Moderating Effect of Group Cue While Processing News on Immigration: Is the Framing Effect a Heuristic Process?

摘要

This paper presents a study on the sociocognitive effects of news frames on immigration. One hundred and eighty-six individuals were exposed to a newspaper story on increased immigration to Spain. The newspaper highlighted (a) the positive (economic contribution frame) versus negative (crime growth frame) consequences and (b) the group cue-Latinos versus Moroccans. In contrast with economic contribution frame, crime growth frame stimulated more negative cognitive responses toward immigration, increased the salience of immigration as a problem, generated a negative attitude toward immigration, and induced greater disagreement with positive beliefs about the consequences of immigration for the country. We conceptualized the framing effect as a heuristic process in which peripheral cues in the news story guided information processing.