Alternative explanations for the thrice-replicated interaction between the presence andabsence of population data andsex on apprehension andvictimization risk were examined. Consistent with three previous experiments, men first exposed to population increase data were less apprehensive after reading a news story containing frequency depictions of increasing threat than were men not first exposed to population data. Women's apprehension levels were unaffected by exposure to population data. However, this interaction was reversedwhen a thought-listing task was interpolatedbetween the threatening story and the apprehension judgments. Although men showed significantly higher statistical skill levels than did women and individuals with higher levels of statistical skill reportedless apprehension, statistical skill did not account for the observedinteraction between sex andexposure to population data. Analyses of cognitive responses suggested that although both women and men heed relevant base-rate data, these data prompt men and women to alter the production of different cognitive responses. Sex differences in reportedapprehension as a function of exposure to base-rate data appear to be mediated by different cognitive responses to base-rate data.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Baesler, E. J. (1991). Message processing of evidence and the long-term retention and judgment of beliefs. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson.
2.
Baesler, E. J.
, & Burgoon, J. K. (1994). The temporal effects of story and statistical evidence on belief change. Communication Research, 21, 582-602.
3.
Bar-Hillel, M.
(1980). The base-rate fallacy in probability judgments. Acta Psychologica, 44, 211-233.
4.
Benbow, C. P.
(1988). Sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability in intellectually talented preadolescents: Their nature, effects, and possible causes. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11, 169-232.
5.
Benbow, C. P.
, Lubinski, D., Shea, D. L., & Eftekhari-Sanjani, H. (2000). Sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability at age 13: Their status 20 years later. Psychological Science, 11, 474-480.
6.
Berger, C. R.
(1998). Processing quantitative data about risk and threat in news reports. Journal of Communication, 48(3), 87-106.
7.
Berger, C. R.
(2000). Quantitative depictions of threatening trends in news reports: The scary world of frequency data. Human Communication Research, 26, 27-52.
8.
Berger, C. R.
(2001). Making it worse than it is: Quantitative depictions of threatening trends in the news. Journal of Communication, 51, 655-677.
9.
Brosius, H.-B.
(1993). The effects of emotional pictures in television news. Communication Research, 20, 105-124.
10.
Brosius, H.-B.
, & Bathelt, A. (1994). The utility of exemplars in persuasive communications. Communication Research, 21, 48-78.
11.
Cohl, H. A.
(1997). Are we scaring ourselves to death? How pessimism, paranoia, and a misguided media are leading us toward disaster. New York: St. Martin's.
12.
Crossen, C.
(1994). Taintedtruth: The manipulation of fact in America. New York: Simon & Schuster.
13.
Davis, S.
, & Mares, M.-L. (1998). Effects of talk show viewing on adolescents. Journal of Communication, 48(3), 69-86.
14.
Demers, D. P.
, & Nichols, S. (1987). Precision journalism: A practical guide. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
15.
Dillard, J. P.
, & Peck, E. (2001). Persuasion and the structure of affect: Dual systems and discrete emotions as complementary models. Human Communication Research, 27, 38-68.
16.
Dunwoody, S.
(1999). Scientists, journalists, and the meaning of uncertainty. In S. M. Friendman, S. Dunwoody, & C. L. Rogers (Eds.), Communicating uncertainty: Media coverage of new and controversial science (pp. 59-79). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
17.
Easterbrook, J. A.
(1959). The effect of emotion on the utilization and the organization of behavior. Psychological Review, 66, 183-201.
18.
Flynn, J.
, Slovic, P., & Mertz, C. K. (1994). Gender, race, and perception of environmental health risk. Risk Analysis, 14, 1101-1108.
19.
Furedi, F.
(1997). The culture of fear: Risk taking and the morality of low expectation. London: Cassell.
20.
Gerbner, G.
, & Gross, L. (1976). Living with television: The violence profile. Journal of Communication, 6, 223-230.
21.
Gibson, R.
, & Zillmann, D. (1994). Exaggerated versus representative exemplification in news reports. Communication Research, 21, 603-624.
22.
Gigerenzer, G.
(1998). Ecological intelligence: An adaptation for frequencies. In D. D. Cummins & C. Allen (Eds.), The evolution of mind (pp. 9-29). New York: Oxford University Press.
23.
Glassner, B.
(1999). Culture of fear: Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things. New York: Basic Books.
24.
Gould, S. J.
(1992). Bully for brontosaurus: Further reflections on natural history. New York: Penguin Books.
25.
Griffin, R. J.
(1999). Using systematic thinking to choose and evaluate evidence. In M. Friendman, S. Dunwoody, & C. L. Rogers (Eds.), Communicating uncertainty: Media coverage of new and controversial science (pp. 225-248). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
26.
Guetzkow, H.
(1950). Unitizing and categorizing problems in coding qualitative data. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 6, 47-58.
27.
Hadden, S. G.
(1989). A citizen's right to know: Risk communication andpublic policy. Boulder, CO: Westview.
28.
Halpern, D. F.
(2000). Sex differences in cognitive abilities (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
29.
Hewes, D. E.
(1995). Cognitive processing of problematic messages: Reinterpreting to “unbias” texts. In D. E. Hewes (Ed.), The cognitive bases of interpersonal communication (pp. 113-138). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
30.
Hewes, D. E.
, & Graham, M. (1989). Second-guessing. In J. Anderson (Ed.), Communication yearbook 12 (pp. 213-248). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
31.
Hirsch, P.
(1980). The “scary world” of the nonviewer and other anomalies: A reanalysis of Gerbner et al.'s findings on cultivation analysis. Communication Research, 7, 403-456.
32.
Hirsch, P.
(1981). On not learning from one's own mistakes: A reanalysis of Gerbner et al.'s findings on cultivation analysis, part II. Communication Research, 8, 3-37.
33.
Hogarth, R. M.
(1980). Judgment and choice: The psychology of decision. Chichester, England: Wiley.
34.
Hyde, J. S.
, Fennema, E., & Lamon, S. J. (1990). Gender differences in mathematics performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 139-155.
35.
Kahneman, D.
, & Tversky, A. (1972). Subjective probability: A judgment of representativeness. Cognitive Psychology, 3, 430-454.
36.
Kimura, D.
(1999). Sex and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
37.
Koehler, J. J.
(1996). The base rate fallacy reconsidered: Descriptive, normative, and methodological challenges. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 19, 1-53.
38.
Lazarus, R. S.
(1991). Emotion andadaptation. New York: Oxford University Press.
39.
Mares, M.-L.
(1996). The role of source confusions in television's cultivation of social reality judgments. Human Communication Research, 23, 278-297.
40.
McLeod, C.
(1996). Anxiety and cognitive process. In I. G. Sarason, G. R. Pierce, & B. R. Sarason (Eds.), Cognitive interference: Theories, methods, and findings (pp. 47-76). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
41.
Meyer, P.
(1979). Precision journalism: A reporter's introduction to social science methods (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
42.
Morgan, M.
, & Shanahan, J. (1997). Two decades of cultivation research: An appraisal and meta-analysis. In B. R. Burleson (Ed.), Communication yearbook 20 (pp. 1-45). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
43.
Morgan, M.
, & Signorielli, N. (1990). Cultivation analysis: Conceptualization and methodology. In N. Signorielli & M. Morgan (Eds.), Cultivation analysis: New directions in media effects research (pp. 13-34). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
44.
Nisbett, R. E.
, & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies andshortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
45.
Oatley, K.
(1992). Best laidschemes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
46.
Paulos, J. A.
(1995). A mathematician reads the newspaper. New York: Basic Books.
47.
Planalp, S
. (1999). Communicating emotion: Social, moral, andcultural processes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
48.
Schachter, S.
, & Singer, J. (1962). Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state. Psychological Review, 69, 379-399.
49.
Schwartz, L. M.
, Woloshin, S., Black, W. C., & Welch, H. G. (1997). The role of numeracy in understanding the benefit of screening mammography. Annals of Internal Medicine, 127, 966-972.
50.
Science in the Streets: Report of the Twentieth Century Fundtask force on the communication of scientific risk. (1984). New York: Priority.
51.
Shrum, L. J.
(2001). Processing strategy moderates the cultivation effect. Human Communication Research, 27, 94-120.
52.
Shrum, L. J.
, & O'Guinn, T. C. (1993). Process and effects in the construction of social reality: Construct accessibility as an explanatory variable. Communication Research, 20, 436-471.
53.
Slovic, P.
(1987). Perception of risk. Science, 236, 280-285.
54.
Smith, C. A.
, & Lazarus, R. S. (1993). Appraisalcomponents, core themes, and the emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 7, 233-269.
55.
Wildavsky, A.
(1979). No risk is the highest risk of all. American Scientist, 67, 32-37.
56.
Winer, B. J.
(1971). Statistical principles in experimental design (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
57.
Zillmann, D.
, & Brosius, H.-B. (2000). Exemplification in communication: The influence of case reports on the perception of issues. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
58.
Zillmann, D.
, Gibson, R., Ordman, V. J., & Aust, C. F. (1994). Effects of human-interest stories in broadcast news. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 38, 65-78.
59.
Zillmann, D.
, Perkins, J. W., & Sundar, S. S. (1992). Impression-formation effects of printed news varying in descriptive precision and exemplification. Medienpsychologie, 3, 168-185.
