The effects of visual isolation on the perception of scandalized politicians

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>In their depictions of scandalized politicians, journalists frequently use news images that highlight the (alleged) isolation of politicians. To test how this way of portraying political actors affects a recipient’s attitudes and his/her guilt perception toward such a scandalized politician an experiment was conducted. All participants were exposed to the identical textual information. However, the visual information (degree of isolation) was systematically altered. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) showed that participants – exposed to a visual highlighting the isolation of the politician – evaluated the politician in a significantly more negative way and rated other recipients’ perceptions of the politician’s level of guilt to be higher.</jats:p>