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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Exemplification and Exemplars, Effects of

subject

description

The term “exemplification effect” describes the influence of illustrating and aggregating case descriptions in media presentations on the recipients' perceptions of issues. Aggregating case descriptions emerges whenever media coverage presents any kind of generalizing claim about natural or social phenomena and an arbitrarily selected sample of single cases to illustrate the issue at hand. General claims (e.g., “growing poverty in society”) often are supported by presenting quantitative information (so-called “base-rate information”) about a large number of cases (e.g., statistics about poverty;  Statistics, Descriptive). Keywords: Communication Reception and Effects; Persuasion and Social Influence; Psychology