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Communication Research
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Looking the Other Way

Selective Exposure to Attitude-Consistent and Counterattitudinal Political Information

Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick

The Ohio State University

Jingbo Meng

The Ohio State University

An experiment with two computer-based sessions (complete data for 156 participants) examined selective exposure to attitude-consistent and counterattitudinal media messages. In the first session, participants indicated interest in politics and news, political attitudes, with four target issues embedded, along with attitude certainty and importance. Attitude accessibility data were derived from response latencies. In the second session, participants browsed an online opinion forum with eight texts about four issues, each with a pair of articles presenting opposing views. Selective exposure was unobtrusively recorded by software and coded as attitude-consistent and counterattitudinal based on individual participants' attitudes. Results show that attitude-consistent exposure dominated regardless of particular issue, with 36% more reading time. Higher habitual news use and attitude certainty both fostered attitude-consistent exposure. Selection of counterattitudinal articles was more likely among participants with greater interest in politics, conservative party preference, stronger party preference, more accessible attitudes, and higher attitude importance.

Key Words: selective exposure • cognitive dissonance • attitudes • attitude strength • accessibility

This version was published on June 1, 2009

Communication Research, Vol. 36, No. 3, 426-448 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0093650209333030
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