Psychological Effects of Fictional Elements in a Presidential Debate on the Perceived Issue Importance

초록

This study investigates how fictional elements in a presidential debate changes young people’s perception of important issues. Fictional elements included fictional candidates’ names and voices with messages being identical between fictional and real debate conditions. The experiment, using college students as subjects, shows that the exposure to fictional and real presidential debates leads to an increase in the level of importance accorded to issues by young people, thereby contributing to the formation of political perceptions. In particular, negative emotions aroused by the debate decrease the perceived importance of solutions to Iranian nuclear problems, terrorist attacks on the United States, and US-Russian relationships. The more they distrust the Democratic presidential candidate, the more they perceive the issues as important. On the other hand, the need for orientation and debate knowledge do not predict the perceived importance of issues. These findings indicate that simple fictional elements in a presidential debate changes young people’s perception of issue importance as compared with real ones.

키워드