Does Product Placement Change Television Viewers’ Social Behavior?

Abstract

To what extent are television viewers affected by the behaviors and decisions they see modeled by characters in television soap operas? Collaborating with scriptwriters for three prime-time nationally-broadcast Spanish-language telenovelas, we embedded scenes about topics such as drunk driving or saving money at randomly assigned periods during the broadcast season. Outcomes were measured unobtrusively by aggregate city- and nation-wide time series, such as the number of Hispanic motorists arrested daily for drunk driving or the number of accounts opened in banks located in Hispanic neighborhoods. Results indicate that while two of the treatment effects are statistically significant, none are substantively large or long-lasting. Actions that could be taken during the immediate viewing session, like online searching, and those that were relatively more integrated into the telenovela storyline, specifically reducing cholesterol, were briefly affected, but not behaviors requiring sustained efforts, like opening a bank account or registering to vote.

In Search of Entertainment-Education’s Effects on Attitudes and Behaviors

“…No apparent uptick in accounts occurred. Similarly disappointing results were obtained for other behaviors, such as registering to vote or visiting a website that featured information about college scholarships for minority students (Paluck et al, 2015). I might add parenthetically that these results changed my view about the effects of entertainment-education.…”

How the news media activate public expression and influence national agendas

“…These biases have been addressed in some of social science's most creative observational studies, although these approaches are well suited to answering certain questions (such as those for which instruments are available) but not others [e.g., (25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)]. The biases are also addressed via elegant experiments and quasi-experiments, often made possible by studying different quantities of interest, such as individual-level effects or occasionally the effects on aspects of the national conversation (26,(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42).…”

Entertaining Beliefs in Economic Mobility

“…Indeed, a growing body of natural and field experimental evidence finds that entertainment media powerfully alter the dynamics of electoral processes (Durante, Pinotti, and Tesei 2019; Xiong 2022) and change important social outcomes ranging from school enrollment rates to eating habits and White supremacist activities (Ang 2020; Jensen and Oster 2009; Paluck et al. 2015).…”

“…Such narrative persuasion in entertainment media is much more powerful than rhetorical persuasion via political messages, as people are less likely to develop a counterargument or critically scrutinize such a message (Jones and Paris 2018). Indeed, a growing body of natural and field experimental evidence finds that entertainment media powerfully alter the dynamics of electoral processes (Durante, Pinotti, and Tesei 2019;Xiong 2022) and change important social outcomes ranging from school enrollment rates to eating habits and White supremacist activities (Ang 2020;Jensen and Oster 2009;Paluck et al 2015). 3 Taken together, these theories tell us that both the news and entertainment media have the power to shape perceptions of economic mobility, with each type pushing them in opposite directions.…”