Limited Effect Model

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Limited Effect Model

Background

During the first quarter of the 20th century, there was clash among various European powers for the expansion of their influence abroad. This resulted in the outbreak of the First World War leading to a storm of rumor and propaganda. In this critical situation every government was worried about the moral of its public so they patronized their respective media and used them for extensive propaganda campaign. In the aftermath of the war there emerged a general belief in the great power of mass communication. The media were thought to be able to shape public opinion and to sway the masses towards almost any point of view desired by the communicators. This concept has come to be called the Magic Bullet Theory. On that time large scale empirical research on the process and effects of mass communication was started. The findings from such research slowly revealed a picture inconsistent with the magic bullet theory. After some time had passed, on the ground of these empirical researches all powerful effects were replaced by the limited effects model.

Basic Assumption

Limited effect model states that Individual have a tendency to expose themselves to messages that are consistent with their existing attitudes, norms and beliefs. They may ignore, misinterpret or reject those messages which are contrary to their attitudes. People want their beliefs and judgments about things to be consistent with one another. When beliefs of an individual about things are not consistence, it creates inconsistency. Media messages are received and interpreted selectively. Media rarely directly influence individuals. Thus the effects of media are neither uniform, powerful, nor direct. Their influences are selective and limited.

Selective influence theories

These are the five researches which fall in limited effect model
• Payne Fund Studies
• Hovland army Studies
• Cooper & Jahoda Studies
• Lazerfeld Studies
• Joseph Klapper Studies

1. Payne Fund Studies

Empirical research on the effects of mass communication started during the 1920’s with the Payne Fund studies, a large-scale program investigated the influence of motion pictures on children. These movies were a new medium that had arrived with the new century and become increasingly popular, especially after First World War. During an almost incredibly short period, these movies became the favorite entertainment of the majority of society. Million of families watched these movies every week. Some 45 million children under fourteen were among those audiences. The Payne Fund studies investigated the impact of exposure to the movies on the idea or behavior of thousand of children. At first movies did seem to have direct, immediate and widespread influences on the children who saw them. However, those conclusions did not hold up as other media and other audiences came under investigation. Generally as more sophisticated research was completed and a large body of findings accumulated, it became increasingly clear that the magic bullet conception was not consistent with the facts.

2. Hovland Army Studies

During the Second World War (1942-1945) a social psychologist Carl Hovland and his companions Sheffield and Lumsdaine conducted research for the US Army. The US military had a research branch and its primary mission was to make experimental evaluation of the effectiveness of various programs to study the morale of their soldiers. Hovland’s team focused on the war department Orientation movie series “Why We Fight” which were specially designed to improve the morale of their troops. Hovland conducted more than 50 experiments on persuasion (an attempt to change a person’s attitude) and found that movies were successful in helping soldiers to understand the factual basis of the war but they were not highly effective in influencing attitudes & motivating soldiers to fight the war. These empirical facts contradicted the All Powerful Effect perspective and implied that it would be necessary to develop new conceptualization.

3. Cooper & Jahoda Studies

Cooper and Jahoda (1947) studied how the anti-prejudice propaganda can be misunderstood by prejudiced people. When the prejudiced reader confronted the Mr. Biggott cartoon, which contained anti-minority propaganda, their effort to evade their feelings and understand Mr. Biggott’s identification with their own identity would bring about misunderstanding. This kind of evasion occurs because of what individuals often face to accomplish uniformity in everyday life. There is a fear to be isolated from what they belong and also threat for shivering their ego. Therefore, the concept of selective exposure was in the same thread with small effect studies in mass communication in 1940s.

4. Lazerfeld Studies

Early in 1940, before television was available as a mass medium, Lazerfeld, Berelson and Gaudet developed an elaborate research design to study the impact of mass communicated presidential election campaign on voters. At first they were interested in how the members of given social categories selected media material related to the election and how this content played a part in influencing their voting attention. The study took place in Erie County, Ohio, rather typical mid-American area. The media content under study was the campaign speeches and other political messages presented in newspapers, magazines and radio. A main sample of 600 was interviewed. It was discovered that some respondent were activated by the media campaign while on the other hand informal social groups have some degree of influence on people and mould the way they select media content and act on it. The research suggested a movement of information through two basic stages: First from the media to relatively well informed individuals who frequently attend to mass communication second from those persons through interpersonal channels to individuals who had less direct exposure to the media and who depended upon others for their information. This communication process was called the “Two step flow of communication.”

Joseph Klapper Studies

Klapper (1960) formulated several generalizations on the effects of mass media in his book “The effects of Mass Communication.” His research findings are as follows: "Mass-media ordinarily does not serve as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effect, but rather functions through a nexus of mediating factors and influences. These mediating factors render mass-communication as a contributory agent in a process of reinforcing the existing conditions.”
Klapper presented the concepts of Selective Exposure, Selective Perception and Selective Retention which were later formulated as the principles of selective influence theories.
Klapper studies named limited effect model as “The law of minimal consequences.”

Intervening Factors

Selective influence theories argue that there are several sets of intervening variables that fall between the content presented by the mass media (stimulus) and changes in feelings, thinking & action of audience (response).

Stimulus à Individual Differences à Response
Stimulus àSocial Categories with sub culture àResponse
Stimulus à Social Relationship à Response

Each set of factors is contributing in some way to the selectivity with which audiences attend to the media, interpret what they are expose to, remember that content, and is thereby influences in their actions. In other words, these are distinct sets of intervening variables characterizing audiences but their influence is somewhat similar in the process of mass communication.

Principles of Selective Influence Theories

There are four basic principles that govern the actions of audiences and lie at the heart of the selective influence theories. These principles are:

 Selective Attention
 Selective Perception
 Selective Recall
 Selective Action

1. Selective Attention

Individual differences result in distinctive patterns of attention to media content. People develop “Mental Filters” that screen out vast amount of information. Their attention is confined to only a limited segment of what is available. For example, those with deep concerns about their health pay closer attention to content dealing with medical issues than others.

2. Selective Perception

It is one of the most significant of all the factors for understanding the selective influence theories. Perception refers to the psychological activity by which individuals organize meaningful interpretations. Selective perception is that people of distinct psychological characteristics, interests, beliefs, prior knowledge, attitudes, needs and values will interpret the same media content in very different ways. For example, some people may read deep shared meanings into poetry that leave others yawning.

3. Selective Recall

The principle of selective recall parallels those of attention and perception. Selective recall plays a role in the efforts to change attitudes. People remember what they want to remember. Some kinds of content for some kinds of people will be actively remembered for a long time. For others, with different cognitive structures, category membership and social linkage may be forgotten the same material quickly.

4. Selective Action

Action is the last link in the chain. Before it can take place, a member of an audience has to attend to the media presentation, perceive its meaning & remember its content. All of these responses will be dependant upon the intervening influences of cognitive variables, categories and their sub-cultures and social linkage with other people.

Selective Influence Theories can be summed u in two ways
• First is in the terms of the nature of the intervening conditions that they pose between media content and the responses people make.
• Second is in terms of the four principles of selectivity that lead individuals to attend, to interpret, recall and act upon media messages in distinct ways.

Conclusion

The Selective influence theories provide very sound guides as to the kinds of factors that must be researched thoroughly before we will be able to understand and predict the effects of mass communication on audience. They are as relevant to the study of media influence today as they were during the decades when they were being developed. It is true that they pose a long list of variables intervening between media and masses. Fortunately, hundreds of experiments and surveys have probed these variables in the past. It is hoped that investigators will continue to purse this theoretical strategy so that these theories can be more effectively formalized.

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