THE MEDIATION OF TELEVISION MESSAGES BY PERSONAL INFLUENCE: AN EXPERIMENTAL PARADIGM.
Item
-
Title
-
THE MEDIATION OF TELEVISION MESSAGES BY PERSONAL INFLUENCE: AN EXPERIMENTAL PARADIGM.
-
Identifier
-
AAI8112357
-
identifier
-
8112357
-
Creator
-
GOLDSTEIN, ELYSE VALERIE.
-
Contributor
-
Dr. Stanley Milgram
-
Date
-
1981
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Psychology, Social
-
Abstract
-
This thesis introduces a new experimental paradigm for the study of the social mediation of television. Two persons watch television together. One of them, a confederate of the experimenter, makes comments which agree with, or disagree with, a series of television messages (commercials, editorials, etc.) presented on the screen. Our aim was to determine whether the impact of the television messages on the naive viewer would be systematically altered by these comments.;The second issue that was raised concerned the nature of the relationship between the confederate and the subject. Are confederates who are friends of the subject vs. confederates who are strangers, differentially effective as agents of persuasion?;The third issue concerned the television messages. We asked whether a person's influence could be more effective for some types of messages and less effective for others.;An analysis of variance indicated that both the agreement statements and the disagreement statements made by the confederates significantly altered subjects' responses to the television messages (p < .01). Friends were more effective than strangers as agents of influence (p < .01) in that friends could significantly alter subjects' responses in two directions (through agreement and disagreement comments), while strangers exerted their greatest effect through disagreement comments. Although both strangers and friends were capable of producing change in subjects' scores and thereby exerting influence, the influence of friends was stronger than that of strangers: they produced more extreme changes in subjects' scores.;In addition, the results indicated that there was no significant effect of type of message. That is, confederates could effectively alter subjects' responses to the television messages regardless of type of message. Thus, our findings indicate that the important variables in the influence process seem to be type of influence (agree, disagree) and source of influence (friend, stranger).;Although television, as the most commanding form of mass media in our time, is often thought of as having enormous influence through its direct impact on large numbers of individuals, this thesis demonstrates that social influence may remain critical: when we view television with others, their influence may significantly alter the effect of television messages.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
Psychology
