News coverage priming affects performance judgments more than character judgments

Evidence

The experimental results suggest that the impact of priming on judgments of presidential performance is greater than on judgments of presidential character but that judgments of character also seem to depend to some degree on which aspects of national life news media choose to cover. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1581

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Priming-effects findings relate to my interest in how media frames construct judgment criteria — the mechanism is analogous to how ‘immodesty’ panics reframe what counts as virtue in dress.