Selective Exposure: The Potential Boomerang Effect

This paper reports a test of selective exposure. Interviews with the audience of a film critical of American involvement in Vietnam revealed that the overwhelming majority shared the film's orientation and that eighty per cent knew about the film before entering the theater. Thus selective exposure occurred. Selective exposure, however, supposedly reinforces viewer attitudes; but for many respondents this did not occur, and for several viewers the film had a boomerang effect reducing their opposition to American policy. This effect may be explained by the different expectations members of the audience brought to the film. For those most disapproving, it violated their expectations of new information, insights, reason and logic.