Racial and Regional Differences in Readers' Evaluations of the Credibility of Political Columnists by Race and Sex

Abstract

The purpose of this experiment was to determine how race and gender of columnist and reader interact to influence readers' perceptions of the credibility of the opinion column. Further, we examined whether regional differences would relate to credibility, using 594 students from two universities 2,500 miles apart. No differences in credibility appeared by race or gender of the columnist until region and race of the subjects interacted.