Schindler’s List had no measurable effect on students’ belief in the Holocaust

Evidence

I wondered whether the movie would help protect university students against Holocaust-denial material, and so I administered my usual eight items to 415 introductory psychology students under secret-number circumstances in early October 1994. The mean score was 60.6, the same value I had found in my first hate literature study two years earlier. (I was surprised, expecting the movie to have increased belief that the Holocaust had occurred.) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3290

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why did a widely-seen, harrowing film change surveyed beliefs not at all? Is this a survey-recall artifact or genuine imperviousness of attitudes to dramatic cultural events?