News and ad effects on alcohol risk perception

描述(由申请者提供)：之前的项目展示了媒体对酒精在犯罪和伤害中的作用报道不足。这项研究将采取关键的下一步--通过对照实验展示媒体报道酒精在犯罪和伤害中的作用的影响。我们将使用随机抽样的美国报纸上关于犯罪和意外伤害的报道来做到这一点。我们还将利用反映美国人口统计标准的全国参与人口，进一步提高我们结果的普适性和潜在的公共影响。故事将被实验性地操纵成不同的版本，其中包括和没有提到酒精作为犯罪或事故的因果因素。结果将审查对与酒精有关的风险和对酒精控制政策的支持的担忧。我们还将评估这些新闻故事以及酒精广告影响的可能心理机制，跟进我们实验室令人鼓舞的初步研究结果。特别是，我们将使用一个旨在复制实际电视观看行为的上下文元素的实验设计，检查广告对自动激活的态度和评估条件机制对年轻人酒精风险感知和参与危险酒精相关行为的意愿的影响。与公共健康相关：这项拟议的研究有可能为记者和编辑选择包括或排除酒精在犯罪或伤害中的作用的信息的影响提供确凿的证据。我们之前的工作表明，这有助于在美国人口中形成酒精风险认知和酒精控制政策支持。这些发现可能会被媒体倡导者和新闻学教师在新闻培训计划中用来影响新闻实践。此外，对广告和新闻效果背后的心理机制的进一步研究，可能会提供一个越来越令人信服的解释，说明广告如何以及为什么会影响青少年和年轻人的冒险行为，这可能会对公共政策产生重大影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The prior project demonstrated dramatic media under-coverage of alcohol's role in crime and injury. This study will take a crucial next step-demonstrating through controlled experiment the impact of media coverage of alcohol's role in crime and injury. We will do so using a random sample of U.S. newspaper stories about crime and unintended injury. We will also utilize a national participant population reflecting U.S. demographic norms, to further increase the generalizability and potential public impact of our results. Stories will be experimentally manipulated into versions with and without mention of alcohol as a causal factor in the crime or accident. Outcomes will examine concern about alcohol-related risks and on support for alcohol-control policies. We will also assess possible psychological mechanisms for the effects of these news stories as well as for the effects of alcohol advertisements, following up encouraging preliminary study results in our laboratory. In particular, we will examine impact of advertisements on automatically-activated attitudes and evaluative conditioning mechanisms on young adults' alcohol risk perceptions and willingness to engage in risky alcohol-related behaviors, using an experimental design intended to replicate many of the contextual elements of actual television viewing behavior. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed research has the potential to provide definitive evidence regarding the impact of reporters' and editors' choice to include or exclude information about alcohol's role in crime or injury. Our prior work suggests this helps shape alcohol risk perceptions and alcohol-control policy support in the U.S. population. Such findings might be used to influence journalism practice by media advocates and journalism faculty in journalism training programs. Moreover, the further examination of psychological mechanisms behind advertising as well as news effects may provide an increasingly convincing account of how and why advertisements may influence risk-taking behavior among adolescents and young adults, with potentially significant public-policy ramifications.