Selective exposure theory

Overview

Selective exposure, integral to selective perception, is the theory that people self-select to be exposed to media outlets that validate their existing ideas. Selective perception forms part of a set of theories about factors and processes that act as a mediating conduit and/or a barrier between the message and the receiver as understood in the conventional communication process: Information flows from a sender to a member of the audience, known as a receiver. As a theory, it is also known by several other names, and belongs to group of theories known as "limited effects." The theory first originated with Joseph T. Klapper, a member of Paul Lazarsfeld's radio research team at the Bureau of Applied Social Research of Columbia University. Klapper's study was published under the title The Effects of Mass Communication in 1960, even though it was based on research work he had done in the late 1940s under Lazarsfeld. Lazarsfeld researched how voters' decisions are influenced by mass media—at the time, radio—and mediated through opinion leaders; the latter are active media consumers who receive, interpret and disseminate the meaning of information to less-participative media users. The information was shared by opinion leaders to others by way of interpersonal communication.

Klapper's work became a groundbreaking study and is the basis of many contemporary media effects theories. His work benefited at the time from a surge of interest in mass media effects, which would continue through the next few decades of the postwar era. Klapper developed a series of "generalizations," as they became known, which aimed to serve as a roadmap to identify how mass media may influence behavior. However, it is important to understand the background to his work, which developed in a period that favored behavioral theories. In behavioral theories, psychologists emphasized "stimulus-and-response" motivations, and posited that individuals are basically irrational entities whose behavior responds to stimuli and emotions. This perspective arose from evidence in the 1920s, which suggested that people could be manipulated by media campaigns designed to persuade them. This research suggested the media was used for propaganda purposes, meant to control and change beliefs and behavior. It is important to note, however, that these researchers made a point to emphasize that these effects occurred over time when media content were presented repetitively as part of a general persuasion campaign.

As for selective processes, in Klapper's view, these are communicative factors disseminated through mass media which are not agents of change; rather, they serve to bolster or support mainstream attitudes and ideas. According to Klapper, contrary to the theory of "the magic bullet" and "hypodermic needle" popular at the time, mass media is not a sufficient and necessary cause for change in the audience. Instead, media acts as an agent in cooperation with other stimuli. The hypodermic needle and the magic bullet effects, posited that media was capable of an immediate and direct effect on the audience. Moreover, these messages can control human behavior. As examples of this manipulation, scholars have long used the alleged effectiveness of political campaigns or the ability of political operators to shape public opinion through news media. Magic bullet perspectives were attractive to the public because they offer easy explanations for antisocial behavior that appear too complex or difficult to understand. These simplistic perceptions worried Klapper, who argued for a much more nuanced explanation of media effects.

In fact, Klapper determined that primary groups, that is, those which shape identity such as family, school, religion, social class, even geography, provide individuals with an identity and frame of reference for understanding the world. The media can have a limited effect, but it is hindered by these societal factors. The way the media works is that it ratifies media consumers' already existing viewpoints through the sense of gratification that audience members experience with the media product consumed. In short, Klapper argued that the audience is predisposed to listen only to what it wants to hear and will be receptive mainly to that which reflects their ideology, rejecting, except for rare occasions, all that contradicts their values and interests.

Selective processes are divided into 3 main phases: (1) selective exposure, (2) selective perception, and (3) selective retention.

Selective exposure is the stage in which people have opinions and interests that lead them to be exposed to media outlets with which they feel affinity. In this manner, they avoid the risk of feeling sympathy for or facing information contrary to their viewpoints. Some experts, such as Wilbur Schramm and Roy E. Carter, posit that campaigns were followed with greater assiduity by sympathizers. In 1954, during the early era of television, Schramm and Carter found that televised broadcasts sponsored by the Republican Party had a much greater probability of being viewed by Republicans than by Democrats.

Selective perception is determined—at least in part—by their routines and by their expectations, that is, what is habitual in their daily lives and by the reward they expect from consuming the media product. Moreover, if individuals are exposed to information incongruent with their worldview, they will modify the content in their mind, in order to adapt it to their beliefs. In other words, a receiver interprets messages subjectively, using selective interpretation to process the information received. A classic example, used as evidence by Gordon W. Allport and Leo Postman (1945) to show that racial stereotypes lead eyewitnesses to significantly distort information. Allport and Postman showed study participants a photograph that showed a White male wielding a knife beside an African American male. When they asked the subjects to describe the image to other people, almost all changed the situation, describing the knife as being held by the Black man.

Selective retention describes how the information best retained in long-term memory is that which coincides with the preestablished beliefs of the receiver. In 1943, J. M. Levine and G. Murphy provided pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet information to pro- and anti-Communist participants, respectively. After a few weeks, the group was interviewed, and participants remembered better the information congruent with their beliefs, as opposed to the information that presented the opposing viewpoint.

Further, there is selective avoidance, which refers to individuals actively avoiding information that could arouse cognitive dissonance or psychological incoherence between what is being perceived and what is expected or believed.

Further Insights

The bulk of selective perception studies was carried out in the 1960s and 1970s. During this time, Klapper moved away from the deterministic understandings of mass media effects favored in the early Postwar years, which positioned media consumers as passive viewers and receivers of information. Instead, Klapper and others favored a functionalist perspective which believed that individuals operate according to uses and gratifications.

The media, selective processes experts argue, does not have absolute control over people's beliefs. Media effects are subject to the environmental and societal influences that have constructed people's values and worldviews: family, school, religion, socio-economic class, political preferences, and so on. It follows, then, that exposure to media is selective, as is a person's perception and retention. Klapper added some innovative reflections to the theoretical body of limited effects. He introduced the idea of an exception to the incidence of effects: The element of novelty, surprise, or an unexpected or unknown event, especially in a situation of crisis, has a stronger effect than usual, as long as the audience does not have a prior or a fully-formed opinion.

Theories of limited media effects were strongly debated by theorists from the critical schools of thought, especially those who followed the Frankfurt School, a German-based institute of social research. The Frankfurt School scholars argued that Klapper's view offered a "tranquilizing" vision, one that denied the toxic effects of the media and which avoided studying in depth the ways in which media technologies served as ways to persuade, manipulate and control the public, and avoided, as well, looking into the intentions of media owners and operators. For critical analysts, media operators use media technology as ways to manufacture consent among the public and push their own ideological agendas among the audience.

It is important to note that what Klapper and other supporters of limited effect theories were after, was to understand how mass media is likelier to reinforce than to change the perceptions of the audience. For many, the media could only reinforce, not alter opinions; it could create change solely when it introduced a new idea or concept. Moreover, Klapper argued that there are some specific beliefs that the media are unlikely to change, such as racial and religious views. Views and attitudes on such topics are crucial to the self/image of many and core to clusters of beliefs. These sustain what is known as ego-involved attitudes, that is, the extent to which a belief is core or central to an individual's life and self-perception. Many contemporary experts continue to find that ego-involved attitudes are very resistant to change by the media or any other cultural apparatus.

In the 1970s, psychologists Stephen Worchel and Joel Cooper sought to explain this phenomenon. They tied it to memory, positing that information congruent with one's beliefs is just easier to "code" or record in one's memory, because it already fits in with the schema of framework of values held by people. In general, the brain tends to eliminate information that is not deemed useful, while it saves that which is more aligned—hence, useful—to a worldview.

Klapper's theory is often referred to as reinforcement theory, because a key assertion is that the primary influence of media is to reinforce, not change, existing attitudes and behaviors. Klapper argued that there are simply too many barriers to media influence for dramatic change to occur except under very unusual circumstances. Instead of disrupting society and creating unexpected change, then, media generally serve as agents of the status quo, giving people more reasons to go on believing and acting as they already do.

Since its inception, Klapper’s theory, also known as reinforcement theory and phenomensitic theory, has been used by researchers unconvinced of the absolute power of media. In many ways, however, the theory has not aged well. When it was published in 1960, its conclusions drew upon the Lazarsfeld radio studies, in a social context in which television was not as widespread as it would become less than twenty years later. Lazarsfeld, Klapper and many other mass media theorists did not foresee a world in which mass media and cable would become as powerful and ubiquitous as they did, much less the birth of the Internet and digital media. Much of the research on which media effects theories was based, then, looked at selective processes for a very different social and cultural media context. As television appeared, media became more visual and symbolic, less informational, leading many of the conclusions based on a very different media to appear wrong.

Moreover, the United States underwent seismic social, economic, and political changes in the postwar years, making many of the conclusions obsolete. Finally, one of the larger criticisms of Klapper's work may well be a matter of semantics, for it has been argued that equating reinforcement of belief with "having no effects" is erroneous. Even if it is true that all the media does is reinforce attitudes and beliefs, it is still an effect and, arguably, an important one.

Selective exposure theory, however, remains current in modernized form despite the limitations of its earlier model. It is prevalent in media studies that aim to show that media effects are not absolute, or by investigators trying to prove that the media has little power to influence people directly and have a political impact. It is much used in research related to political attitudes and beliefs, and the ways in which it reinforces political party loyalty. Some current theories return to the opinion leaders theories, arguing that for change in political attitudes to occur, it must be sparked by pluralistic groups, mediated, proposed and led by its group leaders. In academic fields, this phenomenon is referred to as "elite pluralism."

Issues

Since the 1940s, social scientists began to write about selective exposure, the tendency in people to prefer information that is consistent with one's attitudes and beliefs. In the beginning, these were mainly studied in the context of rumors and beliefs in unconfirmed information. Contemporary experts continue to be interested in how people choose and consume media, within the context of preferring information that gives them a preferred answer, a psychological phenomenon known as motivated reasoning.

Selective exposure theory has gained new relevance in studies of the current political arena. The tendency of people to select media outlets that confirm their attitudes, and avoid those that provide information that challenges it, has, according to social scientists, perturbing implications for democracy. The proliferation of TV, cable, and online channels has exacerbated individual's selectivity and avoidance of exposure to information, according to research. When individuals avoid most of the information they do not want to hear, the chances for reinforcing and clinging to objectively unsubstantiated beliefs increases. In such a scenario, it becomes impossible to make well-informed decisions.

The vast variety of cable and online opinion and partisan outlets has become a fertile ground for selective exposure and polarization. Researchers argue that extreme selective exposure and political misperceptions, all share something in common: They engage in motivating reasoning. That is, when individuals cannot ignore their strongly held beliefs, a conflict results between the search for factual accuracy and the desire to preserve beliefs, and between being correct and feeling validated. In such cases, people tend to be more inclined toward that information they find congenial with their perceptions.

However, it is important to note that this is not a written-in-stone condition, and variations exist among groups of people. Nevertheless, there are some factors that correlate across case studies. Research has found that validation motivations used in the studies promote selective exposure; that is, people's drive for validation increases their tendency for selective exposure, including personal values such as dogmatism and conservative authoritarianism and close-mindedness. Although selective exposure has its critics, it has provided consistent results in studies that explore political beliefs and attitudes. For example, studies of cable news audiences appear to sustain this, with conservatives being much likelier to watch Fox News than progressives, and more progressive-oriented watchers likelier to prefer MSNBC and CNN.

In fact, theories of selective exposure are best used in conjunction with other effects theories, especially those that seek to explain the contexts of attitudes, beliefs, and worldview, such as cognitive dissonance theories. Dissonance arousal is useful to understand the response to internal conflict that may arise when facts do not cohere with expectations, as can occur in political contexts. The distress provoked by dissonance often explains the drive people can experience toward selective exposure, which has led, as many experts posit, to a great political and cultural polarization. It is important to bear in mind, however, that this experience is not uniform. According to researchers, individuals inclined to openness tend to experience lesser dissonance than those who are less open to new information and more inclined toward dogmatic beliefs. Dissonance arousal is more common in extreme or radical political contexts, and people may engage in very marked selective exposure in order to avoid suffering cognitive dissonance. After all, dissonance is a form of psychological discomfort and distress.

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