Priming and repetition effects on the attitudes and behavioral intentions of young voters in public relations and advertising contexts

The purpose of this dissertation was to understand the effects of a positively framed print message as a prime to a televised advertisement in support of a political candidate in comparison to a simple repeated televised advertisement. This research contributes to the literature on public relations (PR) and advertising by comparing the effect of PR combined with advertising and measuring repeated advertisements alone in the context of college students voting decisions. An experiment comparing the effects of exposure to a positively framed article endorsing the candidate followed by viewing an ad for a particular candidate with the effects of seeing the ad twice (the repetition condition) or just seeing a single ad (the ad control condition) was conducted. The study examined an opinionated endorsement of the candidate from a credible media source, combined with advertising, and anticipated a stronger effect than repeated advertising alone on attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the candidate and on intention to vote for the candidate.