin (communism) often enough to benefit from that, too (e.g., Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum, 1957). But it is argued that the 15 significance of status conferral is, potentially, at least as great as that of the McCarthy phenomenon. And*that's significant. As Nixon says in quite another context (l9u8), ”the greatest enemy of a free press and of a democracy is not 'monopoly' but too much 'thrsadbare traditionalism' in determing both 323$.t° print and 22:,t° print it." While Sen. McCarthy is dead, the implications of status conferral for the press and public opinion processes in a democracy are not. CHAPTER II BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY AND THEORETICAL FORMULATION Introduction Primarily, the last chapter was concerned with the implications of status conferral for the practicing newsman. This chapter is con- cerned with the theoretical background and implications of status con- ferral. First we shall look at a forceful and succinct explication of the status conferral notion, that of the sociologists Lazarsfeld and Merton (1952). Then we shall begin applying other theoretical and empirical literature to the basic theme stated by Lazarsfeld and Merton. The basic notion will be eXpanded and clarified through the statement of a set of propositions. The propositions themselves are not experimental hypotheses in the present studies, but will strongly influence both their construction and their investigation. The hypotheses to be tested will be presented at the end of this chapter. Status Conferral Several authors, including Klapper (1960), Doob (l9u8) and Adams (196u), have theorized that attention by the mass media to sources con- stitutes an implied message about the status or credibility of sources, and that the result is the conferral of status upon sources. 16 17 However, one of the earliest and most detailed explications was by Lazarsfeld and Merton, who state (1952, p. 76): The mass media confer status on public issues, persons, organizations, and social movements. Common experience as well as research testifies that the social standing of persons or social policies is raised when these command favorable attention in the mass media...For some [such] editorial views...represent the considered judgment of a group of eXperts, thus calling for the respect of laymen. But this is only one element in the status conferral function of the mass media, for enhanced status accrues to those who merely receive attention in the media, quite apart from any editorial support. The mass media bestow prestige and enhance the authority of individuals and groups by Is itimizin their status. Recognition by the press...test§fies that one has arr ved, that one is important enough to have been singled out from the large anonymous masses, that one's behavior and Opinions are significant enough to require public notice...The audiences of mass media apparently subscribe to this circular belief: "If you really matter, you will be at the focus of mass attention and, if you are at the focus of mass attention, then surely you must really matter." While this is the most well-known, forceful and suggestive theoretical explication in the literature, there are some difficulties and ambiguities in it. The major difficulties have to do with two ‘elements-othe process (how does conferral operate) and the product (what is it that is conferred). Regarding the process, it is clear that Lazarsfeld and Merton regard attention to persons or topics as sufficient to confer status. It is not necessary for any explicit media message about the persons or tOpics to occur for status conferral to Operate. This is a distinction which none of the other theorists talking about status conferral (e.g., Klapper, 1960; Hovland, l95u; Adams, l96u; Doob, 19u8) has made as clearly. However, it is not possible to go much beyond this in the description of the process--at least based on Lazarsfeld and Merton's 18 explication. They have labeled the process, calling it conferral (they also used the verb forms "bestow" and "enhance" apparently as synonyms for "confer"). But they have not described how it works. For example, does attention by all press agencies confer the same amount of status? Does "legitimizing" status differ from "conferring" status? What are the limiting conditions within which we could eXpect status conferral? The second difficulty is what is meant by "status." The term has had a long history in the literature of sociology, but in the Lazarsfeld- Merton context it is applied to products (see quotation on page four), issues and social movements. Despite the various usages of "status" in sociology, the application of it to products, issues and movements is relatively unusual and, lacking a definition by Lazarsfeld and Merton, leaves Open to question what is meant by the term. The situation is muddied further by the apparent interchangeability in the Lazarsfeld- Merton statement of the terms "status," "authority," "prestige," and "social standing." DeSpite (indeed, possibly because of) these difficulties, the Lazarsfeld-Merton statement bears many fruitful-appearing strands of implication. Perhaps it is possible to abstract these strands from the statement while clarifying what is meant by the process and by the product. Then, in conjunction with what has been said about the phenomenon by other theorists directly concerned with it and in con- junction with other relevant communication and social psychological theory and research, it may be possible to begin constructing a set of propositions about the phenomenon. 19 Status Cogferral-Maigr Propositions l. Credibility is conferred upon_individuals acting as sources of statements when they are_quoted and covered by the press. The present dissertation deals only with conferral involving coverage by the 253§§.°f persons who act as sources of statements. The other aspects--socia1 movements, issues, etc.--are not the immediate concern of this undertaking. The term "status" is thus replaced by the term "credibility" for the purposes of this study. If individuals act as sources, and if "authority" or "prestige" is conferred upon them when they are quoted by the mass media, it follows we are talking about something which has been variously labeled source prestige, authority or credibility (e.g., Bernberg, 1953; Lemert, 1959; Hovland, Janis and Kelley, l953)--or by some other term. Lemert (1963) has argued that the terms pretige, credibility, and authority have been used interchangeably in the literature dealing with communication sources. Certainly Lazarsfeld and Merton use the terms prestige, authority and status interchangeably. Lemsrt further implies that a strain of arbitrariness is present in the choice of any single label from a number of labels. Andersen and Clevenger (1963), in their extensive review of the source persuasiveness literature, take little note of the particular label given the operationalizations in each study. Furthermore, as Lemert (1963) and Berlo and Lemert (196u) indicate through factor analysis, a very large number of adjective-labels for sources cluster together into a very small number of factors. These labels (actually, Semantic Differential polar adjective pairs) were chosen after a survey of the literature dealing with source persuasiveness 2O characteristics-~regardless of the name given these groups of labels. In a series of studies, respondents' Semantic Differential judgments of sources clustered tOgether systematically. They clustered regardless Of how many purportedly separate attributes much of the source per- suasiveness literature would lead us to expect there would be. Scales representing each Of the three major credibility factors reported by Lemert (1963) and Berlo and Lemert (196“) will be used in the present study. The factors are called Safety, Qualification and Dynamism (Lemert, 1963). Trustworthiness and expertness were the two major components of credibility prOposed by Hovland (Hovland, Janis and Kelley, 1953). The Safety factor scales seem similar--though not identical-~to the trustworthiness component. The Qualification factor is also similar--but not identical--to the expertness component. There is no analogue, in Hovland's scheme, of the Dynamism factor. In effect, this proposition states that the sheer act of covering a source modifies his perceived credibility during the communicative act. The idea that source images are affected by occurrences during the process of communication is not a new one. As a matter of fact, Aristotle (Welldon, 1886) emphasized that "ethical proof," i.e., proof using the "ethos" (roughly, the character) of the source, could be accomplished during the communication. The message itself, its delivery and other factors could enhance or diminish the perceived "ethos" of the source. This is consistent with a view of communication as a process involving the interaction and mutual influence of source, message and channel in the responses of the communication receiver (e.g., Berlo, 1960). Though the general idea dates at least as far back as Aristotle, much of the 21 credibility research done to date apparently was not influenced by this past history (of. Andersen and Clevenger, 1963). However, Doob (l9u8) is consistent with this credibility process view. He cites (pp. uuo-usa) a number of factors, other than the original credibility of the source and the explicit persuasive message, which can interact with and affect the effectiveness of both source and message. Most of these factors come into play during the communicative act. Andersen and Clevenger (1963) clearly prefer a view of credibility as changeable during the communication act instead of a "fixed ethos" view. Much of the research cited by Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum (1957) also supports the view that source image will be affected by a number of variables during the communication process. Such studies as those of Bettinghaus (1961) and Haiman (19u9), for example, indicate the way a speech is delivered will affect the perceived credibility of the source. A study by Kerrick (1958) indicates that "general" credibility will be affected by the Specific topic on which the source proffers an opinion. Sources perceived as "non-relevant" to the topic were less effective than those perceived as "relevant" to the topic, even though the reactions to them before messages were received in general were comparable. Such studies point to several ways of looking at and investigating source credibility. First, they indicate that a source's previous reputation is only one relevant characteristic; there are other, more dynamic aSpects of the source which may affect his persuasiveness during the communicative act. In a mass communication situation, whether the source is quoted by the mass media--and which media agencies—-would be one relevant aSpect of the communication situation. Second, these studies 22 indicate that a source's credibility need not gemain stable through the communication process. Third, following from the previous two points, they indicate a need to obtain the audience's perception of the source as many times as feasible during the communication process. Unfortunately, most previous studies have not involved systematically obtaining reactions to sources throughout the communication process, possibly because of the concern that measurement would affect the process. But in the present undertaking a measurement instrument is available and changes in responses to sources during the process are the central focus. 2. Credibilitygconferral results fromugn implicit message about the person who is quoted in 3L223§$ story. The act of coverage con- stitutes an implied message about the source. The fact of attention or recognition is the implicit message, quite apart from any eXplicit message about the source. Klapper (1960, p. 105) states there is a "lack of precise documentation" of the phenomenon. But then (p. 110) he says, in effect, that everybody knows "the mere presence of the message on mass media probably confers status on the speaker." As in the case of Lazarsfeld and Merton, it is clear that Klapper is talking about the act of coverage as an implicit message. Adams (1969) is a little more conservative about the scientific status to be conferred upon status conferral than is Klapper. He points out that a news agency can be a source of explicit messages, and that in studies of explicit propaganda assertions by news agencies "generally newspapers score well (p. 12)." But, he says, the extent to which this "built-in credibility" helps 23235 sources when the newspaper quotes these other sources is not known. While Adams is I 23 more cautious than Klapper, it is clear also that his "built-in credibility" would enhance source credibility-~if it does do this-~on an implicit, rather than eXplicit, level. Doob (lQUB, p. #93) proposes that The printed word as such...possesses a certain amount of prestige. People appear to believe that the mere expenditure of time and energy which printing requires must be a measure of the content's significance. He states further that newspaper readers "are usually aware of the fact that hundreds or thousands of other people like themselves are or will be reading the same article." In other words, the press, by expending this energy, must believe that its large audience should read the story. The proposition may be subsumed under the general proposition that cognitive objects can affect each other even when the connection between them is merely an implicit one. Osgood and Tannenbaum's cognitive balance theory (1955) assumes that there will not be interaction between cognitive objects unless an explicit assertion of some kind were made connecting them or dissociating them. A "message" often constitutes an assertion, in their terms. Since the present study deals with an implied message, the question is whether such an implied message would constitute an assertion in their theoretical system. However, one of their examples (1955) of a favorable assertion is a girl standing near an automobile with her hand resting on the car. The girl is the source of a favorable assertion about the car. But this is an implied message, is it not? No statement is made about the car. Her hand merely rests on the car. More direct support for the general proposition that cognitive objects may interact even when the connection is implicit comes from a study derived from Heider's balance theory (l9u6). Heider's theory deals extensively with implicit connections. In investigating Heider's theory, Horowitz, Lyons and Perlmutter (1951) provide support for the general preposition. They report that the implied (and perceived) attitude of a person's "reference other" toward a cognitive object was a function of the person's attitudes toward the reference other and toward the cognitive object. For example, if a person liked the reference other and also liked the cognitive object, the reference other was also seen as liking the cognitive object. Direct support for the Specific proposition that coverage con- stitutes an implied message about the person covered comes from studies by Adams (1962), Naples, Berelson and Bradshaw (1990), and from four advertising studies cited in Fuchs (1969) and Lucas and Britt (1950). Adams found that a number of unnamed sources, when presented in the context of news story sources, differed in perceived credibility. Such labels as "reliable sources," "official reports," "authorities," and "trustworthy indications" were judged on a seven-point "accept-reject" scale. Since no other identification was made of the sources, it follows that it must have been some reporter or unidentified news agency which was making the implied assertion involved in the label. It would seem that if news story readers were sensitive enough to discriminate between the implied assertions about sources in Adams' 1962 study they would also be sensitive enough to perceive the implied assertion involved in covering the source. Naples, Berelson and Bradshaw, in their studies of print media (books, eSpecially), concluded (p. 119) that an "attitude frequently changes from a subordinate to a dominant position when it is justified T0 U'l by the authority of print." It is clear they are talking about an implied "justification." A series of advertising studies is probably the most directly relevant to status conferral of any research in the literature. It is not surprising that advertising people would be con- cerned with the effects of the media agency carrying the ad upon its effectiveness. It is also not surprising that a lot of this research is not available. As one of these researchers, Fuchs (1969, p. 10) says: "The extent of the published work in the area of media effects is not very great. This is perhaps because the researcher who is most likely to engage in this type of study probably intends to base some marketing or advertising decision on the results. It is not surprising that he allows his competitor no access to the findings." However, portions of three studies are available and a fourth is available in its entirety. All of these studies indicate that the kind of media agency carrying the advertising influences the effectiveness (i.e., per- suasiveness) of the advertising message. If the media agencies were ”merely" carrying the advertisement, we would eXpect no such effect. The fact that the same advertisement is more effective when carried by certain media agencies than when carried by other media agencies indicates that an implicit message about the product is involved in the act of carrying the advertisement, and that the reactions to the implied message are somehow related to which media agency is the source of the implied message. If this is the case, it eXplains why advertisement effectiveness is related to media agency credibility. In an unpublished study by Alfred Politz Research "...it has been possible to demonstrate that more people eXpress belief in a particular advertisement when presented inside 25 the covers of some magazines than of others (Lucas and Britt, 1950, p. 600)." Fuchs (196“, pp. 10-11) cites two other studies, each showing that the magazines Sponsoring the research imparted positive effects to test products advertised in then. Fuchs' study is the only one available in full and, he states, the first such advertising study to be done without any commercial ties. The dependent variable was attitude change toward two automotive parts products advertised in separate ads. The two major independent variables were the "prestige" of the magazine carrying the ad (positive, neutral, negative) and the relative positive prestige of the automobile company endorsing the product. Fuchs found that, disregarding the company prestige treatment, the prestige or credibility of the magazine carrying the ad was directly related to the amount of favorable attitude change toward the product. The results indicate implicit "recognition" was involved in the act of carrying the advertisement, and that the magazine prestige variable was related to how much of a "good" thing this implicit endorsement was judged to be. Another finding relevant to this proposition was that, when the advertisement was actually presented to the reader there was greater favorable attitude change than when they were merely told about the advertisement. ("Abstract" vs. "real" presentation was one of Puchs' other variables.) This result is reminiscent of Doob's statement that part of the implicit message is involved in the trouble and expense of actually printing the explicit message. The third and fourth propositions follow from the second one. Q7 3. The activity being covered is legitimized by_coverag_. If a source's activity is a persuasive one, then it follows his persuasive potential might be enhanced by the act of coverage. In other words, if a source is quoted by the press on a tOpic, the act of coverage implies he is qualified to speak on that topic. Almost all the theoretical and empirical support cited for the second preposition in the preceding pages and for the fourth proposition in the ensuing pages is relevant to this one. This is actually a special case of the second proposition (an implied message about the person covered.) The relevant literature will not be cited here since it may be found in the preceding and ensuing pages. a. A newspaper or other news aggngy is the SQURCE of an implied message about another source when it quotes this source in a news stogy. This proposition is also closely related to the second proposition, which states that coverage constitutes an implied message. Theoretical support for this derivation from Lazarsfeld and Merton's statement comes from several sources. Hovland (lGSu, pp. 1083-u), for example, comments on the unique prestige of the various media and the effects "media...credibility" might have upon attitudes. Adams (196u) states the press may supply "built-in credibility" for a source quoted by the press in a news story. When Doob (19u8) writes about the length of the news story, the placement of it on the page and other factors, it would seem he is writing about how the press sends cues as to how important the story--and sources quoted in it--must be. Klapper (1960, p. 10“) clearly feels media agencies are sources of implicit messages. 28 The mass media are themselves invested with an aura of prestige by a large portion of their audience. The process involved can no longer be traced in detail, nor has it been explicitly documented by attitude studies. But it is a matter of common observation that...media recognition or espousal 312233.33 confers a degree of prestige upon the concept, person or agency so recognized. Is there empirical support for this? Tannenbaum (1953) and Hovland and Weiss (1951) report that media agencies differing in credibility may produce attitude change differences when they make egplicit assertions about concepts. The question remains whether this is applicable to implicit assertions about other sources. The most direct empirical support has already been cited. In four advertising studies the nature of the media agency "merely" carrying the ad affected the effectiveness of the ad. These results suggest that the media agencies did act as sources of implicit messages. There is additional support from several other studies. An Elmo Roper survey (Exhggigg, 1962) indicated television news reports were "more believable" than newspaper reports for most of the respondents who indicated a choice between hypothetical conflicting news reports. 0n the other hand, Editor 222 Publisher (1962) cites two other surveys which purport to show newspapers as media have greater credibility than television. Our concern is not with this argument. But the least these studies indicate is that audiences can attend to the credibility of the medium even when it is supposedly acting as an "objective" relayer of statements made by other sources. In other words, if media credibility can be assessed by these reSpondents in this kind of news situation, it follows that the assessment concerned the media assource9,even when the media were not explicit advocates of anything. 29 Much of what has been said about the last three propositions ("implied message," "legitimization of activity" and "press as source of implied message") can be usefully translated into a learning theory framework-~that of Osgood (1953). In addition, we shall see that Osgood's learning theory leads us to some additional propositions. Most of a press audience never encounters the sources whose statements news agencies bring to them. Thus the impressions the audience gain about these sources are mediated by symbols ("signs" in Osgood's terms) carried largely by the mass media. Therefore, the development of meanings for these sources depends on the history of associations between the source name and other signs. A very large share of a person's meaning for a cognitive object is evaluative or attitudinal (cf. Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum, 1957). It follows, then, that the develOpment of an attitude toward a source will depend on the history of associations between the source name and other signs. Osgood (1953, pp. 697-8) argues that many signs acquire meanings, not via direct association with the objects represented by the signs, but by association with other signs. Signs whose meanings are literally "assigned" to them by association with other signs are called assigps. Now, if the signs whose meanings have "rubbed off" onto the new sign were themselves assigns, then the new sign is more properly called a sign-assigg. The fact that news sources are mediated, and attitudes toward them develop largely through association with assigns (cf. Osgood, 1953, p. 698), would indicate meanings for sources (in particular, source credibility) are developed as reSponses to sign-assigns. To illustrate, suppose a previously unknown source (he could 30 even be non-existent, since a press audience has few independent means to ascertain whether he exists) appeared suddenly and continuously in the news. Let us assume for the moment that no explicit assertions were made about the source by the news agency (i.e., it was what has been called "objective" news treatment). In effect, then, a series of near- nonsense syllables (the source name) is associated with a number of other signs and assigns. Meanings for the source begin to "rub off" from the other signs and assigns. Among these 3 her signs and assigns is the name of the news agency or news agencies covering the source. Holding constant the nature of the "mediating reaponses" (i.e., meaning) made to the other signs and assigns, the develeping attitude toward the source' is likelz to be positive to the extent ghatpthe mediatins resppnsgg made to the news agengy are positive. To the extent the news agency meanings are negative, the developing attitude toward the source is likely to be negative. To the extent the news agency meanings are not intense, the "habit strength" of these reSpenses is weakened, and the likelihood of these responses being conditioned to the source is also weakened (cf. Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum for the hypothesized relation between habit strength and attitude intensity). These relationships were stated on the assumption that the con- tribution of signs and assigns other than the news agency to the developing attitude was either minimal or constant. However, to the extent these other signs and assigns arouse strong mediating responses, the relative, contribution (positive or negative) made to the developing attitude by the news agency would be diminished. This is one of the bases for the statement in Chapter I that hewing to "objectivity" as usually under- stood merely makes the problem of status conferral more important. 3l Osgood's explanation for the formation of signs, assigns and sign-assigns makes intuitive sense. It seems to correSpond with every- day experience. Beyond this, a number of experiments provide support for this theory of meaning-conditioning (cf. Pishbein, 1961; Rhine and Silum, 1958; Osgood, 1953; Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum, 1957). Many of these conditioning experiments (e.g., Staats, Staats and Heard, 1960; Dodge, in Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum, pp. 297-9; Bettinghaus, 1363) also used the Semantic Differential to obtain meanings of signs, assigns and sign-assigns during the conditioning process. A form of the Semantic Differential (the Berlo-Lemert credibility scales) will be used in this study to obtain some meanings for sources and news agencies. Osgood's theory of meaning develOpment is consistent with the set of prepositions developed thus far. Osgood's theory, in conjunction with other relevant literature, also leads to some additional propositions. S. The act of coverage is always a favorable messags about the source. Considered apart from any explicit message about the source, the act of coverage is an act of recognition. This proposition has been implicit in earlier propositions, but Osgood's learning theory enables us to make it eXplicit, because the act of coverage brings the two signs (source and news agency) into contiguity. Thus meanings for the news agency being to be conditioned to the source. 6. The stronger the positive credibility of the news agency covering a sourcej_the;g£eater the positive credibility_conferred upon the source;, The stroggsr the negative credibility of the new§_agency, the_greatgr the negativg_credibility conferral. This is so because the act of coverage brings the two signs-- source and news agency--into contiguity and the meanings for the latter begin to be conditioned to the former sign-stimulus. The Fuchs study (196%), Where the prestige of the magazine carrying the ad was directly related to the amount of favorable attitude change toward the product, will be recalled in this connection. In addition, Hovland and Weiss (1951) and Tannenbaum (1953) report that when media agencies are used as sources of eXplicit propaganda messages, their persuasive effect is comparable to other kinds of sources varying in credibility. Osgood's theory of meaning development leads to two further propositions, each dealing with limiting conditions within which con- ferral would occur. 7. Signs, other than the news agency, will be associated with the source in an act of coverage. Tg_the extent attitudinal mediatipg responses made to these other signspoompete with the responggs made to the news agpncy,_the news aggncy_effect upon the source will be correspondingly diminished. This means that, if an explicit assertion is made about the source by the news agency, status conferral would be diminished to the extent that the assertion contradicts mediating attitudinal responses to the news agency. It also means that, all else being equal, if the source makes a propaganda assertion during the coverage status conferral will be confounded with the receiver's existing feelings alout the prepaganda concept. 8. Status conferralo-as a_phenomengpf-will be greatest when the source was previously unknown_to the reader. 33 This is because there will be the fewest attitudinal mediating reSponses elicited by the source. In other words, the conditioning of credibility will follow a traditional learning curve. The greatest effect will be exhibited when virtually no previous learning has taken place. If the source is unknown and few mediating reSponses are aroused by the way he is covered (prOposition #7), the conditioning due to status conferral will be greatest in the early learning trials (i.e., in the early pairings of source and news agency). If existing meanings are aroused by the source, changes in source credibility due to status con- ferral will be diminished, though if it were possible to separate changes due to status conferral from other changes, status conferral changes would still follow the traditional learning curve. In addition, status conferral effects would be diminished even further if the existing source meanings contradicted the existing news agency meanings ("response interference"). This completes the present theoretical develOpment of the status conferral notion. The prOpositions developed in this chapter will govern both the hypotheses develOped for testing in two eXperiments and the way the two eXperiments are conducted. Next we shall consider relations between status conferral and Rokeach's personality theory. Status Conferral and Rokeachfs Personality Theory Rokeach's theoretical formulation (1960) is that people differ systematically in the way they react to sources of messages. He argues (pp. 57-8) that persons with "closed" belief Systems (closedminded persons) are less able than Openminded persons to separate what is said 3L3 from who says it. The Openmi ded person tends to evaluate the soundness of the argument independent of how much power and credibility the source has. The closedminded n rson is less able to do this. The nature of the source will influence how the closedminded person reacts to the message more than it will influence how the Openminded person will react. For Rokeach, the relative ability to discriminate between source and message is the "fundamental" (p. 70) distinction between openminded and closedminded personality types. There is support for this distinction between how the two per- sonality types process incoming information. Powell (1960) found that after they had seen an assertion made by a source, closedminded persons rated source and message concept closer together than did openminded persons. However, since Powell did not obtain initial ratings of source and concept it is impossible to trace the movement of source and concept ratings. It follows from Rokeach's treatment of the difference between openminded and closedminded persons that the latter would be more susceptible to prestige or credibility effects than the former. This prediction is supported by another study. Vidulich and Kaiman (1961) found closed minded persons conformed--in the autokinetic situation-~to pressures from high status sources more than openminded persons. The opposite relation was true for the low status sources. If status conferral involves a news agency as the source of an implicit assertion about a source covered in the news story, it follows that Rokeach's personality theory should have much to say about differential reactions to these source conditions. For example, if there be any status conferral, we would expect on the basis of Rokeach's 35 theory that closedminded persons would be more susceptible to it than openminded persons. We would expect, in other words, that there would be greater positive status conferral for closedminded persons than openminded persons if the news agency (source of the implicit message) had positive credibility. On the other hand, if the news agency wars perceived as having negative credibility, negative status conferral would be greater for closedminded than openminded persons. It also follows from Rokeach's statements about the relative ability of the two personality types to differentiate source and message that, if sourcss of propaganda assertions make explicit statements about concepts, relatively closedmindsd respondents should be more persuasibls than opsnnindsd persons i£;the source has initially positive crsdibility. ££;ths source has initially negative credibility, relatively closed-indsd respondents should bs lsss psrsuasible than openminded rsspondsnts. Summagy and Hypotheses Earlisr, sight propositions about status confsrral were dsvslopsd by clarifying and modifying ths Lazarsfsld-Hsrton statansnt of ths general notion. Thsss propositions, however, ars not explicit hypothssss so much as thsy ars bases for developing hypotheses. Spscific sxpsrinsntal hypotheses will be prsssntsd later in this ssction. Thsss hypothssss result from the propositions and also from the application of Roksach's personality theory to them. First, than, the sight propositions prsssntsd in this chapter. 1. Status conferral iapliss that credibility is conferrsd upon individuals acting as sourcss in tho news. 2. Status confsrral rssults from an inplisd nsssags or asssrtion about the sourcs quotsd in a news story. 36 3. The activity being covered is legitimized by the act of coverage. If a source is speaking on a topic, status conferral would mean his competence to talk on that topic was recognized. u. The news agency providing the coverage is the 22252: of the implied message. 5. The implied message always involves a positive assertion about the person covered (an eXplicit message might not, of course). 6. Credibility is enhanced when the coverage is by a positive- credible news agency. It is diminished by coverage performed by a negative-credible news agency. 7. To the extent responses made to other signs compete with the responses made to the news agency, the news agency effect upon the source will be correspondingly diminished. 8. Status conferral-oas a phenomenon--will be greatest when the source was previously unknown to the receiver. It should be evident that it would be difficult to investigate all the implications of these eight propositions in a single study. However, it is possible to investigate a fair number of these implications within the confines of this dissertation. Hypotheses The hypotheses to be investigated are divided into two relatively discrete sections. Within these sections, some of the hypotheses will be tested primarily in the first of two experiments. Others will be tested only in the second experiment. Our analysis of the eight propositions discussed above shows that status conferral is concerned directly with changes in source credibility 37 when sources are covered by news agencies. Since source credibility has been found to affect attitude change, status conferral is also concerned with attitude change effects. Shagges in Source Credibilityr-l) If two positive-credible news agencies quote sources who make no assertion about story topics, the more credible news agency will confer greater credibility upon the source than the less credible news agency (Experiment #1). 2) In the above case, closedminded persons will perceive sources as more credible than open- minded persons (Bxperiment #1). 3) Sources differing in initial credibility who make assertions about story concepts will be perceived as more credible when quoted by a highly positive-credible news agency, followed by a slightly positive-credible news agency, follswed by a negative-credible news agency (Experiment #2). “) Positive status conferral will be greater for closedminded persons than openminded persons in the case of the first two news agencies and less for closed- minded persons in the case of a negative-credible news agency (Experi- ment #2). Attitude Change--l) If an assertion is perceived, more attitude change will occur when the source is quoted by the more credible of two credible news agencies (Experiment #1). 2) When sources differing in initial source credibility are quoted in news stories as making assertions about story topics, the more credible the source, the more attitude change. 3) When these sources are quoted by a high-credible news agency, there will be more attitude change in the intended direction than when a slightly-credible news agency carries the story, than when a negative- credible news agency carries the story. u) Hewever, closedminded persons 38 will depart from the main effect pattern. When source, news agency and Dogmatism variables are combined, closedminded persons will be persuaded more than openminded persons when source and news agency treatments involve positive or neutral credibility; they will be per- suaded less when one or more negative-credible treatment conditions are involved. (Hypotheses #2-“ investigated in second experiment.) The next chapter describes the methods and results of the first experiment. CHAPTER III THE FIRST EXPERIMENT: METHOD AND RESULTS Introduction The purpose of the first experiment was to investigate the hy- pothesized status conferral phenomenon in as antiseptic an environment as possible. If results appeared promising, then a more complex second experiment would be done. This experiment attempts to eliminate two variables which.the propositions would lead us to expect, would make it more difficult to demonstrate a status conferral effect. These two variables are l) a propaganda assertion by the source when he is quoted by the news agency and 2) pre-existing meanings for the source on the part of receivers of the message. This chapter is divided into two principal parts, a "methods" section and a "results" section. The "methods" discussion contains five principal subsections: 1) study design, 2) pro-testing, 3) procedure of the experiment, u) subjects and methodological problems caused by subject losses and 5) source credibility measurements. The "results” section will be outlined after completion of the "methods” section. Method Stug DesiE The first experiment was stripped of all but a few variables. The only major dependent variable was the credibility of two sources quoted in separate news stories. Both sources were fictitious. No 39 “0 information about them was given to the £39 apart from a) the statements they made in the ”news stories" and b) which of two news agencies was purported to have carried each news story. The former information was constant across experimental conditions; the latter type of information constituted the experimental treatment. Each news story was written so that the source made no overt assertions about the attitude concepts involved in the story. Independent variables were the perceived credibility of the news agencies providing the coverage for the sources and the relative open- mindedness or closedmindedness of the §§ reading the stories. The design looks like this: TABLE 3.1 Design of the First Experiment News A en Credibili Rel. High (UPI) fiel. Neutral (Petaluma) I) High 0 (above 6 median) H A‘ A Low T (below I median) S H Dependent variable: perceived source credibility, measured separately on the three factors: Safety, Qualification and madame Sincevtwo stories-coach with a different source quoted in itc-are in- volved, this design is replicated. In one story "C.P. Ritchie" was quoted on the topic of legislative reapportionment. The treatment variable was whether United Press-International or the Petaluma (Calif.) 31 Weekly Argus-Courier was supposed to have carried the story. In the other story, "Henry Kendall” was quoted on the topic of municipal income taxes. For a given subject, if the Ritchie story were attributed to UPI, then the Kendall story was attributed to the Petaluma paper. Or, if the Ritchie story were attributed to the Petaluma paper, then the Kendall story was attributed to UPI. The plan was to analyze credibility change scores as a function of the independent variables. This requires a test-stimulus-retest procedure. However, because of difficulties to be discussed in the section on subjects and subject losses, the major analysis was shifted to after-only credibility scores. Pro-Testing A dozen Hotel, Restaurant and Institutions students rated Ritchie and Kendall with the credibility scales in the spring of 1963. They also ranked six news agencies as to "general journalistic competence." As hoped, these §p rated the fictitious and unknown Ritchie and Kendall toward neutrality on all three credibility dimensions. Had change scores been the dependent variable, as was originally planned, this would have afforded maximum room for differences in treatment effects to occur. The complete rank-order for the group, using pooled ranks, was: UPI, AP, the New York Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Oswego Palladium- Iig=3_and the Petaluma Weekly Arggg-Courier. On the basis of these results, UPI and the Petaluma paper were chosen as the relatively high and relatively low-credible news agencies. ”2 Procedure of the First Experiment The experiment involved two sessions for most as, a before-test session and, two weeks later, an after-test session. Before-tests--The first session involved these tasks: 1) responses to Form E of the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale, 2) ranking of the six news agencies, 3) rating of the two experimental sources on the Berlo-Lemert credibility scales and rating of two masking sources (Khrushchev and Jimmy Hoffa), and u) rating the two news story concepts (municipal income taxes and legislative reapportionment) and one masking concept (recognition of Red China) on eight Semantic Differential scales. These concept ratings were made with five of Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum's (1957) evaluative scales, two activity scales and one potency scale (see Appendix A). The credibility scales will be discussed in a subsequent section. In this experiment, E? did not judge any of the six news agencies on credibility rating scales. They ranked them at the first test session and did not judge them after that. The ranking task was intended only to provide an empirical check on the assumption that United Press- International was perceived as having more credibility than the Petaluma paper. The other four were included in order to mask interest in the two agencies, to provide a range in which UPI and Petaluma could be separated and to obtain exploratory information for the second experiment. All six news agencies actually exist, with the exception that the -Petaluma paper is a daily, not a weekly. Many of the tasks performed by Sp at both test sessions were to provide exploratory information for the second experiment. 1&3 After-testso-Two weeks after the "before” measurements, Sp participated in the second test session. This session involved two test booklets for most S}, and several different tasks within these booklets. I. First, Sp read two "reprints" of news stories, one quoting Henry Kendall on the topic of municipal income taxes and the other quoting C. P. Ritchie on the topic of legislative reapportionment. The stories were printed on stencil by electric typewriter with column- rule margins so that they appeared in a newspaper format. The news agency purported to have carried the story was typed above and below the story. No other effort was made to draw attention to the news agency carrying the story. g} were merely instructed to "read the material." Each story was on a separate page, and the order of pre- sentation of the stories was counterbalanced through all the test book- lets. Both stories were intended to be "two-sided" in the Hovland sense (Hovland, Janis and Kelley, 1953). Stories and presentation formats may be seen in Appendix A. 2. The stories were in the same test booklet as the ”after" measurements for the experimental sources and concepts. As soon as S} read the stories, they were instructed to begin responding to the Semantic Differential scales on pages following the stories. In addition to the experimental sources and concepts, gs rated five masking sources, a news agency (Pravda) and a masking concept on the appropriate scales. A listing of these masking objects may be found in Appendix A. -Por purposes of the present experiment, these tasks helped mask the experimenter's interest. Since the order of credibility and concept scales had been constant throughout the "before” test additional masking was provided, for those present at both test sessions, by randomly M4 ordering scales within blocks of scales. Both credibility and concept scales were identical to those on the "before" test, however. 3. When gs completed reading the stories and rating sources and concepts, they exchanged this test booklet for a second booklet. There were three sets of two questions in the second booklet. The first two questions were open-ended items designed to see if the subject had an inkling of the study's purpose. The next two were criterion qgestions: recognition tests designed to see if the subject could match the source with the news agency for each of the two stories in his treatment group. If a subject failed to answer the two criterion questions correctly, he was discarded from the sample. The reason for this is that if the subject failed to recognise which source was quoted by which agency after he had completed the credibility scales, then there would be little likelihood that he could have recalled this connection while he was rating credibility of the two sources. Of course, at issue in the experiment was whether he Egglgfuse'this information. The final set of two questions was designed to obtain gs' perception of whether the sources in the stories made assertions about the concepts. The precise form ef these six questions may be observed in Appendix A. The experiment took place during class time and was said to be a "public opinisn survey” during the "befere" test phase. We warning was given that the experimenter would return. When he did, he explained that "some things have happened" that made it necessary ts “check" the previous results. He explained that there would be some similarity to the previous survey, but that it was a "reliability check” and he weuld explain in detail after testing was completed. 1&5 Subjects and Subject Losses Sub ects--Subjects were students enrolled in Communication 100 during the Fall, 1963, term. The class was the section composed ef education majors, most of whom were freshmen, sephomores and juniors. All but five ef the 62 Se were female. Subject Losses-~The study, as originally planned, involved a test-stimulus-retest procedure with credibility change scores as the dependent variable. Thus only those gs present at beth the before-test and after-test sessionso-separated by twe weeks--could be in the sample. Since there were absut 150 students in the class, it was felt an adequate sample could be salvaged despite anticipated losses due to lack of attendance at both test sessions. However, a number of factors necessitated abandoning this procedure. 1) There were 157 students enrolled in the class. The first test session occurred the week after midterm exam papers were passed back. Only 98 completed questionnaires were obtained at the first test session. Nine of these completed questionnaires had false names on them, or a name was not placed on them. In addition, only 63 questionnaires were obtained at the second test session from gs who could be identified as filling out the first questionnaire. 2) There were a number of refusals at both test sessions. The author would estimate the number reached one dozen. 3) Of the 63 gs filling out questionnaires at both test sessions, 1% of them failed the criterion questions and thus were discarded from the sample. Thus there were only #9 usable questionnaire sets available for four cells. u) Another five questionnaires would have to be discarded to achieve proportionality in the cell frequencies. “6 Since it was likely that error variance would be large and the hypothesized status conferral differences slight, it was evident almost from the outset that the loss of S9 would require abandoning use of change scores as the principal focus of interest. Accordingly, gs who were present only at the second test session were added to the sample. These 31 E? responded to the Dogmatism Scale after they had read the stories and rated sources and concepts with the Semantic Differential. Then they were given the questionnaire containing the criterion questions. The other gs had filled out the Dogmatism Scale items at the previous test session. Only 13 of the 31 after-only E? passed the criterion tests. However, they were distributed favorably throughout the design. Cell frequencies, with these S9 added to the before-after gs, were preportional. These 13 S9 resulted in a net gain of 18 because none were discarded to obtain proportionality. Table 3.2 presents cell frequencies for before-after, after-only and total gs. TABLE 3.2 Cell Frequencies of Subjects Passing Criterion Test Treatment Booklets Ritchie-UPI Ritchie-Petaluma Kendall-Petaluma ' Kendall —UPI Before-After After-only_Ttl 'Before-After After-only_ Ttl 9 Hi Dog. 12 3 15 ' 12 5 l7 0 A‘ 7 Lo Dog. 10 u in ' 15 l 16 I There are three possible problems involved in the change of procedure. 1) Discarding the before-test credibility scores for those Sp who were present sacrifices any precision which might have been ’47 obtained if there were variance in these scores. However, since Ritchie and Kendall were fictitious individuals, one would expect £9 to be neutral toward them on the before-test. If all gs were neutral, then no precision is lost in the analysis of differential status conferral. Of the us before-after Sp, only four departed from strict neutrality in judging Ritchie on :21 of the three credibility factors and only two departed from neutrality in judging Kendall. Thus relatively little is lost, since none of the four cells contained more than one of these few individuals. 2) Another possible problem is that those gs present at both test sessions might not react to the after-test session the way Sp present only at the second session would react. Comparison of the after- test credibility ratings made by both types of §§,however, indicates that these reactions do not differ. Ratings by after-only §s are similar to those made by the before-after E}. 3) The final problem is that it is necessary to assume UPI would have been ranked higher than the Petaluma paper by the after-only gs in order to assign them to treatment cells. They were not asked to rank the news agencies. However, all of the #9 E? who did rank the agencies ranked UPI higher than the Petaluma paper, as did all the exploratory test respondents. Credibility Measurements The major dependent variable in the first experiment was perceived source credibility. Pour credibility scales represented each of the three dimensions found by Berlo and Lemert. These scales were the highest-loaded and cleanest Semantic Differential scales reported by Lemert (1963) from results obtained by the time of the first experiment. ’4‘; Since these are independent credibility dimensions, three separate analyses are required for each of the experimental sources. Summation and computation of a dimension total was across the four scales representing that factor. The Safety scales were: ggfgrdangerous, openminded-closedminded, objective-subjective and.hgnggtrdishonest. Qualification scales were: informed-uninformed, experienced-inexperienced, educated-uneducated and trained-untrained. Dynamism scales were: extroverted-introverted, £3323: reserved, aggressive-23:5 and bglg:tigig. Scoring for all scales in both experiments-oboth for sources and for concepts--was from one to seven, with one representing the positive end of the scale. Summary of Procedure The sole independent variables in the first experiment were the credibility of the news agency providing the coverage and the relative openmindedness and closedmindedness of the news story reader. It was hypothesized that the credibility of the source quoted in the news story would be greater when he was quoted by United Press-International than when he was quoted by the Petaluma paper. Further, it was hypothesized that the closedminded reader would be more sensitive to status conferral cues, regardless of which of the two agencies was providing the coverage, than would the openminded reader. Experimental materials were two news stories. In one, "C.P. Ritchie” was quoted by either UPI or the Petaluma paper on the concept of legislative reapportionment. In the other, "Henry Kendall" was quoted by either the Petaluma paper or UPI on the concept of municipal “9 income taxes. Both sources were fictitious, as were the news stories. Dependent variables were credibility ratings of Ritchie and Kendall on the Safety, Qualification and Dynamism dimensions. These ratings were made by 62 §§ present at the second test session. They were made immediately after the gs had read the two stories. Both before-test and after-test source and concept measures were available for us of the 62 §P' enabling limited analyses of change scores. All gs were enrolled in a single section of Communication 100, and the experiment was conducted during class time in the Fall, 1963. Results Before we consider the principal study results, there are some subsidiary analyses. Thus, there are several sections to the ”results" discussion: 1) Dogmatism scores, 2) results relevant to several experi- mental assumptions, 3) attitude change toward the story topics, u) credibility-change results and 5) the principal focus of the experiment, status-conferral differences between treatment conditions. Dogmatism Scores Dogmatism total scores for the sample ranged from 80 to 192. Scoring for each of the no items was on a one (complete disagreement) to seven (complete agreement) basis. (A score of four on an item was possible only if the subject volunteered a "no answer" response or failed to respond to the item.) Median score was luS. Thus those scoring more than this were classified as relatively closedminded; those below it were relatively openminded. Obtained Dogmatism totals closest to the median were inn and lu6. Experimental Assumptions There were three experimental assumptions which were checked in the two test sessions. These assumptions were that: 1) UPI was perceived as having more credibility than the Petaluma paper, 2) £9 did not know the purpose of the experiment and 3) the two sources did not make atti- tudinal assertions. Relative Credibility of News Agenciese-All of the #9 So present at the first test session ranked UPI above the Petaluma paper in ”general journalistic competence." In fact, the mean rank given UPI was 1.9% on a 1-6 scale. The mean rank for the Petaluma paper was s.u7. Overall, UPI ranked first of the six news agencies and the Petaluma paper ranked last. Perceived Purpose of the Studye-If gs had "seen through" the experiment, the results would not be very useful for our purposes, at least. As part of the second test session, all S3 responded to two open-ended questions designed to ascertain whether they had perceived the purpose of the experiment. These questions were asked after all the credibility and concept measurements had occurred but 23:25: the criterion questions. Only one subject's response seemed close: "you are trying to see how we change as a result of seeing the stories." This subject was excluded from the final sample. She had failed the criterion questions. Most of the Open-ended responses were concerned-- not unexpectedly--with some perceived educational purpose in the field of public affairs. (In contrast to this apparent docility, however, there were a number of test-wise gs in the sample. After the study was completed, the experimenter offered to answer questions about the study. The first student to ask a question asked: "Why did you use the Dogmatism Scale?") Perceived Assertions--In an effort to hold constant a potentially confounding variable--prior attitude toward the news story conceptso-the stories were written as "two-sided" messages. It was hoped that the two sources would not be perceived as taking a position on the concepts. In order to check this assumption, gs were asked to respond to two multiple-choice questions at the end of the interview. These questions asked whether the source had taken a stand on the concept and, if he had advocated a position, whether the position were affirmative or negative. Slightly more than half the 62 Se felt that Kendall had not been neutral about municipal income taxes, and slightly less than half felt Ritchie had not been neutral about legislative reapportionment. as Table 3.3 indicates, there is no evidence that the pattern of However, perceived assertions differed among the four treatment cells for either the Ritchie or the Kendall story. TABLE 3.3 Chi-Square Tests of Hypotheses That Patterns of Perceived Assertions Differed Among Treatment Cells, By Story A. Kendall-municipal income tax story Perceived Assertion Treatment Cell "WWW ' £9.11" 70131 Hi Dog.-Petaluma 5 7 3 15 X2 be Dog.-Petaluma 2 6 5 la Hi Dog.—UPI 2 7 3 17 Lo Dog.-UPI 2 7 ‘1 16 IT '57 21+ '67 B. Ritchie-legislative reapportionment Perceived Assertion Treatment Cell “E53"; no assertion‘"222r Total Hi Dog.-UPI u 9 2 15 x2 Lo Dog.-UPI 3 9 2 1n Hi Dog.-Peta1uma 7 8 2 17 Lo Dog.-Petaluma 5 9 2 16 E ‘3? '5 3'5” ”.8 NS 1.7 NS Therefore, unless there were special interactions with differences between cells in pre-existing attitudes toward the concepts, there is small likelihood that perceived assertions affected credibility ratings. A check on differences in credibility ratings as related to whether the perceived assertion was in opposition to the subject's prior attitude toward the concept indicated no significant difference between credibility ratings by E? who thought they read something ”bad" and E? who thought they read something which agreed with their prior attitude. Therefore there seems to be no evidence for the confounding of credibility ratings with the subject's agreement with the perceived assertion. Next we shall look a little more closely at the attitude change scores for those gs who were present at both test sessions and who perceived assertions. Attitude Chang: toward Story Concepts The principal focus of the first experiment is upon source credibility ratings as a function of news agency coverage and the reader's openmindedness or closedmindedness. However, if a subject did perceive an attitudinal assertion, it would then be possible to analyze his attitude change toward the concept as a function of status conferral and Dogmatism. (Since the perception may be either that the assertion is positive or that it is negative, only the gs present at both test sessions may be used in the analysis. Some of the after-only gs also perceived that assertions were made, but there is no way of handling their concept scores.) .Less than half the “9.§? present at both test sessions felt Ritchie had made an assertion about legislative reapportionment: 15 53 felt he was "pro" reapportionment and 7 felt he was "con" reapportionment. Attitude change scores were scored positively if they were in the direction of the perceived assertion; negatively if the change were in opposition to the perceived assertion. Table 3.u presents attitude change means for the Ritchie story on legislative reapportionment. TABLE 3.“ Mean Attitude Change Scores,* Cell Sizes** and Analysis of Variance Results for Ritchie-Legislative Reapportionment Story UPI Petaluma Overall Source df SS MS I; pp Hi Dog. 1776'? W. Mung We is: I" 85715 36.15 1.e1<.2o (19:6) (11:5) Dog. 1 35.63 35.63 «---- MXD l 16.80 16.80 ------ Lo Dog. 5.50 -.57 1.6a w/n 18 797.u2 nu.3o - (N=u) (N27) 5.55 1.17 *Scored positively if the change is in the direction of the perceived assertion, negatively if in opposition to the perceived assertion. **Cases are before-after subjects, only. while the large differences between the means suggest both a mediated credibility effect on attitude change and a relationship with Dogmatism, only the former effect approaches significance ((L20). Because cell sizes are disproportional if there had been an interaction it would be uninterpretable. Further, the number of cases is tiny and the error term large. As walker and Lev suggest (1953, p. 157), these conditions may mean "the failure to find a significant difference may be due to the small number of cases examined rather than to the equality of population 50 while more of the 89 before-after gs perceived an assertion in the Kendall-municipal income taxes story, thus affording more cases (28), the cell means are so close that further analysis is unwarranted. The maximum range of means from cell to cell was only 1.25 to 1.86. Changes in general were much smaller toward this concept. There is an additional set of analyses we can perform on responses made by gs present at both test sessions. We can look at the changes in credibility ratings for all cells, regardless of treatment conditions. The next section is concerned with this. Credibilitnghgnggs We have credibility-change data for the us Se who were present at both before-test and after-test. As Tables 3.5-3.10 indicate, there were very large increases in perceived credibility for both sources, all credibility dimensions and all treatment conditions. TABLE 3.5 Ritchie: The Safety Dimension Before-Test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells Before-test Mean Cred. Cell 5. Mean* Increase t-value p-value (two-tailed) UPI: Di Dog. 12 15.5 “.50 3.31 <}Ol UPI: LO Dog. 10 16.6 6.70 6.26 V3001 Pet.: Hi Dog. 12 15.5 3.25 2.4a (.05 Pet.: Lo Dog. 15 16.0 1.87 1.81 <.1o *Neutral point is 16.0.Scores may range from k (positive end) to 28 (negative end). After-test mean may be obtained by subtracting mean credibility increase from before-test mean. 55 TABLE 3.6 Ritchie: The Qualification Dimension Before-Test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells Before-test Mean Cred. Cell 5. Mean* Ingrease t-value p-value (two-tailed) UPI: Hi Dog. 12 15.5 5.67 8.71 (.001 UPI: LO Dog. 10 1n,8 6.90 6.16 (.001 Pet.: Hi Dog. 12 15.0 3.50 2.81 <.05 Pet. Lo Dog. 15 16.0 3.87 11.03 (.01 *Neutral point is 16.0. Scores may range from 8 (positive end) to 28 (negative end). After-test mean may be obtained by subtracting mean credibility increase from before-test mean. TABLE 3.? Ritchie: The Dynamism Dimension Before—Test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells Before-test Mean Cred. Cell E. Mean* Increase t-value p-value (two-tailed) UPI:Hi Dog. 12 15.1 3.00 8.92 <.001 UPI: Lo Dog. 10 18.8 3.50 2.10 ‘<.10 Pet.: Hi Deg. 12 15.8 1.75 1.67 <{.2o Pet.: LO Dog. 15 16.0 1.80 2.65 14.02 *Neutral point is 16.0. Scores may range from 0 (positive end) to 28 (negative end). After-test means may be obtained by subtracting mean credibility increase from before-test mean. Since there were no CODtPOl groups, these large increases in credibility may not be attributable solely to status conferral. The message itself is one other factor which could have contributed to the increase. However, it would be difficult to achieve an appropriate 56 control for message effects only. Since our interest is in press agency status conferral, the message would have to be constant across treatment groups and control groups. But if the experimental message appears in a press format, how can the message be held constant? Either the format is changed for the control group, thus in effect not holding the message constant, or the format is also held constant. If the format is held constant, taking away only the experimentor's explicit attribution of the story to a news agency, then it is quite likely the control group reader would "decide" what news agency he attributes the story to. TABLE 3.8 Kendall: The Safety Dimension Before-Test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells Before-Test Mean Cred. Cell §_ Mean Increase t-value p-value (two-tailed) UPI: Hi Dog. 12 15.8 8.92 3.6“ (.01 UPI: Lo Dog. 15 16.0 0.67 6.11: 1.001 Pet.: Hi Dog. 12 16.0 5.92 15.77 (.001 Pet.: Lo Dog. 10 15.6 u.uo 3.01 (.01 *Neutral point is 16.0. Scores may range from u (positive end) to 28 (negative end). After-test means may be obtained by subtracting mean credibility increase from before-test mean. 57 TABLE 3.9 Kendall: The Qualification Dimension Before-Test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells Before-test Mean Cred. Cell g. Mean Increase t-value p-value (two-tailed) UPI: Hi Dog. 12 15.2 5.58 3.19 (.01 UPI: Lo Dog. 15 16.0 5.53 7.09 <<.001 Pet.: H1 Dog. 12 16.0 6.00 13.76 (.001 Pet.: Lo Dog. 10 lu.9 5.60 0.08 < .01 *Neutral point is 16.0. Scores may range from 8 (positive end) to 28 (negative end). After-test means may be obtained by subtracting mean credibility increase from before-test mean. TABLE 3.10 Kendall: The Dynamism Dimension Before-Test Means and Credibility Change Scores, by Cells Before-test Mean Cred. Cell 39 Mean Increase t-value p-value (two-tailed) UPI: Hi Dog. 12 16.0 3.08 2.81 (.02 UPI: Lo Dog. 15 16.0 1.93 3.03 (.01 Pet.: Hi Dog. 12 16.0 8.08 n.30 1<.01 Pet.: Lo Dog. 10 15.9 3.90 3.33 <‘.Ol *Neutral point is 16.0. Scores may range from 0 (positive end) to 28 (negative end). After-test means may be obtained by subtracting mean credibility increase from before-test mean. How large these increases are may be seen by dividing each of the change scores by four; the answer is the mean change in scale units. The t-tests, made against the hypothesis that no change occurred, are almost uniformly significant at the .05 level or less. It is clear, 58 then, that we can conclude credibility increases did occur for the us gs, regardless of treatment condition. It is also clear, due to the lack of a control group, that the interpretation of this result is debatable. The debate will be resumed in the final chapter. Status Conferral Differences While these changes are large, the experiment was designed to test hypotheses concerned with differences in perceived credibility as a fUnction of news agency conditions and Dogmatism groups. Therefore, the primary concern is with the credibility ratings of Ritchie and Kendall which were made by the 62 E9 after they had read the two news stories. Tables 3.11-3.13 present the data for the Kendall-municipal income tax story. The experimental hypotheses are 1) the source will be per- ceived as Safer, more Qualified and more Dynamic when quoted by UPI than when quoted by the Petaluma paper, and 2) the source will be perceived as Safer, more Qualified and more Dynamic by closedminded than openminded readers. These hypotheses are not supported by the results for the Kendall story, although the overall means for the three credibility dimensions are generally in the predicted directions. TABLE 3.11 Analysis of Variance, Cell and Main Effects Means* for Kendall: The Safety Factor UPI Petaluma Row Means Source df SS HS -" """"""" "'"""'""" Me a :.....'1'.'.'. Hi Dog. 10.55 10.53 10.60 Dogmtsm l ---- ----- - MxD l ---------- Lo Dog. 11.19 11.50 11.33 film 58 895.55 15.00 Col. Mn. 10.91 11.00 90a.85 E5cores range-from 8 (positive end) to 28"(negatIVe end). 59 TABLE 3. 12 Analysis of Variance, Cell and Main Effects Means* For Kendall: The Qualification Factor UPI Petaluma Row Means Source df SS MS - H ..._...... Me 1a :7-------:- Hi Dog. 9.01 10.00 9.87 Dogmtsm 1 ------------ MxD l ------------ Low Dog. 10.37 10.00 10.20 W/n 58 1 Oul.u7 17.96 "T‘Ip .98 Col. Means 9.90 10.22 *Scores range from u (positive end) to 28 (negative end). TABLE 3.13 Analysis of Variance, Cell and Main Effects Means* For Kendall: The Dynamism Factor UPI Petaluma Row Means Source 51; _S_ 315‘ 3 Media 1 8.59 8.59 .792 NS Hi Dog. 12.29 12.33 12.31 Dogmtsm 1 12.20 12.20 1.125 NS MxD 1 10.09 10.09 .931 NS Lo Dog. 13.9w 12.36 13.20 W/n 58 628.99 10.8u Col. Means 13.09 12.35 *Scores range from 8 (positive end) to 28 (negative end). However, significant differences in status-conferral were achieved for the Ritchie-legislative reapportionment story. It is apparent there were large differences between source credibility means associated with news agency treatment conditions. For the Safety dimension (Table 3.10), respondents rated Ritchie significantly (.05>p>.025) Safer when he was quoted by UPI than when he was 60 TABLE 3.10 Analysis of Variance, Cell Means and Main Effects Means* For Ritchie: The Safety Factor UPI Petaluma Row Means Source df SS MS F ““““'“ “We a 'T 85786 85786 5.169 .05p.025 Hi Dog. 11.07 12.20 11.69 Dogmtsm 1 8.62 8.62 .519 MxD 1 23.10 23.1“ 1.393 Lo Dog. 10.50 10.12 12.03 W/n 58 963.20 16.61 Col. Means 10.98 13.16 :Scores range ffom 0*(positive endl'to 28(negatiVe end). TABLE 3.15 Analysis of Variance, Cell Means and Main Effects Means* For Ritchie: The Qualification Factor UPI Petaluma Row Means Source df 88 MS F "" ""'"""" """"‘" We 1"": ‘1‘ 50.65 30765 17863 (.20 Hi Dog. 10.27 11.06 10.69 Dogmtsm l 0.07 0.07 .219 MxD 1 8.15 8.15 .038 L0 Dog. 10.00 12.25 11.20 H/n 58 1:08.87 18.60 Col. Means 10.10 11.63 xScores rangefrom 0 (positive endT'to;28"(negative end). TABLE 3.16 Analysis of Variance, Cell Means and Main Effects Means* For Ritchie: The Dynamism Factor UPI Petaluma Row Means Source df SS MS F '— ""'" "'""""""" MT—e 1a "1' 32.00 57700 07892 .05p.025 Hi Dog. 12.07 13.00 12.56 Dogmtsm l 2.97 2.97 .277 MxD 1 13.56 13.56 1.265 Lo Dog. 11.50 10.31 13.00 W/n 58 621.87 10.72 Col. Means 11.79 13.60 *Scores range from “(positive end) to 28 (negative end)1 61 quoted by the Petaluma paper. Means for the closedminded and openminded groups were in the expected direction but did not differ significantly. For the Qualification dimension, (Table 3.15) the mean for Ritchie (UPI) was 1.09 higher than the mean for Ritchie (Petaluma); this difference, however, does not reach the .05 level (<1.20). Again, means for the closedminded and openminded groups were in the expected direction but did not differ significantly. For the Dynamism dimension (Table 3.16), news agency treatment was again the only significant ( .05) p).025) effect. Once again, means for the closedminded and openminded groups were in the expected direction but did not differ significantly. None of the three interactions reaches significance, although in each of the) three tables the rank-order of cell means is the same. The highest obtained mean is for openminded readers of the "UPI" story, followed by closedminded readers of the "UPI" story, closedminded readers of a "Petaluma" story and openminded readers of a "Petaluma" story. The error term in each of the six analyses is relatively large. In every case the total variance attributable to random error dwarfs the "raw" variance attributable to the combined dogmatism, media and media X dogmatism treatments. However, there was no evidence of serious heterogeneity of variance, using the P-max. test. The credibility means for Kendall were in general higher than the obtained means for Ritchie, but the only obtained treatment differences were for Ritchie. For the 09 Se present at both test sessions, credibility increases for Kendall, regardless of treatment condition, were significant at the .02 level (one test) and the .01 level (all other tests) or better. In contrast, of the 12 significance figures for Ritchie's change scores, one was at the .20 level, two were 52 at the .10 level and two were at the .05 level. The other seven were at the .01 level or better. Concerning the prediction that high jogmatics would give higher credibility scores to the sources -- regardless of which news agency provided the coverage -- none of the analyses, considered separately, reached significance. However, in each one of the six cases the obtained mean for closedminded readers was higher than the obtained mean for cpenminded readers. Summagy For the portion of the sample which was present at both test sessions, there was strong evidence for large increases in credibility ratings of both message sources, regardless of treatment condition. Within this context of large increases in credibility ratings for both Kendall and Ritchie, the entire sample rated Ritchie Safer and more Dynamic when he was quoted by UPI than when he was quoted by the Petaluma paper. These results, and tendencies observed in the other experimental results, all seemed to warrant a second experiment. CHAPTER IV THE SECOND EXPERIMENT: METHOD Introduction The first experiment examined status conferral in a context stripped of all but a few variables. It was designed to See if more complex experimentation were warranted. Results of the first experiment did seem to warrant investigation of the status conferral effect within - a much more complex--and perhaps more realistic-~context of variables. The second experiment, then, involves more independent variables and more dependent variables than the first experiment. Further, it enables a much wider range of analyses. While there is considerable similarity in the methodology of the two experiments, the second experiment differs from the first in many important respects. First, instead of college students, the sample is composed of adults residing in the Lansing area. Second, the news messages were "one-sided,” in the Hovland sense. Third, the sources quoted in the news stories made assertions favoring the topic of the story. Fourth, while the sources quoted were once again fictitious, labels were attached to some of them so that they differed in credibility before the stories were read. Fifth, while this experiment also involved a before-after test procedure, there was virtually no delay between the two test phases.. Sixth, three different news agencies were involved, the extra one (Pravda) having generally negative credibility. Seventh, 63 6“ this study involved interviews conducted in the respondent's home; it was not an intact-group study. Eighth, a 20-item form of the Dogmatism Scale was selected from the uO-item scale in order to shorten the in- terview time. Ninth, the interviews provided a wealth of demographic data and data on newspaper audience habits; this was not available in the preceding study. Tenth, the news stories were printed by letterpress in a much more realistic format than in the first experiment. Eleventh, Es rated the credibility of the news agencies, both before and after they read the stories. In the previous study they ranked them two weeks before they read the stories. This chapter is concerned with the method and procedures used in the experiment. Before we look at these matters, however, there is a wealth of pre-test data relevant to the methodological decisions to be reported in the succeeding sections of this chapter. Let us consider this exploratory information first and then look at the experimental methodology. Pre-testinjg Pre-test data relevant to the second experiment came from three separate studies: the original pre-test, with the 12 Hotel, Restaurant and Institutions students; the first experiment, where most of the masking tasks provided relevant data; and, finally, a pre-test using S's from the sample list for the second experiment. Pre-testing was done to try to solve problems in four areas of the study: 1) selection of labels for sources, 2) selection of news agencies, 3) selection of concepts to be topics of the news stories and 0) instructions and procedures for the personal interview. He shall examine each of these problems in the order named. Labels Sources in the second experiment were to be fictitious, as they were in the first experiment. Therefore it appeared necessary to attach labels to those sources toward which we wanted credibility ratings to depart from neutrality on the before-test. The problem was to obtain one positive label and one negative label. A number of labels were attached to the names of fictitious sources in the first two pre-tests: "trade.council president,” "American industrialist," "1960 Socialist Party candidate for president," "national secretary, John Birch Society," and "N.Y. Black Muslim leader." The first two labels were supposed to confer positive credibility; the other three were supposed to be negative' labels. None of these labels proved entirely satisfactory. Either the label produced only slightly positive or negative responses on all three credibility dimensions, or it produced mixed (some positive, some negative) responses on the three dimensions. (See Appendix B for results of all pre-testing.) However, the ratings of "American industrialist" and "Socialist candidate" seemed closest to the desired ratings; the variances of responses to these labels also were the smallest. Therefore some changes were made in the final pre-test but similar themes were present in the labels: "American businessman" and "0.8. People's Socialist Party member." The final pre-test involved 19 Lansing residents interviewed in ‘their homes. The §P were chosen from the master sample list for the second experiment. Most of these respondents rated "Roger Frank, American businessman" at the neutral point on all three dimensions. They did rate "James Hinton, 0.8. People's Socialist Party member," as quiteIDangerous though slightly Qualified and Dynamic. The label used for Hinton apparently 66 would produce stable negative ratings on the Safety dimension. But this label, like all the other negative labels, produced negative ratings only on the Safety dimension. The Qualification and Dynamism means were on the positive side of neutrality. This is consistent with the findings of Rarick (1963). Since the pattern remained the same for all negative labels, it was decided to use "James Hinton, U.S. People's Socialist Party member," as the low-credibility label. The main problem, then, was to get a positive label. Few of the final pre-test respondents asked for additional information about Hinton. Apparently the label helped them decide how to rate him. However, every one of the reSpondents asked for further information about "ROger Frank, American businessman.” Thus it seemed possible to build in some more positive cues about Roger Frank's credibility. Accordingly, it was decided to incorporate the following information about Roger Prank into the test situation: Frank was a banker, industrialist and member of a corporation board of directors. All of this-~which is consistent with his being an American businessman-~was to be read to the respondents for the main experiment. As occupational labels, a banker and director rate extremely high in prestige for general samples as reported by the National Opinion Research Center in Bendix and Lipset (1953, pp. #12-3). News Agencies The second major problem pre—tested for the second experiment was which news agencies to use. Since United Press-International had already been used in the first experiment, Associated Press was chosen for the high-credible news agency in the second experiment. In both the first two pre-tests, it ranked behind only UPI and ahead of the 67 other four news agencies. In the Lansing pre-test, A.P. received very positive credibility ratings. For similar reasons, the Oswego Palladium-Times was chosen for the relatively neutral news agency. In both the first two pre-tests it ranked only above the Petaluma paper. In the Lansing pre-test it received slightly positive ratings on all three dimensions. Since pre-test results indicated both the Oswego and the Petaluma papers generally were perceived as having slightly positive credibility, it seemed necessary to obtain a negative news agency in order to extend the range of treatment conditions. But if even the lowest-ranked agencies received positive credibility ratings, it appeared unlikely that most American news agencies would receive negative ratings. In fact, the 19 respondents interviewed in the Lansing pre-test did not name any American newspapers‘they would not read. One cited Tass, the Soviet news agency. Credibility ratings of Pravda, another Soviet news agency, were available from the first experiment. Pravda was Dangerous but slightly Qualified and Dynamic, according to the means (N=62). The 19 Lansing residents rated Pravda in similar fashion on the three credibility dimensions. Also, Hovland and Weiss (1951) reported Pravda was a low- credible source. Therefore, Pravda was chosen as the negative news agency. Story Topics The third problem to be approached in pre-testing was selection of topics for news stories in the second experiment. Since the sources quoted in stories were to vary in original credibility and were to make assertions about the story concepts, this meant that it was important to be able to predict, in general, how respondents would evaluate the concepts before they read the messages. This was because credibility- change was again to be a central focus of the experiment, and the principle of congruity (Osgood and Tannenbaum, 1955) would lead us to expect status conferral would be counteracted by a ceiling effect with certain com- binations of sources, concepts and assertions. given that sources made positive assertions about concepts, congruity would lead us to expect a ceiling effect would be avoided if the sign of the source was the opposite of the sign of the concept. In other words, if a "nice" source said a "bad" thing and a "bad" source said a "good” thing, there would be room for differential status conferral effects to be observed. Therefore, we needed a concept most respondents would evaluate negatively and a concept most would evaluate positively. Pre-testing from the first experiment and the Lansing general sample produced one very negative concept (diplomatic recognition of Red China) and one slightly positive one (the nuclear test-ban treaty). Since both concepts could have been topics of news stories carried by any of the three news agencies without causing too much surprise, these were the topics selected. Interview Pre-testingb The final problem dealt with in pre-testing was handling of the interview. In addition to smoothing out the interview procedure, pre- testing was concerned with two potentially severe problems. 1. The first problem was to obtain Semantic Differential in- structions which would overcome a possible positive response set in the judgment of the fictitious sources. Two sets of instructions were 69 pro-tested. The first set explicitly instructed respondents to use the neutral point whenever they felt they did not know enough about the judgmental object to be sure about any other kind of response. This instruction set also told respondents to beware of making positive responses automatically and without thought. The second set of in- structions made the same points by induction and implication through a series of practice tasks. The first set of instructions produced almost completely neutral responses to all objects. The second set produced reaponses more in line with expectations: unlabeled and fictitious sources were marked neutrally, labeled ones were marked more or less according to the label. Therefore, the second instructional technique was chosen. 2. The second potentially severe problem was concerned with the criterion questions. It will be recalled that, in the first experiment, only two-thirds of the §§ passed the criterion test, which was given after they had read the two stories and completed the after-test credibility measurements. Since the interviews in the second eXperiment were lengthy and expensive, it was important to estimate the percentage of respondents failing the criterion tasks, and to try to increase the proportion of successes if it were possible to do so. Only 58 per cent of the Lansing pre-test respondents passed the criterion task. Most of these Se were asked once to recognize the agency quoting the source. This was after they had completed all other tasks. Some of them were asked to take the criterion test twice, once after reading the stories and once following the after-test. Two-thirds of these respondents passed criterion. Accordingly, it was decided to ask the criterion questions twice, the answer to the test when asked the second time counting as the criterion trial. 7O Hethodwof the Study With this pre-testing backgound, the reasons for some of the procedures to be reported in ensuing sections should be a little more evident. First we shall consider the design of the experiment and then a synopsis of the interview procedure. Following these sections will be sections detailing a number of aspects of the study: interviewgps, sample selection, treatment assignment, stimulus materials, credibility and concept scales, and the Dogmatism Scales used in the study. Study Design Independent variables were 1) perceived credibility, prior to message exposure, of the source quoted in the news story, 2) perceived credibility, prior to message exposure, of the news agency (A.P., Oswego Palladium-Times or Pravda) carrying the story and 3) relative open- mindedness or closedmindedness of the news story reader. There were two major groupings of dependent variables: changes in source credibility and changes in attitudes toward the news story concepts. This is a two (source credibility) by two (high and low Dogmatism) by three (news agencies) factorial design, replicated because there are two stories. For the Red China story, source treatment conditions were positive credibility (Roger Frank, American businessman) vs. neutral credibility (C.P. Ritchie). For the nuclear test ban story, the conditions for the sources were neutral credibility (C.P. Ritchie) vs. negative credibility (James Hinton, U.S. People's Socialist Party member). Treatment conditions were combined so that no set of two stories duplicated either sources or news agencies. 71 Synopsis of the Interview Over-view--All data for the second experiment were gathered in a single personal interview with each of the 216 respondents. All of these interviews were conducted in the respondent's homes. The experi- ment involved "before" and "after" measurements of the credibility of all sources and news agencies and of reactions to the story concepts. In addition, Es responded to a shortened form of the Dogmatism Scale (Troldahl and Powell, 196u), read the two news stories, and were twice asked to recognize which source was quoted by which news agency. This 'is an overview of what happened during the interview. A detailed synopsis follows. Preliminary Questions-~The interviewere first asked the respondent several questions about his newspaper reading habits (see Appendix C for this and other portions of the questionnaire). These preliminary questions were completed by obtaining the respondent's approximate age and number of school years completed. If the respondent had not com- pleted six or more school grades, the interview was terminated. Before-test--Then the interviewer handed the before-test booklet to the respondent. This booklet contained credibility scales for Roger Frank, American businessman; James Hinton, member of the 0.8. People's Socialist Party; Fidel Castro; C. P. Ritchie; Pravda, Soviet news agency; the Oswego (N.Y.) Palladium-Times; the Lansing State Journal and Associated Press. It also contained Semantic Differential rating scales for three concepts: diplomatic recognition of Red China, the nuclear test-ban treaty and Michigan legislative reapportionment. The three judgment objects which are underlined were included for masking purposes. All others are involved in the analysis. Scales used to 72 rate sources, news agencies and concepts will be discussed in another section. Scale marking instructions were read aloud to the reSpondent while he followed on his own cOpy in order to make sure that he read the instructions. The instructions for judging sources and concepts were similar to the instructions in the first experiment. The only difference was that these respondents were required to respond to some practice scales under the tutelage, if necessary, of the interviewer. For the practice segment the interviewers could interrupt the subject's reSponses and correct him if he gave overt evidence of misunderstanding the pro- cedure. After the practice page interviewers were told to avoid hindering‘ or advising unless the aid was specifically requested; after this page they were not to give the appearance of watching the respondent's checking behavior. Eggmatism Test--When the respondent had completed the before- test booklet, the interviewer took it back. Then he handed the respondent a response-category card for the Rokeach Dogmatism Scale and read to him 20 of the Rokeach items recommended for personal interviews by Troldahl and Powell (196u). Unlike the first experiment, the Dogmatism Scale was not self-administered. Interviewers entered the responses as gs made them. The shortened Dogmatism Scale is discussed in a later section of this chapter and reproduced in Appendix C. Reading of Stories--After the respondent had completed the Dogmatism items, he was handed two news stories to read. As he was given the stories, the interviewer made explicit mention of the two news agencies purported to have carried the two stories. Further discussion 73 of the handling and format of the news stories will be in a separate section of this chapter. First Criterion Trial--The interviewer waited until the respondent had indicated he had read the two stories. Then he took them back and immediately asked the respondent to recognize (not recall) which of the three agencies had carried the story quoting C. P. Ritchie. Then he asked the same question for Roger Frank or James Hinton, depending upon which treatment group the respondent had been assigned to. This was the first criterion trial. If either reSponse were incorrect, the respondent was immediately told the correct answer. An attempt was made-- going as far as showing him the story or stories again-~to get the respondent to emit the correct response. If the responses were correct on the first criterion trial, the interviewer told the respondent that he was correct. After-test--Then the interviewer handed the respondent the after- test booklet. The respondent was no longer in possession of the stories when be filled out this questionnaire. (At this point he was told this was the last task remaining in the interview. Pre-testing indicated boredom and fatigue were high at this stage of the interview.) There were credibility measurements again for Frank, Hinton and Ritchie and the three news agencies. There were measurements once again for the two story concepts. Scales for all these measurements were identical with those used on the before-test; as in the first experiment, however, the order was randomized in contrast to a set pattern of scales on the before-test. Purpose of this was masking. Further masking was attempted by getting measurements for Michigan 7:: legislative reapportionment (repeated from the before-test), American newspapers in general, and "My Best Friend." Credibility ratings of American newspapers in general were also included for potential analytical purposes. Second Criterion Trial-~As soon as the respondent had completed the after—test booklet, the interviewer took it back and asked the criterion questions once again. This was the second criterion trial. If the reSpondent were incorrect on either question, he was excluded from the sample. His responses to the questions when asked the first time were not relevant to the decision. See Appendix C for these questions. Final Questions-oFinally, the interviewer asked the respondent two occupational and political questions (see Appendix C). Then he thanked the respondent and asked him if he had any comments or questions about the study. The interviewer recopded these comments or quesgions after the interview was completed. This enabled a check on experimental manipulations. This, then was the chronology of the interview. Next we shall consider, in more detail, several aspects of the study methodology. Ipterviewers The author did none of the interviewing for this study. A crew of ll interviewers undertook the task, beginning in mid-March, 196“. Briefing and supervision throughout the study was by the author. Inter- viewing was completed in six weeks. Five of the ll interviewers had had a considerable amount of pro- fessional experience; all five were women, and they did more than 75 per cent of the interviews. A sixth interviewer was the wife of a Communi- cation graduate student. Her previous experience was limited to a telephone interview, but she proved quite competent. These six inter- 75 viewers accounted for about 88 per cent of the 83 who passed the criterion test. The other five interviewers--all male graduate students in the Department of Communication-~obtained the remaining interviews. Sample Selection This was a modified probability sample from the Lansing telephone directory. There are more than 700 columns in the directory. A starting point within the first column was selected randomly. The same point was used for all succeeding columns. This procedure generated 707 names, but the total sample was reduced to 537 with the exclusion of all names followed by East Lansing telephone numbers. Names followed by Haslett or Ckemos numbers were also drOpped from the sample, but were replaced by a set procedure. Similarly, if the name of a business were selected, replacement was by the same procedure. The procedure was to move four names above the present name; if this name were also "ineligible," then the immediately preceding name was to be selected, and so on. Thus this was a sample of the greater Lansing area, excluding East Lansing, Haslett and Okemos residents. Respondents who had not completed the sixth grade in school were excluded from the final sample, as were respondents who failed to pass the criterion test. The former respondents did not participate in the interview beyond the questions on education. The latter respondents went through the entire interview. Treatment Assignment There were three news agency credibility conditions for each story and two source credibility conditions for each story. This generates only six treatment sets of two stories if there is a fixed relationship between the treatment combination on the first story and 76 the treatment combination on the second story. In order to simplify the assignment of S9 to treatments, it was decided to have this fixed relationship between treatment combinations for each story. Thus, for example, if a respondent read a Pravda story quoting C. P. Ritchie on recognition of Red China, he would also read an Associated Press story quoting James Hinton on the nuclear test ban treaty. Or if he read an Associated Press story quoting Roger Frank on recognition of Red China, he would also read a Pravda story quoting C. P. Ritchie on the nuclear test ban treaty. These are two of the six combinations of stories and treatment conditions. The other experimental variable was the openmindedness or closed- mindedness of the respondent. It was, of course, impossible completely to assign the respondent to a cell until after the interview was completed and DOgmatism score obtained. But this was the only one of the three independent variables which could not be determined before the interview was completed. The procedure used to assign gs to source and news agency treat- ment conditions is as follows. Since there were only six particular combinations of treatments for the two stories, the task was to see that the respondents who passed criterion were assigned equally to the six conditions. When an interviewer had obtained six reapondents who had met criterion, he was instructed to bring the six questionnaire sets in. The interviewer was further instructed that for every six successful interviews there should be one successful interview for each of the six treatment sets. In order to tighten control of treatment assignments further, the interviewers were also required to maintain a special tally sheet provided by the author. If there were any systematic interviewer bias over time, it would have been constant across treatments 77 because the interviewer could not administer the same treatment set more than once in any given set of six successful interviews. Each set of stories was mounted on color-keyed sheets of paper. There were six different colors of paper, corresponding to the six treatment sets. The stories were also labeled in a code which was incomprehensible to the reSpondent. Using either the color or the code cues, the interviewer could indicate, at two different spots within the questionnaire set, which treatment had been administered. Since the stories were removed from the questionnaire set after the interview, the interviewer was required to note the treatment used before he brought the questionnaire set in. All questionnaires were completely inter- changeable except for the news stories. The only interview differences between treatment groups involved the news stories and criterion questions. This procedure was used through most of the interviewing, and worked well. However, since the Dogmatism variable could be determined only after the interview with this procedure, during the last week of interviewing interviewers totalled Dogmatism scores as they coded the responses. Specific assignments were made as to which treatment sets to give relatively openminded reSpondents and which to give to relatively closedminded respondents. To this point in the discussion of study methodology, we have looked at the design, interview chronology, interviewers, sample selection and treatment assignment. Next we shall look at how the stories were presented. After this section, there will be two final sections, both dealing with measurement. The first of the last two sections deals with scales used to measure responses to sources and concepts, and the 79 last deals with the shortened Dogmatism Scale. Stimulus Materials The two news stories were set on linotype machines and then printed by offset processes. Stories were printed in a format that was as close to newspaper style as possible. They were embedded within a page format, i.e., other, irrelevant stories were printed on all sides of the experimental stories. In addition, news stories were printed on the back. All the surrounding material was the same for all versions of both stories. Both experimental stories, and all story versions, were printed below a two-column, two-line headline; the surrounding stories also appeared below two-line, single-column headlines. Thus when the ex~ perimental stories were torn from this context-~with bits and shreds of the surrounding context deliberately left in--and pasted on a sheet of paper, there would seem to be a very close resemblance to a real article which had been torn from a newspaper. As in the first experiment, brief statements above and below the story identified the news agency purported to have carried the story. The news agency name, in these statements, was circled with a red magic- marking pencil. In addition, the name of the news agency was written boldly with the red magic-marking pencil across the news story itself. (See Appendix C for examples of how the stories looked.) Headline for all versions of the Red China story was constant, regardless of source or news agency: "Should 0.8. reconsider Red Chinese Recognition?" For the nuclear test ban treaty story, the last name of the source used for that version was substituted into the head- line: "'Test Ban a Boon to Man'-- .” 79 Differences between treatment versions within the stories were also minimal. Regarding treatment differences between high-credible vs. neutral-credible sources (Red China) and between neutral-credible vs. negative-credible sources (test ban), the only changes in the text were the substitution of one source's name for the other source’s name. Regarding treatment differences between news agencies within the stories, there was only one change made. For both the Pravda—Red China and Pravda-test ban stories, the words "the American" replaced the word "he" twice. Since a source quoted by either A.P. or the Oswego paper probably would be assumed to be an American unless otherwise identified, it was felt this should be equalized for the Pravda versions. Therefore the source was twice identified as an American in stories carried by Pravda. No other changes were made within the text of the stories. Credibility and Concept Scales As in the first experiment, four Semantic Differential scales represented each of the three credibility dimensions. But these 12 scales were not identical to the scales in the first experiment. The Qualification scales were identical. They were informed- uninformed, experienced-inexperienced, educated-uneducated and trained- untrained. These were among the best scales reported by Lemert (1963) for Qualification. They remained among the best scales for that factor after a factor analytic replication (Berlo and Lemert, 196u) using a Lansing adult sample which was quite similar to the present sample. Further, these scales seemed meaningful to pre-test respondents, in that a large vocabulary is not required to be able to recognize these words. Two of the four Safety scales were changed, however. figsgrunjust and fair-unfair replaced openminded-closedminded and objective-subjective. 80 It was felt simpler word pairs could be substituted more effectively. In addition, objective-subjective fared poorly in the replication factor analysis and openminded-closedminded was not one of the better Safety scales in a smaller Canadian replication. gaésfdangerous and honest- dishonest remained as Safety scales. Two of the Dynamism scales were also replaced by new scales. As Lemert (1963) reported, there is much greater difficulty obtaining adequate Dynamism scales than Safety or Qualification scales. With more data available from the replication on the performance of the Dynamism scales, it was decided to substitute emphatic-hesitant and forceful- forceless for extroverted-introverted and frank-reserved. Aggressive: meg: and Eli-m remained as Dynamism scales. Concept scales were identical to those used in the first experi- ment. There were five scales reported by Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum (1957) as representing the Evaluative dimension: iggtrun'ust, wigs: foolish, £222f232; fearfunfair and pleasant-unpleasant. However, it rapidly became evident as the questionnaires were coded that the last scale was tapping something other than "pure" attitudes toward the concepts involved in the experimental stories. Therefore it was decided-- before any analysis had been performed--to separate the pleasant- unpleasant scale from the other four evaluative scales and do separate analyses. Osgood (1963) remarks that concept-scale interaction is a frequent occurrence with the Semantic Differential, and that adjustments have to be made to correct these special interactions. In the present case, it was evident that reponses to this scale were not related to whether the re3pondents were favorable or unfavorable toward the concept. 81 Two scales were also included representing the Activity factor: .EEEEIElSE.and active-passive. The final concept scale represented the Potency factor. It was strongegsgfip Again, scoring for all scales was on a one to seven basis, one being the positive end of the concept or credibility scale. Shortened Dogmatism Scale Troldahl and Powell (196“) recommend a short-form Dogmatism Scale for field studies, plus a method for administering it in the in- terview situation. If the uO-item scale were self-administered, the authors report, it would take about 20 minutes of interview time. Since the interviews in the present study were lengthy, it was decided to shorten the Degmatism Scale if reliability could be maintained. Further, it was desirable to give the interviewer some control of the nature and speed of the Dogmatism Scale responses by having him read the items to the respondents. These changes, of course, depend on the empirical support Troldahl and Powell report. They analyzed data from two field studies, one in the Boston area (items read to respondents) and one in the Lansing area (items self-administered). Using the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula, the authors estimate reliability for the uo-item scale at .su, based on split-half reliability figures. Reliability of the 20-item scale recommended by the :uthors was estimated at .79. Correlation between the 20-item and uO-item scales was .su in the Lansing study, where the short form deve10ped 82 in Boston by item analysis was cross-validated independently. (See Appendix C for the 20-item DOgmatism Scale.) The authors used several criteria to select the 20 items they recommend. First, the items comprised a short form which could be used reliably whether administered by personal interview or by self-administration. Second, each of the items correlated with the total score at +.30 or more in each of the studies. Third, the items had to be easily comprehensible to the respondents, as indexed by the reports of the interviewers in the Boston StUdYO Summazy In effect, the experiment was carried to each reapondent in his home. There were three independent variables: 1) source credibility (positive vs. neutral for the Red China story and neutral vs. negative for the test ban story), 2) news agency credibility (A.P., Oswego Palladium-Times and Pravda) and 3) the relative openmindedness or closedmindedness of the reader, as operationalized by a medium cut on the overall distribution of Dogmatism Scale scores. A shortened Dogmatism Scale was used. Dependent variables were changes in credibility ratings and in attitudes toward story concepts. CHAPTER V THE SECOND EXPERIMENT: RESULTS Introduction A number of hypotheses were tested in the second experiment. They are: 1) Greatest status or credibility conferral occurs when a source is quoted by AP, followed by the Oswego Palladium-Times, then Pravda. This will be measured by changes in source credibility ratings. 2) Positive status or credibility conferral will be greater for closedminded. persons than openminded persons in the case of the first two news agencies and less for closedminded persons in the case of Pravda. 3) Roger Frank, the American businessman, will produce more attitude change in the direction of his assertion than will C. P. Ritchie, the neutral source; C.P. Ritchie will produce more than will James Hinton, the Socialist Party member, in the other news story replicatien. u) If there is a status conferral effect, AP should be associated with more attitude change than the Oswego paper; both should be followed by Pravda. 5) In terms of attitude change in the direction of the assertion, closedminded persons will be persuaded more than openminded persons, in each replication, For all combinations of sources and news agencies which involve Roger Prank, C.P. Ritchie, AP and Oswego (the positive- and neutral-credible sources and news agencies); Openminded persons will be persuaded more for all combinations involving James Hinton aggflgg Pravda (the negative-credible source and news agency). , Before we look at the principal results of the study, let 83 Bu us look at demographic and other data relevant to the experimental assumptions. This preliminary material is divided into two sections. The first is concerned with sample characteristics: DOgmatism Scale scores and demographic characteristics of the final sample, compared with those characteristics of the respondents excluded from the final sample because they failed criterion or because of other reasons. The second section of preliminary material is concerned with the experimental assumptions: initial ratings of sources, news agencies and concepts, distribution of demographic traits and other characteristics among treatment cells, and evidence about whether the purpose of the study was perceived. Sample_gharacteristics The final sample consists of 216 Lansing area residents. Another “6 Es failed the criterion test on the second trial and were excluded. In addition, in gs were discarded before the quota of 216 §9 had been obtained. These 1% reSpondents' questionnaires were discarded for a variety of reasons. For example, the fact that one respondent's vision was so poor that he could barely see the questionnaires was not discovered until the middle of the interview. Two reSpondents believed that Communists were conducting the interview. Another respondent passed the criterion test but confessed after the interview was completed that he thought he had "mixed up" the sources while filling out the credibility scales. Two more respondents were excluded because they appeared to have perceived the purpose of the study, at least in part. (See next section: Experi- mental Assumptions.) Do the 216 respondents in the sample differ from the 60 other respondents on any relevant characteristics? Distribution of the 60 85 excluded respondents does not differ from the sample on the following characteristics: sex, political affiliation, Dogmatism Scale total and exposure to--and discrimination among--new3papers. (Appendix D.) However, they do differ in educational distribution. As Table 5.1 in- dicates the 60 excluded reSpondents tended to cluster in the lower education categories, whereas the sample clustered in the middle categories. TABLE 5.1 Educational Achievement of Sample Compared with Excluded Subjects“ Years of Schggl_§ompleted Group 6-8 9-11 12. 13-15 16 or more Sample 17 u8 83 39 29 216 Excluded 2.; .19. $2. .5. .2. ...60 38 63 100 an 31 276 2 x =35.u3 134.001 5&6 of the 60 excluded'gs failéd'thegcriterion test; the otherfilfi were excluded for other reasons. See text. w .._.. The median educational achievement for the final sample was completion of the 12th grade. There were more female (55 per cent) than male reapondents. Most of the sample read either one (50 per cent) or two newspapers (39 per cent), generally the Lansing E3332 Journal daily and one of the two Detroit papers on Sunday. Most (83 per cent) could not think of any newspapers they would not care to read. In terms of political affiliation, 38 per cent of the final sample labeled themselves as "independent," 32 per cent said they were Republicans and 30 per cent called themselves Democrats. 86 The median Dogmatism Scale score, as in the first experiment, was slightly below the theoretical midpoint. In the case of this 20-item scale the theoretical midpoint is 80. Half the respondents had Dogmatism Scale totals of 76 or less. The range for the sample was from an to 120. Most of the scores clustered from 60 to 90. Experimental Assumptions Eggggraphic Characteristics in Treatment Cells Since respondents were assigned randomly to treatment conditions, it was hoped there would be no differences between cells in the dis- tribution of demographic characteristics. If some social characteristic were related to reactions to the experimental variables, the design would be confounded if the social characteristic were not distributed relatively evenly throughout the 12 treatment cells. There are no significant differences in the distribution among cells of sex, political affiliation, exposure to newspapers and dis- crimination among newspapers. (See Appendix D.) However, a Chi-square test of the distribution of educational achievement is significant. Table 5.2 presents this result. Further analysis of this outcome, however, reveals that a relationship between Dogmatism Scale score and educational achievement accounts for most of the disparity, since dogmatism is treated as one of the independent variables. Table 5.3 indicates the relationship. Educational achievement is not related either to how gs were assigned to news agency conditions or source credibility conditions. When the 12 cells are split into the relatively TABLE 5.2 Distribution of Educational Achievement Among Treatment Cells Years of School Completed Cell 6-11 _l_2- 13-16 Prank-AP, Ritchie-Prvda, 3 u 11 18 10" dogs Prank-Oswgo, thh.-AP, 2 9 7 18 10" dogs Prank-Prvda, thh.-Oswgo, l 10 7 18 low dog. Prank-AP, Ritchie-Prvda, 10 u u 18 high dogs Prank-Oswgo, thh.-AP, 8 7 3 18 high dog. Prank-Prvda, thh.-Oswgo, 9 6 3 18 high dog. x2su1.32 thhie-AP, Hinton-Oswgo, u u 10 18 low dog. p ( .01 thhie-Oswgo, Hinton-Prvda, u 8 6 18 low dog. Ptchie-Prvda, Hnton-AP, u 7 7 18 1°" dose thhie-AP, Hnton-Oswgo, 7 8 3 18 low dog. thhieoOswgo, Hnton-Prvda, a ll 3 18 high dog. thhie-Prvda, Hnton-AP 9 5 u 18 high dog. ‘6‘5’ 763’ '6? 21? TABLE 5.3 Relation Between Relative Openmindedness and Closedmindedness and Educational Achievement Years of School Completed_ Group 6-11 High Dog. “7 Low Dog. 3!; 68 12 “1 M2 83 13-16 20 2.9. 68 X2- au.us 108 108 216 p<.001 as openminded and closedminded halves and Chi-square tests performed separately (Table 5.B), educational distributions do not differ significantly. TABLE 5.8 Distribution of Educational Achievement Among Treatment Cells, Considered Separately for Openminded and Closedminded Groups A. Openminded Groups Years of Schqol Completed 6-11 13 13-16+ 2 3 u 11 18 X = 10.61 (no Yates 2 9 7 18 correction) l 10 7 18 NS u u 10 18 u 8 6 18 ..‘i ..Z ..l .33. 18 #2 “8 108 B. Closedminded Groups 6-11 .13 131-164» 2 10 u u 18 X = 8.“? (no Yates 8 7 3 18 correction) 9 6 3 18 NS 7 8 3 18 u 11 3 18 .3... .3. .3. .12 47 41 20 108 Cells may be identified by matching frequencies with those in Table 5e2e 89 Therefore, while education is not distributed evenly among the treatment cells, it is distributed evenly among cells for those treat- ments which could be manipulated by the experimenter. The Dogmatism Scale score presumably results from whatever tendencies the respondent brings into the test situation. None of the other demographic characteristics was confounded with the design. Since source and news agency credibility are the two independent variables manipulated by the experimenter, we should also look at the before-test means to see if the manipulations were successful. The next section is concerned with this. Checks on Credipiligy Hanipglations Sources-~In one of the replications, Roger Prank (American businessman), a high-credible source, is pitted against C.P. Ritchie, a neutral source, on the topic of recognition of Red China. Table 5.5 represents initial credibility means for the experimental sources. All these means are for only the E? who were to hear from the specific source rated. It is clear from the table that, for the 108 §9 who were to receive the Roger Prank message, Prank had generally high credibility. In contrast, Ritchie was rated almost exactly at the theoretical mid- point (16.0) by the 108 gs who were to hear from him on Red China. In the other replication, Ritchie is pitted against James Hinton (0.8. People's Socialist Party member), a negative-credible source, on the topic of the nuclear test ban treaty. Again, Ritchie's means were almost exactly at neutrality, though the variances were slightly larger. Hinton was rated more Dangerous than Ritchie but also more Qualified and ‘Dynamic. 90 TABLE 5.5 Initial Source Credibility Ratings by Respondents Who Were to Receive Sources Rated Safes! Qualif. Bypam. Source Mean* Stand. dv.* Mean* St. Dv.* Mean* St. Dv.* Roger Prank, 9.083 3.898 7.333 3.898 9.657 3.953 Red China C.P. Ritchie, 15.880 .637 15.698 1.671 15.880 1.002 Red China C.P. Ritchie, 15.917 1.613 15.731 2.116 15.880 1.100 test ban James Hinton, 17.198 5.613 11.278 5.2u0 10.565 n.592 test ban :NEESer of cases for each source is 1087' Means range from our (positive end) to 28 (negative end). Theoretical neutral point is 16.0 for each dimension. TABLE 5.6 Initial Credibility Ratings of News Agencies by Respondents Who Were to Receive Agencies Rated Safety Qualif. szam. Agency-story, Hean* Stand. dv.* Hean* St. Dv.* Mean* St. Dv.* AP-China 8.500 3.958 7.333 9.108 9.u17 “.571 AP-test ban 8.389 9.079 6.861 3.955 8.750 “.229 Oswgo-China 19.972 2.737 19.897 3.317 15.397 2.676 Oswgo-ban 19.819 2.805 13.681 2.857 15.597 1.866 Pravda-China 22.903 9.276 12.083 6.0uu 8.889 u.686 Pravda-ban 21.931 5.529 11.777 6.u46 8.236 “.228 INufiser of cases for each—news agency is 72.'_Heans range from four (positive and) to 28 (negative end). 16.0 for each dimension. A Theoretical neutral point is 91 This result is consistent with pro-testing results, where con- sistently sources with "negative" labels were rated as Dangerous but Qualified and Dynamic. This is also consistent with Rarick (1963). He found that ratings of sources run from positive to negative only on an "affective" dimension (probably the analogue of Safety). Ratings on a "cOgnitive" dimension ran only from positive to neutral. while the Hinton manipulation was less successful than the Frank and Ritchie ones, it should be interesting to see how these differences in sign between dimensions for negative sources will relate to the dependent variables. It is quite possible, for example, that the Qualification and Dynamism reactions are meaningful only within the context of the Safety reactions. (Also see News Agency results below.) In general, there were no surprises. Source credibility manipu- lations produced the eXpected before-test ratings, though the initial reactions to Hinton were less stable than to the other sources. Obtained variances, on all three dimensions, were larger for Hinton than the other sources. News Agencies--Three news agencies-~Associated Press, the Oswego Palladium-Times and Pravda--were varied in each replication. Pro-testing had indicated the credibility means would form apattern similar to that observed for the sources. The "negative" news agency would be Dangerous but slighly Qualified and Dynamic. The neutral news agency would be close to neutrality, and the positive-credible news agency would be Safe and pggngualified than Pravda but about as Dynamic. Thus, like the sources, the three news agencies form a perfect rankoorder (positive, neutral, negative) only on the Safety dimension. Did the reSpondents who were to receive the news agency rate its credibility 92 as expected on the before-test? Table 5.6 indicates they did. AP was generally Safe, Qualified and Dynamic. Oswego was generally about neutral on all dimensions, though slightly positive. Pravda was very Dangerous but also slightly Qualified and quite Dynamic. This is similar to the way §P rated Hinton on the three credibility dimensions. In general, then, credibility means indicate source and news agency manipulations were successful for treatment groups. Since the principle of congruity would predict that initial attitude toward the concept will affect the direction of change in attitudes toward the source, it is important to see if the two experimental concepts were evaluated as expected on the before-test. The next section is concerned with this.' Initial Attitudes Toward Concepts Pro-testing indicated most respondents would be against diplomatic recognition of Red China, and that the nuclear test ban treaty would be favorably regarded. Operating on these assumptions, the experimenter paired the Red China concept with a positive and a neutral source and the test ban concept with a negative and a neutral source in order to avoid a "ceiling effect" upon changes in source credibility ratings. The before-test attitude measures support the assumption that recognition of Red China would be a "negative" concept and the test ban treaty a "positive" concept. Mean evaluative dimension rating of recognition of Red China was slightly more than 19 (16 is neutral, 28 the negative end). The standard deviation of these mean ratings (all respondents) was 6.6. Also as expected the mean rating for the test ban treaty was 10.“, decidedly on the positive side. Standard deviation was 6.0. 93 Perceived Purpose of the Study An open-ended item at the end of the questionnaire (Appendix C) was designed to see if the questions respondents asked about the experi- ment indicated reSpondents had some inkling of the purpose of the study. Interviewers reported high ego-involvement in the interview. Several reSpondents asked if the study were intended to see if "I had lied" (by comparing before-test and after-test responses). While trying not to "lie" would tend to work against the hypotheses, the questionnaires of these reSpondents were retained. It appeared these respondents were reacting to questionnaire similarity, not to the eXperimental treatment. Only two respondents, of the 1“ excluded from the final sample, were excluded because they seemed close to the purpose of the study. One of the excluded respondents was an elderly woman who said, in response to the Open-ended question, that she "knew" she should reevaluate the sources and concepts after reading the stories but that she would not do so because the Bible taught her to "judge not, lest ye be judged." The second reSpondent to be excluded was a college-educated male who asked, after the interview was completed, whether the sources were fictitious. Most of the respondents, when they encountered "C. P. Ritchie" on the before-test, explicitly stated they were sure they had seen the name before but didn't remember anything about him. After they had read the stories, many were even more certain he existed and that_thgy had read similar stories quoting him in other papers. While the extent of this believability might even have diminished the differential effects of the news agency variable on perceived source credibility (e.g., if reapondents read about Ritchie in the Pravda version), these respondents were retained. None of the other respondents 9“ were close to the purpose of the study, according to an analysis of the interviewer's reports. A check upon some of the eXperimental assumptions, then, indicates that they were supported, on the whole. The only demographic variable confounded with the design was education, and this was found to be due to a relationship to the Dogmatism score. Initial credibility ratings of sources and news agencies indicate that reSpondents--as groups-- perceived them as intended. The concept ratings supported the selection of them as a positive and a negative concept. Next we shall consider the results of the experiment. Tests of Hypothese§_ There are two major dependent variables in this experiment: source credibility rating changes and changes in attitudes toward the concepts. The most direct measure of status conferral should be changes in perceived credibility of sources quoted in the news stories. Therefore we shall look first at this portion of the results. Relative Status Conferral Principal hypotheses for this portion of the study were that: 1) there would be a direct relation between the credibility of the news agency providing coverage and the amount of positive status or credibility conferred upon the source, and 2) there would be an interaction between relative Openmindedness or closedmindedness and the nature of the news 95 agency. Half the respondents read a news story quoting Roger Prank, American businessman, on the concept of diplomatic recognition of Red China. The other half read the same news story, but C.P. Ritchie was the source. For the nuclear test ban story, the respondents who had read Roger Frank on China received C.P. Ritchie on the test ban; if respondents read C.P. Ritchie on China, they read James Hinton, the People's Socialist Party member, on the test ban. Thus there were four sets of status conferral analyses, each set corresponding to each of the four sources and the dependent variables being change scores on each of the three credibility dimensions. Independent variables for this portion of the analysis are the nature of the agency providing the coverage (AP, Oswego, Pravda) and the relative openmindedness or closedmindedness of the readers. Tables 5.7-5.10 present analysis of variance results for each of the four sources in the experiment. Bach table summarizes three tests of changes in credibility for one source, corresponding to the three . credibility dimensions. News Agency_$tatus Conferral-~The hypothesis was that there would be a direct relation between the credibility of the news agency providing the coverage and the amount of credibility conferred upon the source. This was supported by mean differences significant at the .05 level in three of 12 tests. In addition, four other large differences between obtained means were in the predicted direction and would have occurred between .20 and 1.05 of the time by chance. As in the first experiment, error variance was very large. It is notable that, as in 93 the first experiment, the news agency status conferral differences which were significant at the .05 level occurred only for Safety (1) and Dynamism (2). Also, none of the other four differences with p-values between .20 and .06 (the other three Safety tests and one of the other two Dynamism tests) occurred with the Qualification dimension. If the .05 level is regarded as the only acceptable cutting point for talking about results, it is also important to note that the status conferral differences occurred only for the initially-neutral source, C.P. Ritchie (twice for the test ban story, once for the Red China story). Credibility change differences for the other two sources-- whose initial credibility ratings were more intenseo-did not quite reach the .05 level. Significant treatment differences occurred for Ritchie despite the fact that virtually 311 E? changed their credibility ratings of him enormously and in a positive direction. For both stories the overall mean credibility increase for Ritchie exceeded 9 of a possible maximum of slightly under 12 on the Safety and Qualifi- cation dimensions, and nearly as much on the Dynamism dimension. And the differences between news agency treatment means were in general smaller for Ritchie than for either Prank or Hinton. For example, a mean spread of 1.59 on the Safety dimension is significant for Ritchie while spreads of 2.78 and 2.32 for Hinton and Frank lie between the .10 and .05 probability levels. There is no paradox, however. The error terms for Frank and Hinton were generally about twice as large as the corresponding terms for Ritchie. This outcome was due in large part to the fact virtually every respondent saw Ritchie as more credible after he read the story, regardless of treatment condition. Therefore TABLE 5.7 Mean Credibility Increase for C.P. Ritchie, Red China Story A. The Safety_Dimension Source df SS News Agenpy Dogmtm.? 710.09 Row Media 2 2“.667 Rel. Dog. Score ‘AE’ Oswego Pravda Means MxD 2 .519 """"'“ """' w/n 102 “69.722 High (N=S“) 10.22 9.78 8.9“ 9.65 157 Low (N=5“) 10.17 9.61 9.11 9.63 us 8 """ ""' ""' {069 7302 Col. Means 10.19 9.69 9.03 12.333 2.678.ld>p>.05 .259 .056 “.605 B. The Qualification Dimension Source df SS News Agency Dogmtm. '1- 1757370 Row Media 2 16.722 Rel. Dog. Score 5:, Oswego Pravda Means MxD 2 6.352 w/n 102 688.222 High (N=5“) 9.9“ 10.39 9.06 9.80 MS P Low (N=5“) 9.56 9.00 8.72 9.09 13.370 17982 <.20 8.361 1.239 Col. Means 9.75 9.69 8.89 3.176 .“71 6.7“? C. The Dynamism Dimension Source df SS News Agency Dogmtm. 1— 57787 Row Media 2 86.056 Rel. Dog. Score A§_ Oswe o Pravda Means MxD 2 16.2“1 ““L “""‘ """w/n 102 1002.833 High (N=5“) 7.56 8.11 5.61 7.09 MS P Low (N=5“) 7.72 6.56 5.61 6.63 5.787 7389 “"' ""' ""‘ “3.028 “.376 (.025 Col. Means 7.6“ 7.33 5.61 8.120 .826 9.832 98 TABLE 5.8 Mean Credibility Increase for C.P. Ritchie, Nuclear Test Ban Story A. The Safety Dimension News Agensy Dog. Group A: Oswego we. High (N=5“) 10.78 10.39 9.““ Low (N=S“) M 3.9.312. _9_:_5_9_ Col. Means 11.06 10.28 9.“7 B. The Qualification Dimension News Agengz Dog . Group _A_P_ Oswego Pravda High (N-S“) 10.99 9.9u 9.56 Low ( N= 5 “ ) M m M Col. Means 10.67 9.69 9.78 C. The Dynamism Dimension News Agency Dog. Group A: Oswego Pravda High (N=5“) 9.22 8.11 6.72 Low (N=S“) .8_.__t_3_9. 1,2; §_.__1_1_ Col. Means 9.06 7.78 6.“2 Source Dogmtm Row Media Means MxD W/n 10.20 10.33 MS .fiu 22.565 1.398 6.3“2 Source Dogmtm Row Media Means MxD 10.15 9.93 as 1.150 10.usu 2.8“3 9.“81 Source lfiifififii‘ Row Media Means MxD W/n 8.02 7.“8 MS 7.787 62.69“ .287 10.632 df ss '1' "Thsu 2 u5.130 2 2.800 102 6“6.833 r “2072 3.558 (.05 .220 df ss '37 $7120 2 20.907 2 5.685 102 967.056 8 " .118 1.103 .300 df 95 "i’ 77787 2 125.389 2 .s7u 102 108“.50 r “.732 5.897 .027 (.005 99 TABLE 5.9 Mean Credibility Change* for Roger Prank, Red China Story A. The Safety Dimension News Agency Dog . Group LP. Oswe go Pravda High (N=5“) -l.11 1.72 2.61 Low ( N: 5 “) .1519. .1329. 2:23 Col. Means .1“ 1.61 2.uu B. The Qualification Dimension News Agency Dog. Group A:_ Oswego Pravda High (N=5“) -l.22 .9“ 1.28 Low (11:59) 413 _1_._'{_8_ .118}. Col. Means -.22 1.36 1.““ C. The Dynamism Dimension News Agency Dog. Group A}: Oswego Pravda High (N=5“) —1.33 .22 -.56 Low (13:59) 233 :93 __._3_g Col. Means -l.33 .11 -.08 Row Means * 1.07 1.72 Row Means * 1.39 Row Means -.56 Source fiogmtm Media MxD W/n MS 11.338 “9.065 23.176 18.981 Source BSEETR‘ Media MxD W/n ms 30.685’ 31.750 6.583 21.825 Source m Dogmtm Media MxD W/n us 1.365 22.120 3.usu 13.822 df 55 "I‘ 11.353 2 98.130 2 “6.352 102 1936.056 5 7598 2.585 (.10 1.221 df ss_ ‘1’ 30.683 2 63.500 2 13.167 102 2226.167 8 17378 1.uss .302 df 35 "f 1.363 2 nu.2u1 2 6.907 102 1“09.833 P 7113 1.600 .250 *A minus sign means the change‘is toward increased credibility. 100 TABLE 5.10 Mean Credibility Change* for James Hinton, Test Ban Story A. The Safety Dimension Source if. is News égepgyg Dogmtm 1 1.815 Row Media 2 l“3.630 Dog. Group 5:. Oswego Pravda Means MxD 2 “2.7“1 H/n 102 2“97.““5 High (N=5“) -u.11 -1.67 -.28 -2.02 Low (N=5“) -2.67 -3.22 -.9“ -2.28 MS P ' ' £7815 '707u C01. Means -3.39 -2.uu -.61 71.815 2.933.1o)p>.05 21.370 .873 2“.“85 B. The Qualification Dimension Source df SS News Agencz Bogmtm ‘1 “573.70 Row Media 2 98.130 Dog. Group ‘23_ Oswego Pravda Means} MxD 2 ““.685 W/n 102 3131.889 High (N=5“) -1.83 1.67 .33 .06 Low (N=S“) -1.33 -.28 -2.11 -1.2u MS 6 '77'7' ""‘ "“" “57570 17“78 Col. Means -1.58 .69 - .89 “9.065 1.598 22.3“3 .728 30.705 C. The_Qynamism Dimension Source df SS News Agency Dogmtm '-1 27676 Row Media 2 71.685 Dog. Group ‘fig‘ Oswego Pravda Means MxD 2 116.352 w/n 102 22“2.500 High (stu) -2.06 .9“ 2.39 .“3 Low (N=5“) .““ -.06 -.06 .11 MS P """ ""' ""' 27576 '7122 Col. Means -.81 .““ 1.17 35.8“3 1.636 .20 58.176 2.6“6 .10>p).05 21.985 *A minus sign means the Range—{s toward increased credibility. 101 the range of error variance was restricted, while for the other two sources it was not. Frank in general lost credibility except for the Dynamism dimension and Hinton gained except for Dynamism, but the overall changes were slight for both of these sources. In general, the order of source credibility change means was as predicted. The greatest source credibility increase occurred for Associated Press, followed by Oswego and then Pravda. If credibility decreases were involved, the smallest loss was for AP, followed by Oswego and Pravda. This relation between credibility change means and news agency treatment condition was true in every case where the mean differences would be significant at p<<§20 or better. ngpatism and Status Conferral--No significant Dogmatism main effects were observed, and none were predicted. Unlike the first eXperi- ment, where both news agencies were perceived positively, the second experiment involved Pravda, which was rated as very Dangerous by the reSpondents. Therefore, unlike the first experiment, interactions between Dogmatism and news agency were predicted. The only interaction which produced an F ratio exceeding 2.0 was for the Hinton analysis, Dynamism dimension. Order of cell means was as predicted in this case. Probability of this is< .10. Attitude Chapge If source credibility is differentially enhanced during mass communication by the nature of the news agency, and if credibility is related to attitude change, then we should observe a number of things related to attitude change. We should observe a news agency main effect, 102 where the greatest attitude change is when sources quoted by AP make assertions and the least when quoted by Pravda. We should also observe an initial source credibility main effect, if the credibility manipulations were successful. Since Rokeach's theory suggests relatively closedminded persons are peculiarly unable to separate evaluations of source and message, we should observe interactions between the Dogmatism, source and news agency (a secondary source) variables. Attitude change toward two concepts--recognition of Red China and the test ban treaty-~was measured. Overall, the Red China story produced more attitude change ( a t of more than “.0, p.<.001) than the test ban story. Each story produced significant attitude change in the direction of the assertion, however. But there were no significant treatment differences for the Red China story (Table 5.11). For the test ban story, however, there were three large main effects. There was more attitude change ((EOS) when C. P. Ritchie was the source than when James Hinton was the source. (Table 5.12.) Contrary to expectations, closedminded reapondents tended (p about .06) to be more persuasible than Openminded reapondents. In fact, the obtained cell means are even in the opposite direction of the interaction predictions. None of the interactions are significant, however. There was also a news agency main effect (<<.05), but the order of change means was not as predicted. This was another surprise. The order of means was AP, Pravda and Oswego, and the obtained mean difference between Pravda and Oswego was slightly larger than that between AP and Pravda. In the Red China story the obtained news agency means were in the same order. 103 TABLE 5.11 Mean Attitude Change* Toward Recognition of Red China Main Effect Means Roger Prank -2.96 CePe ntChie -2eu6 High Dog. -2.62 La! Dogs “’2e81 AP ’2e98 Oswego -2,uu Pravda —2.71 Source x Dgg; Interaction Prank-high Dog. -2.7“ Prank-low Dog. -3.l9 Ritchie-high Dog. -2.5O Ritchie-low Dog. -2.“3 (N=108) (N=108) (N=72) (N=5“) Source x News Agpncy Interaction Prank-AP -3e 50 Prank-Oswego -2.58 Prank-Pravda -2.81 Ritchie-AP -2.“7 Ritchie-Oswego -2.31 Ritchie-Pravda -2.61 Dog. x News Agency_Interaction high Dog.-AP -2.33 high Dog.-Oswego -2.67 high Dog.-Pravda -2.86 low Dog.-AP -3.6“ 10w 885: ‘ 323° a 33:58 Cells (SxDxM interaction) Prnk-high Dog.-AP -2.83 -Oswgo -3.33 oPravda -2.06 Prnk-low Dog.-AP -“.17 -0swgo -l.83 -Pravda -3.56 Ritchie-high Dog.-AP -1.83 -Oswgo -2. 00 Pravda c3. 67 Ritchie-lo Dog.-AP -3.11 —Oswgo -2. 61 -Pravda -l.56 c ange nega n favor o (N=36) (N236) (N=18) n t e recogn zing Red China. Source if SS Mg Source 1 13.000 13.000 Dog. 1.852 1.852 Media 10.565 5.282 SxD 3.630 3.630 SxM 7.583 3.792 SxM 3“.065 17.032 SxDxM 75.120 37.560 w/n 20“ 6675.889 32.725 re .“13 .057 .161 .111 .116 .520 1.1“8 root on o t e asser on, w c was TABLE 5.12 Mean Attitude Change* Toward the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Main Effect Means C.P. Ritchie James Hinton High Doge Low Dog. AP Oswego Pravda -1065 - .30 -1.59 - .35 -2.00 + .07 - .99 Source x Dogi_Interaction Ritchie-High Dog. ‘LOW Dog e Hinton-High Dog. ’ LOW 008 e -2.“6 - .83 - .72 t .13 (N=108) (N=108) (N=72) (N=5“) Spurce x News Aggncy_lnteraction Ritchie-AP -Oswego —Pravda Hinton-AP -Oswego -Pravda Dog. x News Agency_lnteraction High Dog.-AP ~05wego -Pravda Low Dog.-AP -Oswego oPravda -2.31 + .56 - .50 -1.69 + .61 + .19 -2.89 - .“2 -1.“7 -l.ll + .56 - .50 Cells (SxDxM Interaction) Ritchie-High Dog.-AP -Oswe§o Prav a Ritchie:Low Dog.-AP -Oswego -Pravda Hinton-High Dog.-AP -Oswe§o oPrav a Hinton-Low Dog.-AP -Oswe o -Prav a ’1022 + .22 -1. 50 -2.39 + .33 " e11 -1900 + .89 + .50 (N=36) (N=36) (N=18) £5. .1 98.685 u.u75 (.05 83.130 3.770 .10>p).05 77.097 3.“96 (:05 8.167 .370 1“.755 .699 3.89“ .177 .01“ .001 S ource if §_S_ Source 1 98.685 Dog. 1 83.130 Media 2 15“.19“ SxD 1 8.167 SxM 2 29.509 DxM 2 7.787 SxDxM 2 .028 N/n 20“ ““98.333 22.051 Ieglpegaiéive changes are‘Infithe direction of the assertiBn, whiEh favored a PaYe CHAPTER VI SUMMARY, DISCUSSION AND CONSLUSIONS General Summagy Status conferral was investigated by varying the relative credibility of news agencies covering sources and seeing if this relative credibility were related to how the sources were perceived. All sources were covered by news agencies. The difficulty of obtaining an adequate control group to study the absolute effect of coverage necessitated the decision to vary news agency credibility. This probably worked against the status conferral hypothesis, since there is evidence in this study (Appendix B and later in this chapter) and elsewhere (Nixon, 195“) that almost all American news agencies are perceived as at least slightly credible. Two experiments were conducted. The first, using college students, attempted to study relative status conferral in an antispeptic environment using initially neutral sources who did not make assertions. The second, using a sample of Lansing residents, involved sources who differed in initial credibility making assertions about concepts and also involved a generally negative-credible news agency, Pravda. Relative Status Conferral In the first experiment, one source was rated Safer and more Dynamic when quoted by UPI than when quoted by the Petaluma Weekly Argus-Courier. These differences were significant at the .05 level 105 106 or better. A tendency for the source, C.P. Ritchie, to be rated more Qualified when quoted by UPI reached the .20 significance level. The other source was Henry Kendall. Kendall means, though in the direction of the hypothesis for Safety and Qualification, did not differ significantly. In the second experiment, credibility change differences significant at the .05 level were observed for C.P. Ritchie (Dynamism, Red China; Safety and Dynamism, test ban), but not for the initially positive and negative-credible sources. However, obtained means for all sources and all credibility dimensions with almost no exceptions ranked in the order predicted for the three news agencies. And Safety differences for Ritchie (Red China), Hinton and Frank reached the .10) p) .05 level. Since pre-testing had indicated that, for the first experiment, both news agencies would be seen as relatively credible, it was pre- dicted that closedminded readers would view sources as more credible than openminded readers. This main effect prediction was not supported in the first experiment. Though the cell means were uniformly in the direction of the prediction for the C.P. Ritchie story, the differences were not significant. For the second experiment it was expected closedminded Es would be influenced more than openminded respondents by the nature of the news agency. This meant that there would be an interaction, in source- credibility change, between Dogmatism and news agency. Except for a single interaction (Hinton, Dynamism, .10) p)».0$) there was little evidence in the results for such an interaction. 107 Attitudg_ghange In the first experiment, no attitude change effects were predicted because the stories were written as "two-sided" messages. However, for the Ritchie-legislative reapportionment story, the few respondents present at both test sessions who did perceive an assertion tended (p<:.20) to be persuaded more when it was a UPI story than when it was a Petaluma story. The second experiment, unlike the first, was explicitly designed to test the effects of news agency coverage upon reactions to propaganda assertions. Both stories produced significant attitude change in the direction of the assertion, but the Red China story produced significantly. more than the test ban story. However, it was the test ban story for which treatment differences were observed. There was a significant relation between the news agency carrying the story and the amount of attitude change. There was a surprise, however. The rank-order of attitude change was AP, Pravda and Oswego, instead of AP, Oswego and Pravda. Though there were no significant differences among any treatments for the Red China story, it is noteworthy that the same rank-order obtained for the news agencies here, also. Initial source credibility also was related to attitude change for the test ban story. The "neutral" source (Ritchie) produced more attitude change in the direction of the assertion than the "negative" source (Hinton). Closedminded respondents tended (p = .06) to change toward favor- ing the treaty more than Openminded persons, regardless of treatment combination. There was no evidence for an interaction of any kind. 108 Discugsion The results suggest a number of theoretical implications and possibilities for further studies. While it is not entirely possible to separate discussion of the results into discrete categories, we shall take up the discussion in three major sections: 1) status conferral and source credibility, 2) status conferral and attitude change and 3) status conferral and Rokeach's personality theory. Status Conferral and Source Credibility_ How should we evaluate the relative status conferral differences? Most of them did not reach the usual acceptable significance level (‘<,05). TwO did, of six in the first experiment; three of twelve did in the second experiment. Couldn't all these differences be happen- stance? There is no single answer to this question. First, the two studies reported here are actually not direct in- vestigations of status conferral. They are indirect ones. The direct way to study status conferral would be to look at the absolute effect of coverage by the press. To do this it would be necessary to have a control group which got the same message from the source as the experi- mental group, but could not (or did not) attribute what they heard or read to coverage by any news agency. Thus the message cues affecting perceived source credibility would be constant but the implicit message would be present only for the experimental group. The difference, then, between experimental and control groups would be a measure of the effect of being quoted or covered by the press. This demonstration--it it were possible--would be a necessary demonstration of status conferral. That is, it would be necessary for confirmation of status conferral as a 109 phenomenon that such an experiment, if it were dong, provide support for status conferral. Unfortunately, it appeared extremely difficult to achieve such a control group while at the same time holding the message constant. Therefore status conferral had to be investigated indirectly by having the source quoted by the press in all treatments, varying the nature of the press agency providing the coverage. The message is constant in this situation--at least, the explicit message. To demon- strate status conferral differences between news agencies was, there- fore, a sufficient_demonstration of status conferral,¥but not a necessary_one. (Suppose being quoted by 222 news agency enhanced source credibility. This would erase differential effects but not an absolute one.) Therefore in part we are talking about the presence of a very subtle effect on the basis of comparing differences between subtle effects. The first kind of answer, then, to the question is that it is not surprising that only some of the differences were significant. A second kind of answer is to point to the consistency of the differences-~the significant ones and the nearly significant ones--in the amount of Safety and Dynamism conferred by the five news agencies in the two experiments. Six analyses of source credibility differences were performed. Every Safety mean difference was in the direction of the predictions of relative status conferral; two of the differences were significant at the .05 level, and three at the .10 level. Four of the six Dynamism mean differences were in the predicted order; three of these four differences were significant at the .05 level and one at the .10 110 level. For the other two Qynamism analyses there were Very slight departures from the predicted orders of means. When compounded for two independent studies, this orderlinese--and the significance figures attached to the differences-~argues strongly for status conferral. Status conferral theory itself would lead us to eXpect that the differences which did emerge did so desEite certain factors. This is the third kind of answer. It is not just that the effect is subtle and we are looking at it indirectly. Several other factors would inhibit the emergence of differences, according to status conferral theory. 1) We have evidence that even the "neutral" news agencies, in both experiments, were perceived positively. This would tend to diminish differences between neutral and "positive" credible news agencies. In a pre-test the Petaluma paper was rated on the positive side on all three credibility dimensions (Appendix 8). further, all the American newspapers Nixon (195“) studied appeared to have positive credibility in the eyes of their readers. In addition, the Oswego paper also was on the positive side of neutrality on all three dimensions (Table 5.6) in the second experiment. Finally, data from the second experiment indicates "American Newspapers in General" were seen by the sample as very Safe, Qualified and Dynamic. Overall means were 9.2 (Safety), 7.3 (Qualification) and 9.0 (Dynamism). 2) If part of status conferral is due to the fact the coverage is printed, not merely written (Doob, 19us; Fuchs, 196u), the story format in the first experiment would work against the effect. 3) To the extent there was departure from initially neutral source credibility, 03good's theory of meaning development (1953) would lead us to expect relatively less change in credibility. This would work against the effect in the second experiment. u) For the same theoretical reason, lll resistance to credibility-change would be encountered to the extent interfering reSponses were aroused by propaganda assertions in the second experiment. A fourth answer is that the process we are concerned with does not usually happen all at once. Usually in an actual situation, status is gradually enhanced by continuing press attention. Rephrased in Osgood's learning theory, this means that the experiments were pretty well limited to "one trial" learning. While it may be true that the learning curve flattens after early trials, how many trials are early trials? This varies in the literature (of. 03good, 1953). So status conferral differences appeared despite a limited number of connections between sources and news agencies. A final kind of answer is suggested by the tendency toward the one- paper city and the reSponses made in the second experiment. If reSpondents are not offered a field of newSpapers from which to choose, it is likely that they will cease to habitually attend to the characteristics of specific newspapers. Differential (but not necessarily absolute) status conferral would be minimized to the extent readers were not in the habit of attending to the nature of the media agency providing them with the story. Lansing has only one daily newspaper. In view of all these points, the fact that differences were con- sistently observed, then, would seem to be impressive evidence for the notion of status conferral. These differences were observed in two studies: different stories, different reSpondents, some different credibility scales, different experimental procedures, and different news agencies. ‘ What about the only (at the .05 level) source for whom differential status conferral was observed in the two studies? It was the same 112 name--C.P. Ritchie. Can we generalize only to a population of C.P. Ritchies? Ho. C.P. Ritchie served, in effect, as a nonsense syllable to which we conditioned meanings. It should be recalled that, though differences did not reach the .05 level for any other sources, the obtained differences (Kendall, Hinton, frank) were rather con- sistently in the direction of the hypotheses. The error variance was in every case quite large. What can we tell about the process and effects of conferral from the results of the two studies? How does status conferral relate to attitude change and source credibility? First, it is important to realize that in both studies there were very large increases in credibility, especially for the initially- neutral sources. While the t-tests against the hypothesis that no change occurred were generally highly significant when performed on data in the first experiment, it is probable that part of this change can be attributed to the message. But the fact that credibility- increase was general and large for 332 treatment conditions is an im- portant one. It is important because it places the observed differences within a context of enormous change, and it is important because it opens the possibility (to be discussed below) that 22; coverage confers status, regardless of the agency providing the coverage. Of the three Berlo-Lemert credibility dimensions, status con- ferral differences were observed primarily on the Safety and Dynamism dimensions. But the gross increases in Qualification were fully com- parable to the Safety and Dynamism dimensions in both studies. What does this mean? It may be that if the activity covered is legitimized 113 by coverage, the act of talking on a tepic must mean--to all respondents, regardless of news agency treatment-~that the source is qualified. There are other possible interpretations. One is that the message itself affords the cues relevant to Qualification estimates, and it is the predictable inclination of researchers to write qualified-sounding statements to be attributed to sources. Certainly this is a question worthy of further research. Is it the message, or is it legitimation? If the topic is a "profound" one, does this increase Qualification more than if it is not viewed as a profound one? If differential status conferral should turn out to be reflected only on the Safety and Dynamism ciimensions, why should this be? This is distinct from the Qualification mechanism, because now we are concerned with the characteristics of Safety and Dynamism. If we managed a study in which absolute (not relative) status conferral were tested adequately, would Safety and Dynamism be joined by Qualification? Or would Qualification-change occur, but not Safety and Dynamism? Obviously the present studies cannot answer this question. They can only raise it for future research. Since Pravda was Dangerous but relatively Qualified and Dynamic, what mechanism produced the smaller credibility increases on Safety and Dynamism for sources quoted by Pravda? In other words, if conferred source credibility transferred directly from news agency credibility, the Pravda ratings would lead us to expect results other than we observed, especially for Dynamism. The present studies do not answer this either. One possibility is that Safety meanings ggneralize to stimuli (sources) associated with news agencies, generalizing to dimensions other than Safety as well as to Safety. An alternative possibility is that if a news agency is either Safe or Dangerous, it ll“ will by necessity be perceived as Dynamic. It will be recalled that the largest news agency differences, initially, were on the Safety dimension. The news agencies did not differ nearly as much on the other two dimensions. This suggests that, if the news agency credibility ratings will predict differences in credibility conferred upon sources, the Safety dimension (for news agencies) accounts for most of the observed differences (on Safety and Dynamism, at least) for sources. The question remains, however, if this result is replicable, whether it be due to generalization or to a fixed relation between the credibility dimensions. Another puzzle is involved in the credibility-change data for sources quoted by Pravda. Does Pravda confer positive status, differing ' from the other news agencies only in the amount of status conferred? Data are puzzling. While the source credibility increase (or alternatively, lack of loss) is smaller for Pravda than the other news'agencies, it is still relatively positive. This is eSpecially true for C. P. Ritchie, who gains enormous credibility even when quoted by Pravda. Several al- ternative interpretations are possible. First, it is possible--as Doob (19u8) argues--that the fact of print enhances objects appearing in print. This would imply that even a negative-credible news agency confers positive status. A second possibility is that the things the source said in the story enhanced his credibility but the fact he was quoted by Pravda partly counteracted this tendency. If the message were the more important factor, what would happen would be a smaller net positive change for the Pravda treatment condition, not a negative change. A third possibility is that, since the Pravda story was in English and in a familiar format, meg: of the Pravda Sp did not pay much attention to the fact Pravda was supposed to have carried the story. Some did, and this resulted in a decrease in 115 the amount of net positive change. Support for this interpretation comes from interviewers' reports. Most of the reSpondents in the second ex- periment who read a Pravda story quoting C. P. Ritchie claimed that they remembered reading the same story or a similar story. Obviously, they would not have thought they read it before in Pravda. On the other hand, the fact that the Oswego and AP treatments also differed does not support this interpretation. Clearly, these three alternatives should be in- vestigated. What is the process involved in status conferral and persuasion? We shall consider this in the next section. Attitude Change and Status Conferral If communication is a process, and if credibility conferred upon sources may be brought to bear on attitudes during this process, it follows that we ought to observe a difference in attitude change when a high-credible news agency quotes a source compared with the effects of less-credible news agencies. We did observe a news agency effect for the test ban story, and the suggestion of one in the first experiment. But the question remains as to what happened and how. The Fuchs study (lQSu) also reported attitude change differences related to magazine prestige, but unlike the present study the relation between amount of attitude change and media agency prestige was simple and direct. Cer- tainly, the finding in the present study that Pravda ranked behind only Associated Press in the amount of attitude change associated with it is not consistent with the position that credibility is mediated (changed, by media attention) and 2232 brought to bear. For if this were the case, since both Ritchie and Hinton were seen as somewhat less Safe and Dynamic 116 when quoted by Pravda than when quoted by Oswego, then the rank-order ‘ O O of attitude change should have been by initial news agency credibility. Yet it is not entirely possible to dismiss source persuasion differences, since initial source credibility was significantly related to attitude change. The most likely interpretation involves a non-statistical interaction between source, news agency and topic. Since the topic was a pact signed by both the U.S. and U.3.S.R., and since sources were twice identified as Americans in the Pravda stories, it may be that the Pravda versions were better received than the Oswego versions because more anxiety was alleviated in the Pravda versions. (The Red China story also-—by necessity, or it tqould not be believable for Pravda to have carried the story-~dealt with a matter of mutual U.S.-Soviet interest. The Pravda versions also mentioned the source as an American in that story. Once again, the obtained mean for Pravda exceeded the mean for Oswego. But this time they did not differ significantly, possibly because the U.S.-Soviet intergstgin the case of Red China was not as compatible as in the case of thg_test ban.) (This also suggests another possible factor in the general credibility-increase for sources quoted by Pravda. Perhaps appearance of an American in a foreign paper is status enhancing, over and above the nature of the paper.) Again, though, the present studies do not illuminate the relation between status conferral and attitude change due to source credibility. The problem is analogous to a situation reported in Hovland and Mandell (Hovland, Janis and Kelley, 1953). A message about the trustworthiness of a source was implied in an introduction and during a speech. Credibility measures after the speech was completed indicated the (implied) "selfish" Speaker was seen as more unfair and dishonest than the "altruistic" [—4 *4 q speaker, but there were no attitude chagge differences, One inter- pretation of this is consistent with one interpretation of the status conferral and attitude change anomaly reported for the test ban story. This interpretation is that differvntial credibility, if it is created at the same time as attitudes toward the concept are being affected, will not affect the attitudes. It might on some subsequent occasion. On the other hand, the fact that an initially-neutral fictitious source was associated with more attitude change than a Dangerous 22$. Qualified and Dynamic source suggests that C. P. Ritchie gained some credibility during the communication and brought it to bear during the process. The principle of congruity, as stated by Osgood and Tannenbaum (1955), would predict that Ritchie would produce no attitude change. Clearly, the status conferral results suggest a number of studies in- vestigating relations between news agency and source credibility and changes in attitudes. ikygmatism Results In general, the predicted relations between Openmindedness and closedmindedness and status conferral did not obtain in either experiment. One possible explanation is that there is a kind of "awareness" threshold for personality-related reSponse patterns to sources to be activated. Since news agencies were never explicit sources and "recogni- tion" of the individuals covered always implicit, the results of the experiment may be interpreted as reaffirming the subtlety of status conferral, not necessarily as contradicting Rokeach's theory. In fact, Rokeach and Rothman (1963) suggest that "comparison processes"nm5t be activated before there is cognitive interaction between two objects. 118 One of these comparison processes is a judgment of mutual relevance. It may be that this judgment is never activated in status conferral, even though there be a status conferral effect. The crucial consideration is ' of course. what constitutes "cognitive interaction,‘ Turning to another aspect of the results, the fact that closed- minded persons tended (p = .06) to be more persuasible than Openminded persons for the test ban story-oa story where an initially negative and a neutral source were operating-~is suggestive. It suggests that if Pravda did confer positive status along with the other two news agencies, this aegis lead to the prediction that closedminded respondents would be more vulnerable to persuasion. Since the expectation was that Pravda would not confer positive status, an interaction was predicted, not the nearly-significant main effect which occurred. Another point should be considered in connection with the Dogmatism results. This is that the division of reSpondents into Dogmatism groups was made by a simple median cut. Perhaps a finer set of Dogmatism score divisions would have illuminated the relation between Dogmatism and the experimental variables, if more reapondents had been available. (See Appendix E for a partial analysis of this possibility.) Conclusion Status conferral was investigated indirectly. It seemed as if more would be lost by a direct investigation than would be gained. In any event, status conferral received empirical support in two independent studies. The fact that the two experiments produced similar results, despite their methodological differences, suggests the value of converging approaches in the study of an area such as status conferral. Bach study 119 sacrifices something in generality when it approaches the problem. However, different approaches should illuminate different aSpects by sacrificing different things. It is evident that we still know little about the process of status conferral and its relation to attitude <3hange and source credibility. But we have learned enough to pose a number of different research questions and approaches. In addition, we do know that differential status con- ferral can occur and, by an inferential chain that led to the study, that absolute status conferral can occur. we also have evidence that, with / .r/ initially neutral sources? enormous increases in credibility can occur regardless of news agency condition. We do not know how much of this increase is due to the message and other factors, and we do not know whether the news agency always adds to this or sometimes detracts from this effect. We have evidence that differential status conferral relates most strongly to the Safety and Dynamism credibility dimensions and that Qualification may be related to a message effect or other factors. We know that initially neutral sources can be effective persuasive agents, at least when pitted against initially negative sources. 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(195”). McCarthy_and the communists. Boston: Beacon Press. Revere, R. (1960). Senator Joe McCarthy, Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian Books. Siegel, S. (1956). Nonparametric statistics for the behavioral sciences. New York: McGraw-Hill. Staats, A.W., Staats, C.K., and Heard, W.G. (1960). Attitude develOpment and the ratio of reinforcement. Sociometry, 325 338-350. Tannenbaum, P. (1953). Attitudes toward source and concept as factors in attitude change through communication. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Univ. of Illinois. Tannenbaum, P. (1956). A model for the prediction of uni-dimensional judgments of a total stimulus complex from judgments of the stimulus components. Institute of Communications Research, Univ. of Illinois. Tobin, R. L. (lQBU). Policing the advertiser. Sat. Review, i2: Jilly 11. I*9‘50 e Troldahl, V. and Lemert, J. (196u). Credibility dimensions, dogmatism, and prediction of attitude change. In preparation, Department of Communication, Michigan State University. Troldahl, V. and Powell, F. (1969). A short-form dogmatism scale for use in field studies. Department of Communication, Michigan State University. 2! Guide. (1962). Believability. March 17, 1962: 3. v// U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1962). U.S. census of o ulation 1960. General social and economic characteristics Michi an. Final roport PC (1)-29C."Washington: U.S. Gov. Printing Office. Vidulich, R. and Kaiman, I. (1961). The effect of information source status and dogmatism upon conformity behavior. J. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 63: 639-6u2. Walker, H.M. and Lev, J. (1953). Statistical inference. New York: Henry Holt. Naples, 0., Berelson, B., and Bradshaw, F. (1990). What readin does to people. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Naples, D. and Tyler, R. (1931). What_people want to read about. Chicago: American Library Association andnfiniv. of Chicago Press. Nelldon, J. (1886). Ed. and transltr, Aristotle's rhetoric. London. wiebe, G. (195a). A new dimension in journalism. Journ. Quart., 21; “ll-Q20. willoughby, W. (1955). Are two competing dailies necessarily better than one? Journ. Quart., 235 197-20H. APPEN DI X A APPENDIX A THE FIRST EXPERIMENT: STIMULUS AND TEST MATERIALS, WITH INSTRUCTIONS On the following pages within this Appendix are the before-test questionnaire, with instructions; the first of two after-test questionnaires (including the news stories); and the second after-test questionnaire. They are present in the order named. I'-‘ k) C.) Department of Communication Michigan State University NAME PUBLIC AFFAIRS SURVEY We are interested in the way people feel about some social questions, and also about some news agencies. The first thing we'd like you to do is to rank some news agencies as to their general journalistic competence. For example, suppose you were to rank these imaginary news agencies: (2) Amalgamated Press (1) The Ipswitch Switchblade (N) The Boston Tower (3) National Press Suppose you had written the numbers in the parentheses beside each of these imaginary news agencies. This would mean that you ranked the Ipswitch Switchblade first (best) of the four, and that you had ranked the Boston - Tower (Fourth) as the worst of the four. Now, below is a list of real news agencies. Would you please rank these six agencies by writing, in the parentheses beside each of them, a number from one to six. The top rank would be a one; the bottom rank would be a six. Please, 23. ties. ( ) Associated Press ( ) Oswego (N.Y.) Palladium-Times ( ) New York Times ( ) United Press-International ( ) Petaluma (Calif.) Weekly Argus-Courier ( ) St. Louis Post—Dispatch Was there a great deal of difference between the agencies you ranked first and sixth? A great deal of difference Some difference Very little difference ~ c, ii? Now, on each of the next few pages you will find either the name of a person or a tOpic of public discussion. Below each name or topic will be a series of seven-point scales with which you can give your reactions toward the person or tepic named. For example, below is the name of a person ani a single scale. When Qving reactions to a person, please react to the person as a source of messages. If you heard him speaking, how would you react to him? ahat kind of source, in general, do you think he is or would be? That is what we are after. MAO TSE-TUNG 800d“ d : s __...5’..§_._____..;_1._‘___ Ta Considering Mao Tse- Tung as a source of information, the first thing to do is to look at the adjectives at each end of the scale,m md decide which of the two adjectives fits better. For example, suppose you decide Mao is in general a "bad" source. Your next task would be to decide how bad he is by choosing among the spaces numbered -1, -2 and -3. If yoE-' considered him extremel bad, you would put a check mark in -3. If you considered him uite bad, you would mark -2; and if all htl bad, mark —1. Similarly, on the "good" side of the scale, extremeI good would be 3; Quite good would be 2, and slightly good womg-fi This leaves the position in the middle (numbered "0"), which would stand for neither good nor bad. The neutral or "0" ositionm also be used " maLin for "I don 't know" or "I don t think this’scalea 1 es ds of_3nswers. Be sure to put a check mark somewhere along each scale. Put your check within the spaces, not on the colons(:) separating the spaces. Put one, and only one, check on each scale. PLEASE DO NOT SKIP ANY SCALES. Try to make each check a separate and independent judgment. However, we want your first reactions, so go through the scales fairly rapidly. 13,3 NIKITA KHRUSHCHBV Safe____: : : : : :____Dangerous Introverted_____: : : : : :____Extroverted Informed_____: : : : : :_____pninformed Closedminded___:____:____:____:___:___:__0penminded Inexperienced___m.: : : : : :_____§xperienced Educated____: : : : : :____.Une ducated Subj ect ive____: : : : : :____Obj ective Frank____: : : : : :_____Reserved Untrained“: : : : : :mTrained Aggress ive____: : : : : ’:___Heek Honest“: : : : : :_____Dishonest Timid : : : : : : Bold Act ive : : : : : : Pas sive * — Unfair : : : : : .: Fair Bad Good : Weak . : : : : Strong Pleasant : : : : : : Unpleasant Fast : : : : : : Slow Foolish : : : : : : Wise Just : : : : : : Unjust 131 C. P. RITCHIE Safe : : : : : : Dangerous - - Introverted : ' ° ° ° : Extroverted Informed : : : ' : : Uninformed — * Closedminded : ‘ ' ' ' : Openminded m Inexperienced ‘ ° ° ° ' ' Experienced u Educated : : : ' ' : Uneducated Subjective : : : : : : Objective “ w 0 O O I 0 Frank : Reserved Untrained : : : : e : Trained H “ Aggressive : : : : : : Heek * —a O O O O I Dishonest Honest : Timid o. O o. O O O JIMMY HO7FA Safe____: : : : : :____Dangerous Introverted_____: : : : : :____Extroverted Inf orme d____: : : : : :_____Unin formed Close dminde d____: : : : : O:___Openminded Inexperienced____: : : : : :____Bxperienced Educate d____: : : : : :___Uneducated Subjective___: : : : : :___Object ive Frank_____: : : : : :____Reserved Unt rained____: : : : : :______Trained Aggressive____: : : : : :___.Meek Honest“: : : : : :___Dishonest Timid ° . . . Bold O. O. O O O p-J U) i.) LEGISLATIVE RSAPPORTIONMEW (REDISTRICTING) Active :____:_____:___:____:___: Passive Unfair :___:___:____:____:__:__Fair Good :____:____:__:___:___:___Bad Weak____:____:____:___:___:____: Strong Pleasant :_____:_:____:__:____: Unpleasant Fast W_________:°'______ Slow Foolish____°___"____:___:____-_° Wise Just :_____:______:____:____'____:_____Un j ust DIPLOMATI C RECOGNITION 0? RED CHINA Act ive °____'____:___:__'____* Passive Un fair____:_____:____:____:____-____° Fair Good_'___:__:__:__ _____: Bad Weak :____°____:___:____'____:____S trong P is as ant :___°_____:___.'__'__: Unpleasant Fast :___'__:____:____‘___. 8 low Foolish ‘__'____°____:____'___-__Wise J us t____'___:____°___:__'_____' Unjust Safe Introverted Informed Closedminded Inexperienced Educated Subjective Prank Untrained Aggressive Honest Timid 2 HENRY KENDALL O O O _’** : : Dangerous : : throverted : Uninformed Openminded Experienced uneducated : Objective : Reserved :___'l'rained Meek : Dishonest 'a____Jpold 1314 He are interested now in what the general public thinks and feels about a number of important social and personal questions. The best answer to each statement below is your ersonal opinion. We have tried to cover many different and opposing points of View; you may find yourself agreeing strongly with some of the statements, disagreeing just as strongly with others, and perhaps uncertain about others; whether’you agree or disagree with any statement, you can be sure that many people feel the same as you do. Hark each statement in the left margin according to how much you agree or disagree with it. Please mark every one. write +1, +2, +3, or cl, -2, -3, depending on how you feel in each case. +1: I AGREE A LITTLE -1: I DISAGREE A LITTLE +2: I AGREE ON THE WHOLE -2: I DISAGREE ON THE WHOLE +3: I AGREE VERY MUCH -3: I DISAGREE VERY MUCH Please write both the number and the sign in the margin left of each statement. A man who does not believe in some great cause has not really uwde In the history of mankind there have probably been just a handful of really great thinkers. The united States and Russia have just about nothing in common. It is often desirable to reserve judgment about what's going on until one has had a chance to hear the opinions of these one "8p.“. s Ian on his own is a helpless and miserable creature. A person who gets enthusiastic about too many causes is likely to be a pretty ”wishy-washy" sort of person. A person who thinks primarily of his own happiness is beneath contempt. In this complicated world of ours the only way we can know what's going on is to rely on leaders or experts who can be trusted. I'd like it if I could find someone who would tell me how to solve my personal problems. When it comes to differences of opinion in reli ion we must be careful not to compromise with those who be eve fferently from the way :3 do. F) (a) 9'1 Continue marking your answers in this manner: +1: I AGREE A LITTLE -1: I DISAGREE A LITTLE +2: I AGREE ON THE HHOLE -2; I DISAGREE ON THE WHOLE +3: I AGREE VERY MUCH -3: I DISAGREE VERY MUCH The highest form of government is a democracy and the highest form of democracy is a government run by those who are most intelligent. While I don't like to admit this even to myself, my secret ambi- tion is to become a great man, like Einstein, or Beethoven, or Shakespeare. The present is all too often full of unhappiness. It is only the future t counts. In times like these it is often necessary to be more on guard against ideas put out by people or groups in one's‘ggg.camp than by those in the opposing camp. Unfortunately, a good many people with whom I have discussed important social and moral problems don't really understand what's going on. To compromise with our political opponents is dangerous because it usually leads to betrayal of our own side. It is only natural for a person to be rather fearful of the future. In the long run the best way to live is to pick friends and associates whose tastes and beliefs are the same as one's own. Once I get wound up in a heated discussion I just can't stop. Fundamentally, the world we live in is a pretty lonesome place. The worst crime a person could commit is to attack publicly the people who believe in the same thing he does. It is only when a person devotes himself to an ideal or cause that life becomes meaningful. Most people just don't give a "damn" for others. The main thing in life is for a person to want to do something important. Most people just don't know what's good for them. Continue marking your answers in this manner: +1: I AGREE A LITTLE -1: I DISAGREE A LITTLE +2: I AGREE ON THE WHOLE -2: I DISAGREE ON THE HHOLE +3: I AGREE VERY HUGH -3: I DISAGREE VERY MUCH Even though freedom of speech for all groups is a worthwhile goal, it is unfortunately necessary to restrict the freedom of certain political groups. In a heated discussion I generally become so absorbed in what I am going to say that I forget to listen to what the others are saying. It is only natural that a person would have a much better acquaintance with ideas he believes in than with ideas he opposes. In a discussion I often find it necessary to repeat myself several times to make sure I am being understood. Host of the ideas which get printed nowadays aren't worth the paper they are printed on. It is better to be a dead hero than to be a live coward. Hy blood boils whenever a person stubbornly refuses to admit he's wrong. If given a chance I would do something of great benefit to the world. A group which tolerates too much differences of opinion among its own members cannot exist for long. In times like these, a person must be pretty selfish if he con- siders primarily his own happiness. If a man is to accomplish his mission in life it is sometimes necessary to gamble "all or nothing at all." There are two kinds of people in this world: these who are for the truth and those who are against the truth. Of all the different philosophies which exist in this world there is probably only one which is correct. There are a number of people I have come to hate because of the things they stand for. 137 NAME PUBLIC AFFAIRS SURVEY--II Did you participate in the earlier survey two weeks ago in class? yes no IN EITHER CASE, PLEASE CONTINUE. 13- Li) This news story is reproduced below by permission of the (name of news agency).* Municipal governments are facing in- creasingly complex and difficult prob. lems, Henry Kendall said here today. "These problems are social, economic and political,” he said, ”and unless the city can solve them its integrity will be threatened." Kendall pointed to the increasing tendency for governmental functions to move from local to federal and state levels. "But present sources of the city's revenue may not be enough to finance the increased community activity which would be required to meet local problems loc- ally," Kendall said. According to Kendall,the increasing cry for municipal income taxes is a natural outgrowth of the recognition that pres- ent revenue will probably not be enough. At present, municipal income taxes--an almost unheard of thing until recently-- are being considered by community lead- ers who recognize the gradual loss of local control. "But,” Kendall said, ”though cries for municipal income taxes may be a natural response to the situation, there is still some question as to whether such taxes would be an adequate solution. Taxpayers today are already paying more income taxes than practically anybody else in the world. City income taxes, then, would add to the total income tax burdOne" Kendall suggested that the city ought at least to consider other means of revb enue as an alternative to income taxes before deciding upon revenue measures. He said the income tax may still be nec- essary, but other revenue measures ought to be considered as well. *Copyright, l963, by (name of news agency). TURN TO NEXT PAGE. 1'37 This news story is reproduced below by permission of the (name of news agency).* There are two sides to the question of legislative reapportionment,C.P. Ritchie said here today. Because of present districting poli- cies, Ritchie said, there can be little question that some legislative districts have fewer voters than others. "But while it is easy to see that the population—representation ratio is not always equal, there are arguments which can be proposed for keeping the present districts as well as arguments for re- districting," Ritchie said. The increasing outcry for reapportion- ment is based on the argument that every citizen's vote should have the same force as any other citizen's, according to Ritchie. Further, unequal represen- tation smacks of special privilege for those who get the benefit of it, he said. Those who back reapportionment also argue that the move is necessary to en- sure responsive government if government is to serve the majority will. Ritchie said there are also arguments for retaining present districting sys- tems. One of them is that the present apportionment system exerts a moderating effect upon legislation, serving as a constraint while still allowing progress. Another consideration is that it is a fallacy to assume that all legislative bodies are meant to be elected on a purely representative basis. Many legislative bodies, including the 0.8. Senate, give equal representation to ar- eas with unequal populations. *COpyright, 1963, by (name of news agency). TURN TO NEXT PAGE. JAMES HINTON, 1960 Socialist Party Presidential Candidate Safe : : z : : : Dangerous Introverted : : : : : : Extroverted Informed : z : : : : Uninformed Closedminded : : : : : : Openminded Inexperienced : : : : : : Experienced Educated O. : : : : Uneducated Subjective : : z : : : Objective Frank ‘ : ° ° ° : Reserved Untrained : : : : : : Trained Aggressive : ° ° ° ' ' Meek fiv“*——“ Honest : : : : . : : Dishonest Timid : : : : : : Bold ROGER FRANK, American Industrialist Safe : : : : : : Dangerous Introverted : : z z : : Extroverted Informed : : : : : : Uninformed Closedminded : z : . : : Openminded Inexperienced : : : : : : Experienced Educated : : : : z : Uneducated Subjective : ° ° - - : Objective Prank : : : : : : Reserved Untrained : z : : z : Trained Aggressive : : : : : : Meek Honest : : : : : : Dishonest Timid : : : : : : Bold TURN TO NEXT PAGE 142 LEGISLATIVE REAPPORTIONMENT Active : ' : ' ° : unfair : ° ° ° ° : Good : : : : ' - Weak : : . - - . Pleasant : : : : : : Past e e e s e : Foolish : : : - ° : Just : : : : : : ROBERT JONES N. Y. Black Muslim Leader Safe_____3______r_____r_____a____.g_____: Introverted____: : : : : : Informed“: : z : : : Closedminded__: ° ° - ° ' Inexperienced“: : : : : : Educated”: : : : : : Subj ective____: : z : : : Prank Untrained : : z : : : Aggressive : : : : : ° Honest : : : : : : Timid : : : : : : TURN TO NEXT PAGE. Passive Fair Bad Strong Unpleasant Slow wise Unjust Dangerous Extroverted Uninformed Openminded Experienced Uneducated Objective Reserved Trained Meek Dishonest Bold 1243 HENRY KENDALL Safe : : : : : : Introverted : : : ‘ ° : Informed : x : : : : Closedminded : : : : : : Inexperienced : : : : : : Educated : 2 x : : : Subjective Prank : Untrained : : : : : : Aggressive : ° 2 : ° : Honest : : : : ' : * Timid : ° : : ° : DIPLOMATIC RECOGNITION OF RED CHINA Active : : : : : : Unfair : : : ' ° : Good : : ' : : : Weak ' : ° ' : : Pleasant : : : ' z : Put e e e e e : O O O O O “wag-”flu Foolish : : z z : : Just : : : ° ° : TURN T0 NEXT PAGE. Dangerous Extroverted Uninformed Openminded Experienced ._____pneducated Objective Reserved Trained Meek Dishonest Bold Passive Pair Bad Strong Unpleasant Slow wise Unjust luu PRAVDA Safe_____: : : : : : Introverted_____: : : : : : Informed___: : : : : : Closedminded___: : : : : : Inexperienced : : : : : O. Educated : : : : : : Dangerous Extroverted Uninformed Openminded Experienced Uneducated Subjective : : : : : : Objective Prank : : : z : : Reserved Untrained : : : : : : Trained Aggressive : : : : : : Meek Honest : : : : : : Dishonest Timid : : : : : : Bold MUNICIPAL INCOME TAXES Active : : : : : : Passive Unfair : : : z : : Good Weak ' - ' : ° : Pleasant : : : : : : Fast : : : : : : Foolish : : : : : : Just : : z : : : WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHED THIS PAGE, PLEASE RAISE YOUR HAND. O O O O O O “~m~—*“ Fair Bad Strong Unpleasant Slow wise Unjust p. a I? U1 NAME PUBLIC AFFAIRS SURVEY---III 1. Do you have any ideas about the purpose of this study? What do you think the purpose is? 2. What sorts of things make you think this was the purpose? TURN TO NEXT PAGE. Please check appropriate spaces. ( ) Roger Frank was quoted in , a news story by United Presvanternational. ( ) Henry Kendall ( ) C. P. Ritchie ( ) George McIntosh was quoted in a news story by the Petaluma Argus:Courier. ( ) Henry Kendall ( ) C. P. Ritchie TURN TO NEXT PAGE. Did you think C. P. Ritchie "took a stand" on the issue of whether to have legislative reapportionment? Yes, he took a stand. This stand was "pro” reapportionment This stand was against reapportionment No, he did not take a stand for or against reapportionment. Did you think Henry Kendall "took a stand" on the issue of whether to have municipal income taxes? Yes, he took a stand. This stand was "pro" municipal income taxes This stand was against municipal income taxes No, he did not take a stand for or against municipal income EQXCSe YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE SURVEY. DO NOT TALK TO YOUR NEIGHBORS. LET THEM FINISH, TOO. PLEASE BRING THIS BOOKLET to us. THANK YOU. APPEN DI X B PRE-TESTING RESULTS: THREE STUDIES 0n the fellowing pages within this Appendix are pre-test results used in planning the first and second experiments. There were three pre-teets. The first (designated #1) was conducted with l2 Hotel, Restaurant and Institutions students in the spring of 1963. The second (designated #2) was conducted simultaneously with the first experiment in the fall of 1963. There were 62 Communication 100 students in this pre-test sample. The third pre-test (designated #3) was conducted in early March, 196“. It was done using 19 Lansing adult residents selected from the sample list for the second experiment. ’J RESULTS PERTAINING TO NENS AGENCY SELECTION TABLE 8.1 Mean Ranks for Six American News Agencies St. Louis UPI }52. New York Times Post-Deptch Oswego Petaluma pre—test #1 (M312) 1.92 2.08 2.25 u.21 9.83 5.33 pre-test #2 (N=62) 1.99 2.2a 2.99 9.01 9.55 5.97 TABLE B.2 Credibility Ratings of Three News Agencies: Means and Variances Agengz Safety Qualification_ Dynamism Pravda (#2) mean 18.90* 19.29* 13.95* (N862) variance 16.52 13.95 15.03 Pravda (#3) mean 19.13* 15.03* 11.22* (N319) variance 16.63 12.88 18.29 Oswego Palla— mean 15.83* 15.7u* 15.uo* dium-Times (#3) = variance 3.96 3.53 3.78 AP (#3) mean 12.18* 11.52* 11.u1* (N819) variance 8.83 9.6# 9.85 *Scores range from one (positive end) to 28 (negative end). Theoretical midpoint is 16.0. TABLE 3.3 Relation Between News Agency Rank and Credibility Ratings, The New York Times and Petaluma Ar s-Courier, First Pre- Test (N: Rank Safetz* Qualif.* Dynamism* Times Petaluma. Times Petlma Times Petlma Times Petlma 3 6 11 12 7 1o 5 6 2 6 7 16 u 16 s 8 3 6 1o 16 5 16 5 8 a 6 1a 16 u 16 g 15M!I 2 3 13 16 s 16 u if 1 6 1n 16 11 16 7 a 3 6 15 17 u 7 s 9 1 3 12 15 J u“ 6 5“ - 3 6 8 10 u '1! 2' 6' a 6 1o 15 5 11 5 7 2 u 11 16 n 12 8 8** 1 6 1:. 16 11 16 ‘7 '5’ 2.25 5.33 11.58 15.08 5.67 12.17 5.67 7.92 *Credibility scores range from one (positive end) to*28 (negative ende for the Safety and Qualification dimensions. They range from one to fourteen for the Dynamism dimension in this study. Theoretical neutral points would be 16 for Safety and Qualification and 8 for Dynamism. **0nly departures from predicted relationship of credibility means. There are four departures in the table, two of them ties. 157 TABLE 8.“ Credibility Ratings of Initially Neutral Source-~No Label Pro-Test #1 (N85) Safety* Qualification* namism* C. P. Ritchie mean 17.9 1u.o 7.6 variance 1.63 1.90 .60 Henry Kendall mean 15.9 12.0 7.6 variance 6.80 30.5 .80 Pre-Test #3 (N=19) C. P. Ritchie mean l6.0** l6.0** 16.0** Variance e o e o s 0 *One is the positive end, 28 the negative and, except for Dynamism, where 1n is the negative end. **Dynamism also ranges to 28 (negative end) Credibility Ratings of Sources with "Positive" and TABLE 8.5 "Negative" Labels, Three Pre-tests Source- Label N C.P. Ritchie, trade 6 council president Henry Kendall, 1960 6 Socialist Part canaIaate for pres'dnt Roger Frank, American 62 industrialist James Hinton, 1960 62 Socialist Part candIdate for pres'dnt George McIntosh, Nat'l 62 Secretary, John BIrcE oc e52 Robert Jones, E:Y* 62 Black Muslim 1.53;» Roger Frank, 19 American businessman James Hinton, HTE: 19 People's Socialist arty memSer Safety Mean l6.33* Var'nce 31.30 53.3.2. l7.17* Var'nce 18.97 Mean 19.60* Var'nce 6.83 Mean 16.803 Var'nce 6.99 M3533 19.15* Var'nce 10.68 31321. 19.11* Var'nce 13.63 3:23. 15.63* Var'nce 0.75 23521 18.31* Var'nce 3.52 8.83* 27.8“ 11.00* 118.33 19.95* 15.03 13.97* 10.06 13.39* 16.37 18.81* 16.72 15.388 0.81 15.56* s.uo Pre- 7.533% 2.70 5.17** H.97 18.21* 8.69 13.85* 10.88 12.85* 19.83 12.13* 19.69 15.38* 0.81 15.868 5.80 Qualification Dynamism test #1 #1 #2 #2 #2 #2 #3 #3 ‘CredibiIity scores Fangefrom one Ipositive éhéi’t6*2§ (negEtIVe endT:g' **Dynamism scores in these cases range from one (positive and) to 1n (negative end). 15“ RESULTS PERTAINING TO SELECTION OF STORY CONCEPTS TABLE 8.6 Initial Attitudes Toward Recognition of Red China and Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Concept Preotest N Mean Evaluative Score* variance Red China #2 62 19.56 25.63 Red China #3 19 20.18 29.89 Test Ban #3 19 15.11 21.67 EEvaluative scores rangEZErom one (favorable .na) to un aver e en . APPENDIX C 156 THE SECOND EXPERIMENT: STIMULUS AND TEST MATERIALS, WITH INSTRUCTIONS The second experiment was conducted by personal interview. There were five separate sections for each interview. They are re- produced in order. The first set of materials is the interviewer's work set. The second set (Section A) is the before-test questionnaire, with instructions. The third set (Section B) is the Dogmatism Scale, with instructions. The fourth set contains the news stories, and the fifth (Section C) contains the after-test questionnaire. Dept. of Communication Project 523 MEDIATED CREDIBILITY STUDY Interviewer sheet INTERVIEW N0. INTERVIEHER RESPONDENT THEusEhOIderTE Name7_ (AddressT' (Pfione No.) (Respondent's name, I? other than householderrsri I? ifitervIEw no. is even, take the man of the house; if odd take the woman.) DATE TIME D SPO ON OP CALL OF OF Egmpleted ‘Home, DesIrea No Home ‘Have"‘ CALL CALL Interview, No Time Person Answer Refusal Moved, ‘ Leggth in min. Now Not Home At Door Deceased l. min. 2. min. 3. min. 1‘. mine Interviewer's Notes Hello...I'm from Michigan State University. We're doing some research on the opinIOns people have about a variety of issues. One of the persons chosen fer this study was the Man Woman of your household It's very important that we find out the opinions of every person selected for the study. (Arrange with respondent for interview.) THIS IS BOOKLET: (Circle booklet type) Results of criterion test A (circle one)g‘_ l-S (green) u-s (pink) IN - passed second test 2.6 (blue) S-l (yellow) OUT - failed 3-9 (white) 6-2 (lavender) 158 interviewer sheet 2 mediated credibility RESPONDENT SEX: M E MARRIED SINGLE APPROXIMATE AGE 1. Do you subscribe to, or regularly read, a newspaper? Yes No 2. If YES, which one or ones? 3. How much time per day would you say you read the newspaper? 6. Are there any newspapers that you would not care to read? (Probe for names and reasons) 5. What was the last school that you attended? 6. What was the highest grade (or year) that you ever attended? less than 6 5...... 12 7 13 8...... In 11 more than 16 7. Did you finish this grade or year? Yes No IF RESPONSE IS THAT THE PERSON HAS COMPLETED THE SIXTH GRADE OR MORE IN SCHOOL, GO ON. I? HE DID NOT COMPLETE THE SIXTH GRADE THANK HIM AND LEAVE. Now, changing the subject a little bit, we'd like you to give your reactions to some topics, people and statements that you may have heard about. (Hand respondent the booklet, explaining that you will help him if he has any questions but that he will fill it out.) interviewer's booklet 3 Handling of Booklet A After you have handed Booklet A to the respondent, read the instruction page (your copy) to him as he follows on his copy. The next page is a practice page. Look on as he fills it out. Correct him is he misunderstands the instructions, e.g., if he puts two check- marks on a single scale. Make sure he notices that there are reversals of scales (goodobad, lousy-fine), but do not point this out to him ex- plicitly unless it is apparent from his marking behavior that he did not notice this. For example, if he marks MODERN ART as extremely fair, but also marks it as extremely bad, you would have reason to raise the point. In general, though, do not volunteer help on the practice page. You may help the respondent on the practice page when it involves mechanics of marking and when it involves any other problem. After the practice page, you may not help the respondent on the mechanics of scale marking unless he speciEIzally asks you. Referring him back to the instruction page should handle most of these problems. The first page of scales after the practice page will deal with ROGER FRANK, "American businessman." Most respondents will sound as if they would like more information on Roger Frank, but whether or not they specifically request more information say the followingfto all respondents: I'll give you a little more information about Roger Frank. He is a banker, industrialist and member of a corporation board of directors. . . .(if respondent still hesitates) If his name still doesn't sound familiar, think of what a banker, industrialist and corporation director in general must be like as a source of information. If the respondent asks about C. P. RITCHIE, say you do not know much about hifi} And remind"him about the instructions and the ”0" or neutral point on the scale, I? the respondent should ask any further. If the respondent asks about JAMES HINTON, "member of US People's Socialist Party," say:“— If his name doesn't sound familiar, think of what such a person must be like as a source of information. TAKE BOOKLET A BACK when reapondent has finished. NOW HAND RESPONDENT CARD 1 AND BEGIN READING INSTRUCTIONS FOR BOOKLET 8. READ QUESTIONS PROM BOOKLET 8 T0 RESPONDENT AND RECORD HIS ANSWERS IN LEFT MARGIN. 1.. W) 0 interview booklet u TAKE BACK CARD 1, and say: Now, I'm going to hand you a pair of news stories. Would you please read them? AS YOU HAND STORIES TO RESPONDENT, SAY THAT ONE OF THE STORIES IS FROM - (Associated Press, Oswego Palladium-Times or Pravda) and the other is from - (one of the two remaining). Don't hurry. We're almost through. After respondent has spent some time reading them, he will look up or otherwise indicate he has finished. TAKE STORIES BACK. Immediately after taking the two stories back, ask the following: We have a couple of questions about the stories . . . ASK ALL RESPONDENTS INTERVIEHER CODE First, _C_. E: Ritchie was quoted in the story by which news agency, first time asked second time_asked correct incorrect Associated Press ( ), ( ), FIRST TRIAL Pravda ( ), ( ), SECOND (CRI- TERION) or the TRIAL Oswego Palladium-Times( )? ( )? IN OUT Interviewer code whether response was correct or incorrect. This was the first trial and does not count as the criterion trial. Tell the respondent If He was ri ht on this question: "yes, C. P. Ritchie was quoted by the - - - -." Ii the respondent was wron tell him the correct answer: "no, C. P. Ritchie was quoted by - - - -. Do you remember now?" If further prompting is necessary, you can go as far as showing respondent the story again. Interviewer choose the appropriate 1 of the next 2 Questions FOR BOOKLETS INTERVIEWER 6.3, 5-1 and 6-2 CODE interviewer booklet 5 Second, Roger Frank was quoted in the story by which news agency, first time asked second time asked correct incorrect Associated Press ( ), ( ), FIRST TRIAL Pravda ( ), ( ), SECOND (CRI- TERION) or the TRIAL Oswego Palladium-Times ( )? ( )? IN OUT This is the first trial only. Tell the respondent whether he was right or wrong in the same style as above. Interviewer choose this question if appropgiate For booklets 1-5, 3-8 and 2—6 INTERVIEHER CODE Second, James Hinton was quoted in the story by whiEh news agency first time asked second time asked correct incorrect Associated Press ( ), ( ), FIRST TRIAL Pravda ( ), ( ), SECOND (CRI- TERION) Or the TRIAL Oswego Palladium-Times ( )? ( )? IN OUT Interviewer code whether response was correct or incorrect. This was the first trial and does not count as the criterion trial. Tell the respondent if he was ri ht on the question: "yes, James Hinton was quoted by ___." If the respon ent was wrong tell him the correct answer: "no, James Hinton was quoted by . Do you remember now?" If further prompting is necessary, you-zzn go as far as showing the respondent the story again. ‘A .4 These two questions, with prompting after the question, constitute the first trial. 1.4 (‘3) h ) interviewer booklet 6 Then say to respondent: The last thing we have to do today is to get your reactions to these news stories. Then we'll be through. HAND RESPONDENT BOOKLET C. These are the same sort of thing you did a little while ago, so no new instructions are necessary. You may in fact notice some similarity between the kind of judgments you made a little while ago and the judgments we're asking you to make now. But there are some differences, so would you please act as if you had not done a similar test earlier? Don't try to remember how you reacted earlier. Please try to give us your reactions as of right now. AS SOON AS RESPONDENT HAS FINISHED BOOKLET C, TAKE IT BACK AND ASK THE APPROPRIATE THO QUESTIONS FROM ABOVE ONCE AGAIN. This is learning trial #2, the criterion trial. You need not tell respondent whether he was right or wrong after these two questions. On the basis of the two uestions asked the second time the res ondent mm. sample. mm questions correctlygfhe second Time they are asked, no matter what He said on the first trial, HE IS IN THE SAMPLE. Otherwise, he is not. He should be coded "out." Code this result on the first page of this booklet, after you have completed the interview. ASK ALL RESPONDENTS: What is the occupation of the main wage earner in the family? PROBE Would you describe your political affiliation as Democratic ( ) Republican ( ) or Independent ( )? Thank you very much for your cooperation. Your questions and your time were very helpful to us. Now if you have any questions, I'll try to answer them. COMMENTS (questions asked, etc.) Interviewer 183 Section A INTERVIEW NO. PUBLIC OPINION SURVEY On each of the next few pages you will find some objects about which we would like your opinion. Below each object will be a series of seven- point scales with which you can give your reactions toward the objects named. Some of these objects will be topics of public discussion. Other objects will be the names of people or the names of news agencies. When giving your reactions to people or to news agencies, would you please react to them as if they were sources of messages which you might receive? When giving your reactions to tOpics of public dis- cussion, would you please react to the general idea of this topic - is it a good idea or a bad one? For example, below is the name of a person and one of the seven-point scales. What kind of source, in general, do you think he is or would be? That is what we are after. Source: MAO TSE-TUNG Good : : : : : : Bad extremeiy quite siightiy 5 siigfitiy quite extremeiy Considering Mao Tse-Tung as a source of information, the first th hin to do is to look at the adjectives at each end of the scale,“ decide— which of the two adjectives fits better. For example, suppose you decide Mao in general is a "bad" source. Then you would decide how bad he is by choosing among the spaces labeled "slightly," "quite" 533' "extremely." Similarly if you decide he was in general a "good" source, you would go through the same process of deciding how good he was-- slightly, quite or extremely. This leaves the position in the middle (labeled "0"), which would stand for neither good nor bad, in the case of this scale. The neutral 2:» "O" osition me also be used for "I don't know" or I don't think :c___his sca e a lies kin—E ofa answers. .- Be sure to put a check mark somewhere along each scale. Put your check within the spaces, not on the colons (z) separating the spaces. Put one, and only one, check on each scale. PLEASE DO NOT SKIP ANY SCALES. Try to make each check a separate and independent judgment. However, we want your first reactions, so go through the scales fairly rapidly. The next page has some practice scales. P‘ V“) :- 2A Practice Page Source: NIKITA KRUSHCHEV Good : ° ' ° ° ° Bad Tired : : : : : : Energetic Unfriendly : : ' : : : Friendly Smart : : : : : : Dumb MODERN ART Active : : : : : : Passive Unfair : : : : : : Fair Bad ° ° ' ° ' : Good 0 O 0 0 e e ~“-*~~‘_ Wise : : : : ° : Foolish Source: HAVANA PEOPLE'S DAILY Foolish : : : : : : Wise Fair : : : : : : 7 Unfair Incompetent : : : : : : Competent Educated : : : : : : Uneducated 165 3A Source: ROGER FRANK, American Businessman Safe____:.__:____:____:___:__:_m___Dangerous “$17 Force is ss___:_____:____.:____:____:___:____f‘orce fu l “018 Informsd_____:____‘:____:___:____:____:__Uninformed __ng Unjust____:_____:____:____:____:_____.:____Just “S20 Inexperienced_____:____:_____:___:____:_____:____Experienced ___QZl Educated : : : : : : _ Uneducated O22 Un fairm:___:_~_:_‘_:__‘:___:__f‘air “S23 Emphat ic____:___:____:___:___:___:____flesitant __D2u Untrained__:__:___:_____:__:___:__Trained __Q2S Aggressive__:___:___:__:___:__:___Meek . «D26 Honest____:____:____:____:___:____:____Di shone st __S 27 Timid : : : : : : _Bold D28 «4A Safe Forceless Informed Unjust Inexperienced Educated Unfair Emphatic Untrained Aggressive Honest Timid Source: JAMES HINTON member of the US People's Socialist Party Dangerous Eorceful Uninformed Just Experienced Uneducated Fair Meek Dishonest Bold S29 “930 Q31 $32 __mp33 ___93h S35 D36 Q37 D38 S39 Duo SA Safe Porceless Informed Unjust Inexperienced Educated Unfair Emphatic Untrained Aggressive Honest Timid Source: FIDEL CASTRO : Dangerous : forceful : Uninformed : Just : Trained : Meek : Dishonest :‘____Bold .8123 D12“ Q125 __“§126 __5129 “0130 _Q131 “0132 __5133 Dl3u 6A Source: C. P. RITCHIE Safe : : : : : : Dangerous Sul Porceless : : : : : : Porceful DMZ Informed : : : : : : Uninformed qua Unjust : : : : : : Just snu Inexperienced : : : : : : Experienced QuS Educated : : : : : : Uneducated _Qu6 Unfair____:_____:___:___:____:___:___?air __S 147 Emphat i c__:___:__:__t:_m:___:__flesitant “DQB Untrained__:____:___:___:____:__:__Trained ___Q 149 Aggress ive____:___:____:___:____:___:___Heek m—DSO Honest____:______:____:____:___:_____:____Dishonest “S 51 Timid : ° ° ° : : Bold D52 7A MI CHIGAN LEGIS LATI VB RBAPPORTI ONMENT Active_____: : : : : :_____Passive Unfair;u___-: : : : : : Fair Good_____: : : : : : Bad Weak : : : : : :_____Strong Pleasant“: : : : : :m—Unp leas ant Fast;____‘: : : : : ,3 Slow Foolish“: : : : : :“Wise Just : : : : : : Unjust m__fil35 ___§136 __mpl37 __‘Pl38 ___Fl39 ___A1u0 ___§1u1 Elk? 170 8A DIPLOMATIC RECOGNITION OF RED CHINA Act ive____:____:___:____:____:_____:___.Pass ive ”E57 Un fair_____:____:____:____:___:____:___Fair __;:su Good___:___-:___:____:____:___:____Bad “E55 We ak___:____:____:___:____:___:___$trong "P56 Pleasant____:___:-__:___:__:__:___Unpleasant “E57 Fast : : : : : : Slow A58 Foolish : : : : : . Wise E59 Just : : . : Unjust E60 9A THE NUCLEAR TEST BAN TREATY Active : : : : : : Passive A61 Unfair : : : : : : Fair E62 Good : : : : : : Bad E63 Weak : : . . . . Strong P6u Pleasant : : : : : : Unpleasant E65 Fast : : : : : : Slow A66 Foolish : : : : : : Wise E67 Just : : : : : : Unjust E68 (80) J— 10A . Safe Forceless Informed Unjust Inexperienced Educated Unfair Emphatic Untrained Aggressive Honest Timid PRAVDA Soviet news agency Dangerous Forceful Uninformed Just Experienced Uneducated Fair Hesitant Trained Meek Dishonest Bold 817 D18 Q19 S20 _ Q21 Q22 S23 D2“ Q25 D26 S27 D28 173 11A THE oswnno (N.Y.) PALLADIUH-TIHES Safew:__-___:___:__:___:____.:___Dangerous __S29 Force less___:___:__:___:____:___:____?orce ful ___D30 In forme d___:____:____-:___.:__:_____:.____Un in formed ___Q3 1 Unj us t______:____:_____:____: ____:_____.:_____J ust ___S 32 ‘ Inexperienced“:____:___:___:___:____:___Experienced “Q33 Educated___:____:____:___:___p:___:___0ne ducated ____Qau Unfair____:___:___:____:___.:___:___Fair “$35 Emphatic____:____:____:____:____:_____:___Hesitant “D36 Untrained___:____:______:____:___:____:_____Trained "Q37 Aggressive___:___:m:__:__‘:__:___Heek ___D3 8 Honest____:____:____:____n:____‘:____:____Dishonest ___839 Timid____:_____:___:_____:___:____:____Bold ”Duo 17:. 12A THE LANSING STATE JOURNAL Safem:___:____:____:____:___‘:____bangerous ___Sul Forceless___:___c:___.:_~:-___t:__:____f‘orceful “Did Informed____:_____:_____:___-_:___:___:____Uninformed ___3u3 Unjust______:____:_____:_____:___:______:____Just ___suu Inexperienced______:____:____:____:____:____:____£xperienced __Qu5 Educatedm:____:___:___:__:____:_____0neducated ___Qu6 Unfair______:_____:_____:___:_____:___:____f‘air _S'47 Emphaticm:___:__‘__:____:__:___:___Hesitant ___Du8 Untrained____:____‘:____:_____:____:_____:____Trained ___Qu9 Aggressive__:m:m:__:_:___:__fleek “D50 Hone st“:____:____:___.:___:____:___Dishonest ___S 51 Timid ° ° ° ° ' : Bold D52 I75 13A ASSOCIATED PRESS S afe_____:____:___”:_____:____:___:____.Dangerous __S 53 Forcelessw:____:___:_____:___~:____:__Force ful __D5 u Informe d___:____:____:____:____:____:____Unin formed “Q5 5 Unjust_____:_____:____:____:____:___:___Just ___S 56 _ Inexperiencedm:___m:___:___:____:______:_____Experienced __Q57 Educated—n:___t:___:__:___:__:”Uneducated __QS 8 Unfair___:____:_____:____:___:___:___Fair __S'59 Emphatic____:___':______:___:___:____:____Hesi tant “D6 0 Untraine d___:___.l:____:____u:___:____:___Trained “96 l Aggressive___.:__:____:___:__-:__:___Neek “D62 H ones t______:____:____:____:_:____:___Dishone st “563 Timid : : : : : : Bold D6u *4 Q C) Section B INTERVIEW NO. Now I am going to read some statements people have made as their opinions on several topics. You may find yourself agreeing strongly with some of the statements...disagreeing just as strongly with others...and perhaps uncertain about others. Whether you agree or disagree with any state- ment, you can be sure that many people feel the same as you do. 15""? TH ITP'OI'N “r", TAN'D_RE—s P‘OND‘ENTTKRT '1 We want your ersonal opinion on each statement. When I read each one, first tell me w et er...in general...you agree or disagree with it... then tell me a number...one, two or three...that indicates how strongly you agree or disagree with it. A or D No. Code 1. Young men should try to get into the same type of work as their fathers do. WARMUP SCALE ONLY. 2. The United States and Russia have just about nothing in common. 3. I'd like it if I could find someone who would tell me how to solve my personal problems. u. The highest form of government is a democracy and the highest form of democracy is a government run by those who are most intelligent. S. It is often desirable to reserve judgment about what's going on until one has had a chance to hear the opinions of those one respects. 6. Man on his own is a helpless and miserable creature. 7. The resent is all too often full of un- happiness. It is only the future that counts. 8. To compromise with our political opponents is dangerous because it usually leads to be- tryal of our own side. B2 A or D No. 11. 177 It is only when a person devotes himself to an ideal or cause that life becomes meaningful. In this complicated world of ours the only way we can know what's going on is to rely on leaders or experts who can be trusted. While I don't like to admit this even to myself, my secret ambition is to become a great man, like Einstein, or Beethoven, or Shakespeare. The main thing in life is for a person to want to do something important. Most people just don't give a "damn" for others. In a discussion I often find it necessary to repeat myself several times to make sure I am being understood. Of all the different phiIOSOphies which exist in this world there is probably only one which is correct. Most people just don't know what is good for them. Most of the ideas which get printed nowa- days aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Even though freedom of speech for all groups is a worthwhile goal, it is un- fortunately necessary to restrict the freedom of certain political groups. It is better to be a dead hero than to be a live coward. My blood boils whenever a person stub- bornly refuses to admit he's wrong. There are two kinds of people in this world: those who are for the truth and those who are against the truth. TIKE'CIRU'EICKT'HIND'RESPUNDENT'NEWS'STURTES “n w m THIS I‘IEL'IS STORY IS PRESENTED CQIRTFSY OF THE MAJCB. THIS NEWS? STCRY IS PRESENTED C(XIRTE‘SY 0F ASSOCIATED PRESS; THIS NEUS STORY IS PRESENTED COJRTESY OF THE OS‘rIEGO (NEW . IT WAS FIRST CARRIED ON AIL AP Wmfi NOVEIBEP. 10, 1.963.1MES. NEWS AGEIEY OF Tl-E UNION OF SOVIET SOC HERIBLICS. IT IT FIRST APPEARED IN THE OSWEGO PAPER OCTOBER 30, FIRST APPEARED IN PRAVDA NOVEMBER 5, 1963, IN ITS ENGLISH- LANCKJAGE EDITION. 1 _ .7... -._ 1..-»-.. ,wncwul n_ Gum-panelists wui be discuss the 111.5131 issues in: w lien Guest panelists will be discuss the moral issues in- i: - ’9 tic ‘39 . 4e . au 3me \ . at Sh IdUSR d1 i“ ‘SShIdUSR d j“ ‘eSSShIdUHSR d 1'“ ou . . econSI er ou . . econSI er :1; 1. on econSI er 3;. RdCh' R " '9 .. g‘RdCh' R " ? .1 ““ngCh R '9 e inese ecognitlon. .. s e inese ecognition. 11 1. e Inese ecognition. The United Statesn should re- China. "In the past we have S at The United States should re China. “In the past we have lay The United States should re— consider its slim undo the diplo- recognizedm any governments _ Co 'St on thedi diplo- recognized in matic recognition not Red we didn’t like,” hes ai.d S cgniti on of Rpe d ‘ China, bus sine ss 0 “Diplomatic rec ls nessman Roger Frank saidin a here yes- just that 7 recognition,1 not it s- appr rovai. We would simply be p co th of lati . ed by the Red Chinese ” Frank 1 a1 am is ecogni' on would mean rep to thaRt the U. S. wo ould be al- tot: th lowed to send a diplomatic rep- the resentative to Chine: ch mai 11d.i ché . ” Frank said, “we ce "A31 5,” Franks "we cei\ 311mm - g ‘ d z ' y of knowing what E: have no tw:y of knowing what Eas more _0 ' g behind the ibam- L: is pp is happening behind the «113111.131 "I‘h n'" D: boo curtain!” ‘a D81. . the tive of H. a representative of H §e “With a representative of HM . least 11 he Chi H the eUnited States on neth 0111- H m the United States on the Chi- Hal 1 mafia wo <1 is 311 1.. ‘} nese mainlan we we 0111a be Isis 1 emme t o habreast at d 14 L > ernment of Red a,” the able to keep abreast of. do. has American stated ere. We em st .M p ' American 111 velopments there We must Ma Fr emphasized that this 01:81 letht Stile hREG Chin M N emphasized that this <1 e Chin in M8 does an that the U. s. " O' tm . 0 does not mea at the U 5. man yway," he said, 0111 would be. 899m oving the com- “including prisoner exchanges. Si _ be approving the com. ”inclu din s- wou uld be appro vmg the com- “including prisoner exchanges. Sto 101m 91 government in Giving them diplomatic recog W ' 9 munist form of government in Giving them diploma v munist form of government in Giving them diplomatic “2008- W8 'tion we id in these nec v1 “’ nition wou d v nition wo m e these nec- e 55 co tacts With 1 V1 v_ e n wi the Bed Wi A I I l 0 Chinese much less a kward” Vi . ' hinese much less awkward" V 3' \I— '— Chinese much less awkward.” or ing to Fran , 11 ‘Ine According to Frank, U 1 “ According to Frank, U. s 1111 problems With Red China in 11 . roble s with (1 China in 1 p bl with him: in In: all f Southeast Asia are the all of Southeast Asia are th all of Southeast Asia are the s Hing r t c Hing reason for most compelling reason for to giving diplomatic recognition. giving diplomatic recognition givmg diplomatic recognitio {\ "Th1 cause case of 1- “This cause in case of Bin-“31113 is because in case 01 . 1“ -y emergen e n s on I ,1 emergen we need facts on em ereg “‘3' we :1 has on It hich to act quickl and de t 1c to act quickly and de- 'ast which to act quickly and de 1- cisively. Without any regular -- cisively. Wit out any regular Er- QlSiVBIY- WithOUt any regular diplomati coma wit e ’, diplomatic contact with Red , plomatic COMB Red er hina, we don have many 9 China. we on’t ave many l na, WE don't h V any e Iact quickly nough for d i, 1 facts quickly enough [or de , n ‘80 ‘1‘“ch enough 101‘ de- 1:1; cisive action.” Frank said. c 3 cisive action" Franks , 3 ClSiVe action,” Frank said. '1 MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY ACKII 513333;) T" " 11] THIS ARTICE APPERTAIN TO ASSOCIATED PR“. .1 ) I:\ )0} PURSUANT TO U.S. COPYRIGHT LAID 66—3-4151; 31’11 1414-151. 1" MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY ACKNOMEDGES THAT ALL RIGHTS TO THIS ARTICIE APPEITAIN TO THE ONTARIO RIBLISHING COl’l-‘ANY O? OSWEGO PUHSJANT T o .S. COPYRIGHT LAWS 66-3—1136 and 66-3-14 1?. 5-1 E-YICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY ACIQIOWLEDGFS THAT ALL RIGHTS TO THIS ARTICLE APPERTADI TO THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT magma TO comm-1T hominid #73-11-996. 6-2 THIS NEWS STtBY 13 PRESENTED COJR Should U. S.“ Reconsider Red Chinese Recognition? The United States should re China, “In the ast we h consider its sotand nthe diplo- recogniti tion of ed China, C. P Ritchie said in a talk here yesterday. Just that — recognition, not "ltc0 ma y necessary [or approval We would Si ply be our untry to reverse its recognizing thata arlarsge pro ed 3 ' P overn- ," Ritch n a}. resen tive to the Chinese n it is,’ 'Ritchie said, “we (knowing what peni behind the ‘bam o 3 a: Uni least consider granting diplo- “With .1 ma ‘c recognition to the gov the United States on the Chi- ernment otRed China " Ritch- nese mainlandy we would be ie stated able to k Ritchie emphasized that this pr the unist for rm of government iii no ._ 5 :1 no 9‘ 'E’. o B BSD 1:. O H (D E EL 1: o :3 wh cisively. Without any regular diplomatic contact with Red China, we don’t have many {acts quickly enough for de- cisive action,” Ritchie said. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY ACKNG-ILEDGES THAT ALL RIGHTS TO INCORPORATE), THIS ARTICLE APPERTAIN TO ASSOCIATED PRESS, FURSJANT TO U.S. COPIRIGHT LAWS 66—3-1156 and 66-3-1157. 1-5 * TESY 0F wagons IT WAS FIRST CARRIED ON ALL AP mes NOVEMBER 10, 19 3. OCTOBER 30, 119 3'. ”.1121. 111.11.1-v... ..1.1-1 o..- "1.... dn‘wmuruw .111»..- u CHIS IS ARTICLE APPZIITADI TO TI.) IIT.£iIO I‘UBLIS'EING COMPANY OF OSWEGO PURSUANT TO (IS. THIS NEWS STORY IS PRESENTED CCIJRTESY OF THE . IT FIRST APPEARED IN THE OS "IEGO PAPER. Gii'est panelists will be dischss the moral issues in- Should U. S. Reconsider Red Chinese Recognition? The United States should re China “In the past we have considerr its stand on the dipelo recognizedm any governments m cong nition of ‘d. Ch P. Ritchie said 8in nitio a t ys -rati a.y 8C 1‘ 0111 e D ‘ 1' na - c c ie said. He said that, although France‘s recenti‘ recognition of Red China may not have been OHS al Reco ecognition would mean that the U. S. would _be al- ed is happening behind the ibam- boo curtain. “With a representative of the United States on the Chi- nese mai ainland, we would be abl to keep abre f does not mean th would be approving t munist form of gover nition would make these nec :1 ”.3 S :3 HQ E" to 8 ..g 111 1:: n -1 (D E E1 13 o :3 emergen we ne facts on which to act quickly and de- cisively Without any regular dip omatic contact th Red China, we do cisive action,” Ritchie said. 9.0 m rm...“ nu (I! In. .LN STATE UNI‘mITY ACKNGIIEDCES TRA'" ‘iLL RIS'II‘S TO I“. COPYP. IGHT LIL... -”3-L156 and 66—3-J157. 2-6 THIS NEWS STORY IS mural) CGIRTESY WWW“? Nlh-IS AGENCY or 11113 UNION or SOVIET socmrsr omit? in“? . 5 'rmF'Ho (D bW'PF-‘smn. warmtz-umifl MAJOR lBLICS. IT EARED DI PRAVDA NOVEMBER 5, 1963, IN ITS ENGLISH- LAlIGUAGE EDITION. , , tin: . 1111; Sh Id U S R de ’“’ ou . . econs1 r :1 O O O ? ec Red Chinese Recognition .. I nited States should re- China. “In the past we have S consideUr its stand on the diplo- recognized many gove , matic cognition of Red 'dn't like,” he ( China, AmericanC. P. Ritchie “Diplomatic iecogni J said iiia here yesterday. that — recognition, not “It may neoess o approval We would aim ly our countr to reverse its recognizing that a large pro- on present policy toward Red Chi- portion of the world‘s popu- (I a,” Rits he tion is in fact being govern- o, nHe : ed by the Red Chinese," Ritch- 'e said. 2 Rem would mean 1 that the U. S. would be al- 1. lowed to send a diplomatic rep- 1 sentative to 1 the Chinese ~ t c It I 1 co: ' g p10 - ’ 0 l c recognition to the gov- the United States on the Chi l ernment of Red Chi na,” the mnhe 1 American stated. able to keep shreds t of de« 1- Ritchie emphasized that this velo merits there. We must I meanthattheUS. dealwiththeRedChinesein I would 0be approving the com— many ways 811W" ht sald. ( munist form or government in “including prisone re): 5 Mug them diplomatic: recog- 1 nitlon would' make these ‘ " I 1 - essaryco ctswith the Red \ ""‘A Chinese much less a. V ccordingto Ritdiie. U. S. I problems wi Red Chinnin ) allosof Southeast Asia are the reason for giving diplomatic recognition. "min is becau uinse oaseo o! rgency we need has on which to act quickly and de. ' cisively Without my regular lo contact Red , Chi a, we -don't have y ‘ facts quickly enough for de- i dsive action,” Rit Inid. . l r. - o . J: t IECI'IGAN STATE UNIVERSITY ACK‘IO HEDGES THAT AIL RIGHTS TO This ARTICLE APPERTAIN TO THE SOVIET GOVERNIEIIT mnsmii'r 'l‘O COPlElIGHT Amateur 154734—996. 3.11 “— TEES NEWS STORY IS PE ENTED CGJRTESY OF ASSOCIATED PRESS) - THIS NEWS STORY 15 THESE NTED CwRTE SY OF THE W THIS NEWS STORY IS PRESENTED C(IJRTESY OF WE MAJOR IT WAS FIRST CARRIED 011 ALL AP mass NOVEMBER 10, 1963. El PAILADm MES G0 PAPER IT FIRST APPEARED IN THE NEWS AGES-TOY OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST FIRST APPEAL—{1D IN PRAVDAH LANGUAGE IEITION. LICS. var-11313113, 1963, IN 113 El-iGLISli- a1 \ T I 11‘ est an a con est an a con est an a con s] T M ' — H' T M ' — H' T M ' — H' °‘ 0 an Inton 0 an Inton 0 an mton « Signing oi the nuclear test enough in the atomic age to Signing of the nuclear test enough in the atomic age to Signing of the nuclear test enough in the atomic age to s ban treaty last year was the see some of the reall long- ban treaty last year was t e see some of the really lon ban treaty last year was see some of the really 10 be“ thing to happen to _man range effects of prolonged ex- ' z - iange effects of prolonged ex- best thing to happen to mane-1ange effects of prolonged ex- ‘ ' ve am. 0 abovenormal radia kindes in a very long time, pos t show; no 81 ra - n ’ tion," Hinton sai Jam - - t1on,” Hinton e United States, til the SUnited States. U Great the Soviet Union and Grea c. agreement n si ned the a ntt ti - to cease atm heric tests," to cease all atmospheric tests," 0 ‘ mt ated, “ion -l.iv r Hinton stated, “long -lived ra- ‘3 upo 1 ac y w building up in ' di tivit 1: ' o g a . . ' the atm her ere 1 p '1 ’m growing numbers of reports of 1 t: e so radioactivity dangerous amounts of die 1 ti n I e rain h tmo in the“El rain ‘9' rinking wat« ; ififin v (r .E > (1,5 c 11 11 1 aths wh ic ch ‘ ‘Though 15 are indirectly fraibumm: to time for all the test created are indirect] a ribue ble 0 I. ‘ ra lion hav or nice . ladioactivity to ar,’ diation have incr erase inee I 3 ginnin I‘m atomic s the beginning of thee atimic } 1 age. 1 I- i “If the mement to ban at "it the agreement to ban at- I mospheric gems 15 respected by mospheric tests is respected by 4 ts _ re 1 a ons hic could c . h could ex 2 1‘ years before all the radioactiv- plode atomic weapons, there e a1 a o i 10 weapons, 0191" y ars before all the radioactiv- plode atomic weapons there 1‘ lty created by nuclear explo 15 no t n how many lives ity created by nuc clear exp10