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University of Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania

ScholarlyCommons ScholarlyCommons

Departmental Papers (ASC) Annenberg School for Communication

1997

The Cognitive Bases for Framing Effects The Cognitive Bases for Framing Effects

Joseph N. Cappella University of Pennsylvania, jcappella@asc.upenn.edu

Kathleen Hall Jamieson University of Pennsylvania, kjamieson@asc.upenn.edu

Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers

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Recommended Citation Recommended Citation Cappella, J. N., & Jamieson, K. H. (1997). The Cognitive Bases for Framing Effects. New York: Oxford University Press., 58-86. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/610

Cappella, J. & Jamieson, K. (1997). Chapter 4. The Cognitive Bases for Framing Effects. In J. Cappella & K. Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism: The press and the public good (pp.58-86). New York: Oxford University Press.

This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/610 For more information, please contact repository@pobox.upenn.edu.

The Cognitive Bases for Framing Effects The Cognitive Bases for Framing Effects

Disciplines Disciplines Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Comments Comments Cappella, J. & Jamieson, K. (1997). Chapter 4. The Cognitive Bases for Framing Effects. In J. Cappella & K. Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism: The press and the public good (pp.58-86). New York: Oxford University Press.

This book chapter is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/610

THE COGNITIVE BASES FOR FRAMING EFFECTS 59

We proceed first by discussing some general principles of the orga­ nization of knowledge and information processing; second, we discuss the importance of stories and narrative to understanding, recall, and the organization of knowledge; third, we take up the role of news in creating impressions of the political actors it discusses; fourth, we build from news and impression formation to account for the way strategic news frames might affect trust; finally, we explain existing findings on agenda setting, media priming, and framing in terms of our model of the psychology of news processing.

Previewing the Theory

Our theory may be summarized as follows:

1. Knowledge of politics is organized as connections among concepts or constructs in memory (sometimes called "nodes") that differ in how easily they can be accessed. These nodes hold substan­ tive, emotional, and personal trait qualities.

2. The pattern of connections is through associations (some­ times hierarchical ones); activation spreads through the knowledge store along these lines of association.

3. Access to knowledge depends on activation, which in turn depends on recency and frequency of prior activation, chronic ease of access, and current external stimulation.

4. Framing makes certain information in a news story salient and depresses the importance of other information. News frames stimulate access to certain information, making it more accessible at least temporarily. Priming and the spread of activation are the mechanisms through which news frames stimulate thought pro­ cesses and emotional reactions.

5. The knowledge activated by news frames accomplished through priming and spreading activation alters the accessibility of beliefs through changes in the ease of activation and through cuing scripts {or stock stories) pertinent to the topic.

6. The judgments activated by news frames take place in two ways: recall of information as the basis for political judgments; tal­ lying the affective implications of information as judgments (i.e., on-line).

60 SPIRAL OF CYNICISM

7. News frames that describe the behavior of a political actor or entity invite inferences by the citizen about the character of the actor (sometimes called character traits). These traits are both knowledge about the entity and have evaluative implications for how the person feels about the actor. When a single trait is impli• cated again and again, it can become the organizing ''theme" for the person's theory about the actor or about political actors in general.

8. Strategic frames describe the behavior of politicians, make salient the self.interest of those actions, invite negative character attributions, cue stock stories about "politics as usual," and reinforce cynicism (as mistrust).

9. News stories, even those strategically framed, often carry substantive information about issues, albeit set in the context of self.interested manipulation. Attentive exposure can alter political knowledge by increasing the accessibility of information, changing the associations among constructs, and cuing and strengthening existing localized networks of concepts.

In the following sections, we develop the components of the expla• nation.

Knowledge, Association, and Spreading Activation

Any serious explanation of the process of learning and political judg· ment must begin with assumptions about how people organize the information they have and how they organize information about poli• tics in particular. 1

Models of how knowledge is stored in memory are numerous and diverse. Some assume that there are both visual and conceptual bases to knowledge,2 others argue that propositional structures are all that we need.3 Some models adopt the view that constructs are linked through networks of association that are hierarchical,4 associational without hierarchy or differentiation,5 or associational with some hier· archical structure.6

We cannot determine which model of knowledge storage is correct because current research tools do not allow direct access to the mental storehouse of knowledge. So the best assumptions are those that work to solve problems and paradoxes in observable data. We assume that knowledge is stored as a network of associations between nodes where