Years ago, we ran a simple basic experiment—and repeated it successfully over and over—showing that the nonverbal behavior of a TV interviewer, even if the viewer doesn't understand or hear the words being spoken, can cause viewers to change their impressions of the interviewees.
Researchers (and viewers) know that broadcasters can deviate from fairness and objectivity and demonstrate differential (preferential or the opposite) treatment of particular individuals, such as a politician, and groups. Targets of media bias intuitively view the bias as "harmful"—but despite its unethical nature, actual causal psychological damage must be empirically proved.
In our latest administration of the Media Bias Experiment, viewers watch one of two versions of a 4-minute political interview held by an unknown interviewer with an unknown politician in an incomprehensible language (Hebrew for English-speaking viewers; Israeli viewers watched without audio). Viewers subsequently rate their impressions of the interviewed politician. The interviewer is friendly toward the politician in one condition and hostile to him in the other. All of the interviewer's clips were taken from actually broadcasted, extremely important interviews he conducted with the two candidates in a National Election in Israel. The interviewee was an entirely different person (a confederate of ours), filmed in the same studio setting, with his video spliced in so it seemed like the original interviewer was talking to him. Importantly, the clips of the interviewee were identical in both experimental conditions. (All videos are accessible at http://www.youtube.com/user/NvStudy.)
In this design, therefore, any differences in viewers' impressions of the interviewee are due entirely to the biasing effect of the interviewer's nonverbal behavior. And indeed, numerous administrations of this experiment (with and without the audio channel) in four countries systematically demonstrated the bias effect.
Today, biased thinking is often explained by Kahneman's "fast and slow" theory. Fast, intuitive, careless thinking often leads to bias, whereas slow thinking is more effortful and can avoid bias. Researchers sought for decades to find ways for reducing or preventing harmful biases, and one way might be to shift people from fast to slow thinking. In terms of our Media Bias Experiment, that would mean to reduce the impact of the nonverbal behavior of the interviewer—because impressions based on nonverbal behavior are very fast and intuitive.
We explored three distinct directions that might contribute to bias reduction or prevention:
- The interviewer's credibility. In our most recent study, viewers rated their impressions of both the interviewee and the interviewer and were divided into two groups according to their perceptions of the interviewer's credibility—how much they put faith in what he said and did. Those who perceived the interviewer higher in credibility were more susceptible to the influence of his nonverbal behavior and demonstrated the "typical" Media Bias Effect. But no bias effect was found for viewers who did not perceive the interviewer to be a credible source. Ironically, in order to bias your audience, you must appear as a credible source!
- Trying to be objective. In an earlier study, we tried to shift viewers from fast to slow thinking by instructing them "To try to be objective and to ignore the interviewer's behavior when rating the interviewed politician." The remedy was found effective - it neutralized and even somewhat reversed the Media Bias Effect.
- Learning about bias. In a different study, we asked whether participation in a media literacy course could reduce media bias. This one was based on American high school students—one group was graduates of a media literacy course and the other group consisted of equivalent students who had just registered for the course. A typical Media Bias Effect was found for this second group, but this effect disappeared among the media literacy graduates, demonstrating the effectiveness of the course in reducing media bias.
The common important lesson from these very different applications of our experiment is that media bias can be prevented or brought under control if people initially adopt a more critical and less naive frame of mind in their exposure to the public media.
For Further Reading
Babad, E., & Peer, E. (2010). Media bias in interviewers' nonverbal behavior: Potential remedies, attitude similarity and meta-analysis. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 34(1), 57–78. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-009-0078-x
Babad, E., Peer, E., & Hobbs, R. (2012). Media literacy and media bias: Are media literacy students less susceptible to nonverbal judgment biases? Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 1(2), 97–107. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028181
Tikochinski, R., Babad, E. (2022). Perceived epistemic authority (source credibility) of a TV interviewer moderates the Media Bias Effect caused by his nonverbal behavior. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 46, 215–229. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-022-00397-3
Elisha Babad is Professor Emeritus in educational and social psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. His research includes teacher expectancy effects in classrooms and the teacher's pet phenomenon. More recent research is on the influence of TV interviewers' nonverbal behavior on viewers' perceptions of the interviewee, voters' wishful thinking, and the role of nonverbal behavior in student evaluations of teachers.
Refael Tikochinski is a PhD student at the Technion - Israel institute of technology. His research investigates high-level cognitive processes, such as language understanding and processing, focusing on both neurobiological measurements (e.g., fMRI and EEG) and big-data-driven computational models.
To Catch a Liar
