The influence of the press upon the accuracy of report.

Abstract

The particular circumstance was the unwitting distortion by a university newspaper of certain data which had been presented in a lecture given as part of a course in general psychology. The results presented show that groups of college students who have not been subjected to the errors of a newspaper report are consistently more accurate in their answers to specific questions which deal with the facts distorted than are other groups of college students, who have, perhaps unwittingly, formed contradictory habits through the medium of the newspaper. Furthermore, they yield corroboration of other studies upon the findings (1) that reports which involve number statements are less accurate than those which are non-quantitative in character, and (2) that the differences in report between sexes are negligible. They also show to what extent a press article can displace information disseminated by the lecture method. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)