Mike Klein
Journal Article Review
11/7/10
Experimental Research Journal Review
For this assignment, I chose to review the Experimental Research study that was conducted by Maria Brann and Kimberly Leezer Himes in 2010. The study looked into the perceived credibility of male versus female television newscasters. It was published in a book titled “Communication Research Reports.” The main focus of this study was to figure out if male or female newscasters would be rated differently in their credibility when delivering the same message. The study was set up in two different parts. Part 1 consisted of the researchers prescreening two male and three female broadcast news majors on physical attractiveness before deciding on a man and woman to serve as the male and female newscaster for this study. The second part consisted of participants viewing a video of a newscast and rating the newscaster on his or her credibility. The prescreening on physical attractiveness was very important because it ensured that the results were going to reflect differences in sex and not in level of attractiveness. To make sure this would happen, the man and woman who were most similarly rated on physical attractiveness served as newscasters for the study. Credibility of the newscaster was measured using a scale that had five dimensions to it. The dimensions were competence, character, sociability, composure, and extroversion. This part of the study was completed by 232 undergraduate students from a large university. One group of students viewed the male newscaster’s clip while the other group viewed the female newscasters clip. Each newscaster read the same weather related story. After the completion of this study, the results were pretty clear. Male newscasters were rated significantly higher on competence, composure, and extroversion than female newscasters. When it came to the last two categories, character and sociability, there were no significant differences in...
