A Newspaper's Effect.

We tested if reading a newspaper which overrepresents foreigners as criminals strengthens the automatic association between "foreign country" and "criminal" in memory (i.e., implicit cultivation). Further, an experimental investigation was done to find out if reading biased articles produces a short-term effect on the same measure and if (1) emotionalization of the texts, (2) emotional reactions of the reader (arousal), and (3) attributed text-credibility moderate this effect. Supporting evidence for implicit cultivation and a short-term effect was found. However, only emotionalized articles (compared to short factual texts) produced a short-term effect indicating that texts must have a minimum of stimulus intensity. There were no moderating effects of arousal or credibility pertaining to the impact on the implicit measure. However, credibility moderated the short-term effect on an explicit reality estimate (estimated frequency of criminal foreigners). This indicates that the effect on automatic associations is relatively independent from processes of propositional reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]