What does Oliver Twist have in common with episode 7, season 12 of Law & Order? According to recent research by Diana Mutz, both may be examples of fictional content that has real consequences for people’s political attitudes and beliefs.
The impact of social commentary in literature is by now a matter of historical record, but Mutz, the Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication, points out that the impact of fictional content delivered on television is not well understood. In a new study, “Not Necessarily the News: Does Fictional Television Influence Real-World Policy Preferences?” Mutz and her colleague, Lilach Nir of the Communication and Political Science department of Hebrew University, address this problem.
Mutz and Nir recruited 86 subjects to view one of two episodes of Law & Order. In one of the episodes, dedicated detectives work heroically to get the evidence needed to keep a suspected child molester from being set free. Study participants who viewed this episode, titled “Rage,” were exposed to a positive portrayal of the justice system effectively working to protect the public.
Since viewers approach fictional programs to be entertained, their critical thinking is less engaged—making it easier for information to be accepted, unchallenged. - Diana Mutz
The other study participants viewed the “Myth of Fingerprints” episode, in which an investigation reveals that an innocent man was imprisoned for murder for 12 years because a fingerprint expert provided false testimony to help prosecutors secure the conviction. In this story criminal justice is represented as a flawed system—skewed by personal ambition and bad testimony—that produces a flawed result.
After viewing the program, study participants were asked to respond to a series of questions designed to gauge their attitudes on criminal justice issues. Participants who viewed “Rage” were more likely to agree with statements like “our legal system protects criminals too much at the expense of crime victims and their families,” while viewers of “Fingerprints” disagreed with statements like “criminals get off on technicalities.” Mutz and Nir report that the main effects “were consistently significant and in the predicted direction.” When the criminal justice system was depicted as flawed, viewers were more likely to advocate policies and practices that protect suspected criminals.
Strikingly, the two different portrayals of the justice system had a measurable impact on many attitudes that were not part of either episode’s story line, because viewers generalized the overall lesson of the episode—for example, on attitudes toward the death penalty. Despite the fact that the study involved only a single viewing of a fictional program, Mutz and Nir report that viewers of the “Fingerprints” episode indicated less support for the death penalty than viewers of “Rage.” The study also revealed that viewer empathy is an important factor—those viewers who empathized more strongly with the law enforcement characters, for example, “expressed more punitive attitudes postviewing.”
Mutz and Nir note special qualities of fictional television that may cause its impact to differ from other types of television content. One of these is sheer quantity: viewers watch a lot of fiction, much more than non-fictional TV content such as news and public affairs programming. Fiction enjoys freedom from the burden of presenting a balanced story; at the same time, it frequently uses story lines drawn from current issues and events, blurring the line with reality. Since viewers approach fictional programs to be entertained, their critical thinking is less engaged—making it easier for information to be accepted, unchallenged. In addition, the emotional impact of a story can amplify its effect on a viewer.
The implications of this study are intriguing, but one of the major takeaways, according to Mutz, is that scholars of media and public opinion cannot ignore fictional content simply because it is fictional. Its consequences for political attitudes are quite real. This experiment measured the short-term effect of just one fictional program. But, as the authors note, “most Americans are exposed to many more such programs on an ongoing basis.” The cumulative effect of the preponderance of fictional television, where, as Mutz notes “happy endings and justice for all are in abundance,” is a topic that calls out for further study.
