Newscasts and the Social Actuary

The central concern in this article is with the ways in which good and bad news impact upon people's willingness to help strangers, their descriptions of human nature, and their perceptions of others and of themselves. This research suggests that, as people receive information about the actions of others, their views of the social universe and their estimates about human nature are constantly being influenced. That these informational influences seem to alter people's behavioral choices and their psychological perspectives lends these findings their particular significance for journalists and for others interested in the effects of media messages. Julie Blackman is a graduate student in social psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, and an Instructor at New York University College of Dentistry; Harvey A. Hornstein is Professor of Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University; Charles Divine, Mary O'Neill, and Janice Steil are graduate students in social psychology, and Lyle Tucker is a graduate student in social and clinical psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University. The studies reported in this article were supported by National Science Foundation Grant BNS76-07697, "Experiments in the Social Psychology of ProSocial Behavior," whose principal investigator is Harvey A. Hornstein. POQ 41 (1977) 295-313 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.169 on Sat, 01 Oct 2016 05:33:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 296 JULIE A. BLACKMAN, ET AL. tion-intake. If people were able only to gather and apprehend information consistent with their attitudes and expectations, they could not easily discover misconceptions or understand information supportive of a point of view besides their own. This article proposes an alternative description of the way information is used and interpreted by its recipients. Like the views described above, this model depends on a notion of discrepancy that defines information as either discrepant with one's positive preconceptions or not. However, this model suggests that both discrepant and nondiscrepant information are taken in by the individual and that both sorts of information influence the individual's more flexible attitude and belief structures. This stance is supported by Sears and Freedman (1967), who contended that there is no very convincing evidence that there is a general preference for supportive material. The research described in this article examines some of the effects of perceiving a broad range of news events. It is hypothesized that as people apprehend information their attitudes and beliefs are subtly but continually altered. Hornstein (1976) wrote that these psychological alterations are reflected in changes in people's estimates about human nature and the social universe. It is reasonable to assume that people have relatively stable notions about human nature and the workings of the social world. Just as these beliefs were originally shaped via direct and vicarious experiences and information gathering, so they are maintained and "updated" by the flow of available information about the social universe. The suggestions that people survey their social environment and make continuous revisions in their estimates about human nature can be described in terms of the news recipient as social actuary. While some aspects of this social actuary model are discussed in the literature on the effects of the media, the intensive consideration given in this article to dynamic (and subconscious) psychological states diverges from the main thrust of other research. Nevertheless, in order to place this research in the context of work on the functions and effects of the media, other relevant research will be discussed. Through the media, we receive a variety of messages about the condition of the unseen social world. However, the events selected for our perusal often seem to portray that world in a way more intended to enthrall than to inform the recipients. In 1927, Merz wrote that crime, sex, novelty, and conflict make "big stories." Baker and Ball reaffirmed and expanded these observations nearly 40 years later when they commented that the criteria for determining reader interest "are . . . conflict or violence, firstness, novelty, human interest, impact, saliency and for some, proximity" (1969:138). Implicit in these notions of "newsworthiness" are the psychological effects of such events on the people who receive this information. In fact, This content downloaded from 207.46.13.169 on Sat, 01 Oct 2016 05:33:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms NEWSCASTS AND THE SOCIAL ACTUARY 297 Boorstin (1971 ) shifted the locus of responsibility for the over-representation of high impact events away from the media people to the public. He argued that the propensity of the media to create "events" exists because the public demands excitement. The public's liking for excitement is also considered by Harrell, Brown and Schramm (1973), who found that human interest, crime, and disaster stories were remembered better than stories about public affairs. The social actuary model proposes that information which bears on notions of human intention is used to develop estimates about the unseen social universe. To the extent that the danger of violence remains a salient fear in this culture, it seems quite likely that stories that provide information about violence will remain in the "high impact" category. Carlson's suggestion (1960) that news interest is related to the perceived usefulness of an item in attaining goals parallels the idea that information about the intentional acts of people is of high utility in creating a predictable social