How anecdotal accounts in news and in fiction can influence judgments of asocial problem's urgency, causes, and cures

This study examined whether accounts about individuals in concrete situatio ns-read as news or fiction-influenced judgments about society at large. Par ticipants (N = 95) read either no story or one of two anecdotal accounts ab out a teenager who was planning to drop out of high school. Whereas one acc ount focused on problems stemming from the student's inner-city high school , the other account emphasized the boy's emotional and motivational problem s. Results showed that both news and fictional stories influenced participa nts' judgments about the causes of and solutions to the dropout problem in the United States (causal generalization) and about the urgency with which policy makers should attend to educational and health care reform (agenda s etting). Among the mechanisms shown to facilitate causal generalization was the extent to which the accounts cued remindings from the readers' stores of personal or media-based experience. The rob of stories in the judgment o f social issues is discussed.