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The Influence of Parodies on Mental Models: Exploring the Tina Fey–Sarah Palin Phenomenon

During the 2008 presidential campaign season, Tina Fey's timely impersonations of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live attracted overwhelming attention, both on television and online. Throughout the campaign, press buzzed about a possible “Fey Effect”: a negative impact of Fey's impersonations on Palin's favorability ratings and a subsequent decline in the GOP ticket. The current study seeks to test for this effect by measuring if Fey's impersonations of Palin rendered caricatured traits more salient in viewers' mental constructions of the candidate, namely character traits central to the Fey impersonation, including issues of intelligence, competence, experience and the Governor's rural background. Findings show that exposure to both the interview and its parody cause viewers to devote more cognitive attention to Palin's intelligence, competence and experience. In addition, the SNL parody is unique in its influence in rendering rural traits more salient in associations with Palin. Ultimately, this research finds that the agency of influence rests in the real Palin, allowing us to establish evidence of a “Palin Effect.”