Roger, Me, and My Attitude: Film Propaganda and Cynicism Toward ...

Journal of Applied Psychology
1992, Vol. 77, No. 5, 768-771
Copyright 1992 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0021-9010/92/$3.00
Roger, Me, and My Attitude: Film Propaganda
and Cynicism Toward Corporate Leadership
Thomas S. Bateman
Kenan-Flagler Business School
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tomoaki Sakano and Makoto Fujita
School of Commerce
Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
Two studies of U.S. and Japanese respondents assessed attitudes resulting from viewing the film
Roger & Me (Moore, 1989). In Experiment 1, the responses of 162 adults who had seen the film in
the U.S. were contrasted with 106 people about to view the film. Those who saw the film exhibited
more cynical (negative) attitudes toward General Motors in particular and toward U.S. business in
general. Experiment 2 employed a Solomon four-group design in Tokyo, Japan, to assess the
generalizability of the U.S. results and also to assess attitude change from pretest to posttest.
Consistent with the U.S. results, viewing the film had negative effects on Japanese attitudes toward
General Motors and toward U.S. business in general. Furthermore, attitudes toward Japanese
business became slightly more positive as a function of viewing the film. Implications and future
research needs are discussed.
As U.S. corporations restructure, American workers are being
laid off in record numbers. For this and other reasons, cynicism—or
negative, distrustful attitudes toward authority and
institutions—was described in the late 1980s as a "consensus
worldview" with implications for not only the workplace but
also society as a whole (Kanter & Mirvis, 1989). Public opinion
research data showed a crisis of confidence in big business,
government, and labor unions (Upset & Schneider, 1987).
These attitudes have a variety of causes. Even feature movies
help shape (and reflect) public opinion (Doob, 1948). Films are
said to represent the status of the American dream, whether
characterized by belief or doubt, optimism or pessimism
(Nimmo & Combs, 1983). This portrayal of film describes at
least one film distributed recently in movie theaters across the
United States (and in Japan). The film, Roger & Me (Moore,
1989), was highly critical of General Motors' plant closings and
layoffs of tens of thousands of workers in Flint, Michigan. The
film's potential importance was captured by the remarks of
Newsweek's media critic:
General Motors wrote the book on stupid public relations. The
thrashing of the company and its CEO in the smash-hit movie
Roger & Me is one of the worst examples of corporate PR since
GM hired a detective to tail an unknown auto-safety advocate
named Ralph Nader in 1966. That fiasco . . . helped kick off a
public backlash against American business that lasted for IS
years. [Roger & Me] could do the same. (Alter, 1990, p. 52)
!
The purpose of the present study was to assess empirically
the potential impact of the popular media on people's attitudes
We wish to thank the Center for Management Studies of the Kenan-
Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
for financial support of this project. Thanks also to Bruce Barry, Edie
Busija, and Mike Grant for their assistance with data collection and
analysis, and to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Thomas S. Bateman, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3490.
768
toward U.S. corporations and their leadership. Specifically, we
found that Roger & Me had significant and predictable effects
on viewers' attitudes toward these issues.
Roger & Me, though based in fact, can be described as propaganda—a
deliberate, directive communication that attempts to
change the target's perceptions, cognitions, and behavior in
ways that further the objective of the propagandist (Jowett &
O'Donnell, 1986). The film was the medium used by the producer,
Michael Moore, to shape public opinion toward General
Motors, its leadership, corporate America, and the plight of
U.S. workers. The messages intended by Michael Moore were
that the American dream is dead, that corporations are
disloyal, and that "we are living in a modern-day 'Grapes of
Wrath' where millions of Americans are struggling to survive"
(Donahue, 1990). The story described the effects on Moore's
hometown, Flint, Michigan, of General Motors plant closings
that put some 30,000 employees out of work. Moore was the
champion of the unemployed, and General Motor's chief executive
officer, Roger Smith, was depicted as the perpetrator of
widespread harm.
The film's impact can be inferred from anecdotal and empirical
evidence. Anecdotally, reactions included such statements
as "The big shots are not concerned about the little people"
(Donahue, 1990) and "I'm sure [Roger Smith] would cut your
throat in a second. Like he did the people in Flint" (Duffy,
1990, p. 44). A movie reviewer declared, "I swear you'll
never watch a cheery GM ad in quite the same way" (Ringel,
1990, p. 17).
Empirically, some research (Adams et al., 1985; Elliott &
Schenck-Hamlin, 1979; Roberts & Maccoby, 1985) has shown
that a single exposure to a film can affect viewers' attitudes. No
study known to us has tested the impact of film on work- or
business-related attitudes. On the basis of the anecdotal evidence
noted in the previous paragraph, the premise and findings
of empirical studies of the attitudinal impact of film, and
the generalized conclusion from propaganda research that peo-

ROGER & ME 769
pie respond favorably to a message even when it is obvious that
it is biased (Jowett & O'Donnell, 1986), we predicted that Roger
& Me would have a direct effect on audience attitudes toward
the targets criticized in the film, in a direction consistent with
that intended by the producer. That is, people who had seen the
film were expected to express more cynical (negative) attitudes
toward Roger Smith and General Motors than were people who
had not viewed the film.
Although the explicit targets of Michael Moore's attacks were
Roger Smith and his corporation, the ultimate "villain" was big
business (Duffy, 1990). Thus, we anticipated that audience reactions
would generalize beyond General Motors. This prediction
follows not only from Michael Moore's objectives but also
from prominent theories of attitude structure and cognitive inference.
Attitudes have a certain degree of consistency with one
another, as known from decades of theorizing and research in
cognitive consistency (Festinger, 1957; Heider, 1958; cf. Judd &
Krosnick, 1988). Moreover, people are readily influenced in
their attitudes toward populations by information from a single
case (Hamill, Wilson, & Nisbett, 1980; Nisbett & Ross, 1980).
Given that General Motors is a single case in the population of
major U.S. corporations, and that it is vividly and negatively
portrayed in Roger & Me, cognitive consistency theory and sample-to-population
inferential biases led to the prediction that
Roger & Me would affect audience attitudes toward U.S. business
in general. People who viewed the film, compared with
those who had not yet viewed the film, were predicted to express
more cynical (negative) attitudes toward U.S. corporations
and their leadership.
Method
Experiment 1
Sample and procedure. The sample consisted of 268 adults who
attended a movie theater in Durham, North Carolina, for the purpose
of viewing Roger & Me. The average age of the study sample was 36, and
49% of the respondents were male.
A graduate assistant distributed and collected questionnaires in the
theater lobby, with the permission of the theater manager. Over a 2-
week time period, beginning immediately after the film's release,
theater patrons were solicited both as they entered and exited the
theater in which the film appeared. This resulted in two subsamples of
volunteer respondents: one that had not yet viewed the film (« = 106)
and one that had (« = 162). Thus, the study design contrasted a pretest
group with a posttest group. The two groups did not differ significantly
with respect to age, gender, tendency to sympathize with labor
versus management (as measured by a single item in the survey), or
interest in the film and the subject matter (as inferred from the fact that
all respondents had purchased tickets for Roger & Me). This comparability
established the viability of using pretest scores as control group
data against which to compare posttest attitudes of the experimental
group.
Measures. Respondents completed a written survey. The instructions
introduced the nature of the study and conveyed the anonymity
and confidentiality of the results. Care was taken to encourage complete
honesty in responding, to indicate that there were no right or
wrong answers, and to imply a lack of bias, preconception, or social or
political agenda on the part of the researchers.
The survey was constructed to assess two dependent measures: attitude
toward General Motors, and general cynicism toward U.S. business
and its leadership. The General Motors measure consisted of two
7-point Likert items asking respondents to indicate their general opinions
of General Motors and of Roger Smith. The cynicism measure
consisted of nine 7-f>oint items, to which respondents indicated the
extent of their agreement or disagreement. To reduce the negative connotation
and inflammatory potential of cynical phrases in the survey,
most of the items were phrased in a positive rather than negative direction.
Examples are "Most of our top business leaders are devoted to the
service and good of their employees" "I have great respect for the
major corporations of our country," and "The American dream, in
which anyone can work hard and get ahead, is alive and well." Lower
scores on this scale indicate more negative attitudes and higher levels
of cynicism.
Results and Discussion
The two-item General Motors variable had internal reliabilities
of .83 (r = .70) in the pretest group and .80 (r = .67) in the
posttest group. The cynicism measure had internal reliabilities
of .75 and .82 in the two groups.
The two dependent variables were significantly correlated
(r = .48, p < .001). We conducted two separate univariate analyses
of variance, which was appropriate given our independent
interest in the two variables and our cognizance of the implications
of multiple tests (Huberty & Morris, 1989). People who
had seen the film exhibited a more negative attitude toward
General Motors (M = 3.8, SD = 2.3) than people who had not
seen the film (M = 6.15, SD = 2.8), F(l, 246) = 51.40, p < .001.
Those who had seen the film also reported greater cynicism or
negative attitudes toward U.S. business in general (M = 23A,
SD = 8.8) than did those who had not seen the film (M= 26.9,
SD = 8.3), F(l, 260) = 9.95, p < .05. Thus, the results support
the predictions that viewing Roger & Me would affect audience
attitudes in directions intended by the film's producer.
Because of practical constraints on the study design, limitations
temper the strength of the conclusions regarding the impact
of the film. Demonstrable attitude change—coupled with
no change in a pre-post control group—would be the most
compelling evidence of the film's impact. Therefore, a second
study was conducted. This study differed from the first in that
we added measures of attitude change and an appropriate control
group. In addition, the study measured the film's impact on
a sample of moviegoers in a different country.
Experiment 2
In the summer of 1990, Warner Brothers released a subtitled
version of Roger & Me (Moore, 1989) in Japan. Experiment 2
offered methodological advances over the first experiment and
served to test the generalizability of the U.S. results as well as to
assess attitudes toward Japanese business. We predicted a replication
(with extension to pretest-posttest attitude change) of
the results of Experiment 1: People were expected to express
more negative attitudes toward General Motors and U.S. business
after viewing the film, compared with their own pre-viewing
attitudes and with the attitudes of respondents who had not
viewed the film.
Moreover, we predicted that the film would lead the audience
to perceive Japanese business more positively. Given the
Japanese philosophy that workers and their firms share the
same fate, viewing the negative consequences of the layoffs im-

770 T. BATEMAN, T. SAKANO, AND M. FUJITA
posed by American executives on their employees was expected
to provide a standard of comparison by which Japanese company
policies would look all the more fair and honorable.
Through processes of social comparison (Kelley & Thibaut,
1978) and pressures toward cognitive consistency (Judd &
Krosnick, 1988), we predicted that people would express more
positive attitudes toward Japanese business after viewing the
film, when compared with their own pre-viewing attitudes and
with the attitudes of people who had not viewed the film.
Method
Sample and procedure. The sample consisted of 542 university
students in Tokyo, Japan. The average age of the sample was 20.8 years,
and 87.6% of the sample was male. Twelve sections of a management
course required of all commerce students were randomly assigned to
four experimental conditions in a Solomon four-group design. Two of
the groups completed a questionnaire in class before Roger & Me was
released in Japan. Approximately half of the students who completed
the survey, and half who did not, then viewed Roger & Me in a local
theater. Subsequently, all students completed the same questionnaire.
Thus, two groups replicated Study 1: Group 1 (« = 132) saw the film and
completed a posttest (without a pretest), and Group 2 (n = 144) was a
control group that completed a posttest concomitantly with Group 1
but without having viewed the film. Two other groups were added to
the Study 1 design: Group 3 (n = 137) was an experimental group that
completed a pretest, saw the film, and then completed a posttest, and
Group 4 (n = 129) was a control group that completed two surveys
concomitantly with Group 3 but did not view the film.
Measures. Survey items from Experiment 1 were translated into
Japanese for use in Experiment 2. The Experiment 2 questionnaire
also measured a third dependent variable not used in Experiment 1.
This scale adapted Experiment 1 items to assess attitudes toward Japanese
business and its leaders. Six of the nine items of the cynicism
scale—excluding items that were presumed to be too difficult for the
average Japanese to validly express an attitude toward (prior to seeing
the film)—were reworded with a Japanese rather than U.S. business
referent.
Results and Discussion
The General Motors measure had a coefficient alpha of .64
(r = .48) in the pretest-only groups and .82 (r = .69) in the
posttest-only groups. The scale measuring cynicism toward
U.S. business showed reliabilities of .64 (pretest-only groups)
and .73 (posttest-only groups). The measure of attitudes toward
Japanese business had a coefficient alpha of .78 in both the
pretest and posttest samples.
Consistent with the recommendations of Solomon (1954),
we conducted a two-way analysis of variance, using Time 2
measures as dependent variables. The independent variables
were whether or not subjects had (a) seen the film and (b) taken
a pretest. Results revealed significant effects of film viewing on
all dependent variables. As in Study 1, the group that had seen
the film had more negative attitudes toward General Motors
(M= 3.75, SD = 1.9) than did the group that had not (M = 5.5,
SD = 2.75), F(\, 538) = 130.39, p < .001. Those who saw the
film also held more cynical (negative) attitudes toward U.S. business
(M = 28.8, SD = 7.2) than those who had not (M = 33.8,
SD = 5.9), F(\, 533) = 76.42, p < .001. In addition, the group
that saw the film reported slightly more positive attitudes toward
Japanese business (M = 22.3, SD = 5.2) than the group
that did not (M= 20.7, SD = 5.6), F(\, 535) = 12.32, p < .05.
Analysis of the posttest scores further revealed that the pretest,
either as a main effect or in interaction with film viewing,
had no significant effect on general attitudes toward either U.S.
or Japanese business. There was a main effect of the pretest on
attitudes toward General Motors, F(\, 538) = 3.94, p < .05, and
an interaction effect as well, F(l, 538) = 6.29, p < .05. The
significant main effect stemmed from the interaction, in which
posttest scores for subjects who did not see the film were comparable
to the scores of those who did (M= 7.6, SD = 1.8) and did
not (M= 7.5, SD = 2.0) complete the pretest, whereas filmgoers
who completed the pretest had more negative attitudes (M =
5.1, SD = 2.2) than filmgoers who did not (M = 5.9, SD = 2.2).
Separate analyses were performed on the treatment and control
groups that provided measures of attitude change (Groups
3 and 4). Means for pretest and posttest scores for the three
dependent variables, in the treatment and control groups, are
shown in Table 1. Paired (correlated) t tests showed that the
changes in the group that viewed the film were highly significant
for all variables. In contrast, the control group did not
change attitudes toward General Motors or U.S. business; the
change in attitude toward Japanese business was significant but
quite small.
General Discussion
Roger & Me was described by a leading critic (Gene Siskel) as
one of the two films that most epitomize the Reagan era
(Moore, 1990). As such, it was an important film release, one
intended to shape public opinion in the United States. Roger &
Me had an impact on Japanese audiences as well. Taken to-
Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations, and Paired t Tests for Changes in Dependent Variables
Treatment group
Control group
Dependent
variable
M
Pretest
SD
M
Posttest
SD
1(136)
M
Pretest
SD
M
Postest
SD
t(128)
Attitude toward General Motors
Attitude toward U.S. business
Attitude toward Japanese business
3.92
3.87
3.38
0.83
0.76
0.86
2.56
3.16
3.77
1.11
0.85
0.86
12.39**
8.64**
-5.73**
3.71
3.80
3.33
0.91
0.63
0.92
3.80
3.77
3.44
0.92
0.60
0.93
-1.55
0.42
-2.52*
*/>

ROGER & ME 771
gether, the two studies revealed (a) significant negative effects of
the film on U.S. audiences' attitudes toward General Motors
and US. business in general; (b) similar effects on Japanese
audiences' attitudes toward General Motors and U.S. business;
(c) a significant positive impact on Japanese attitudes toward
Japanese business; and (d) attitude change, in directions consistent
with the other findings, in the Japanese audience. Thus,
the presumed potential of the popular media to influence audience
attitudes toward business has been empirically demonstrated.
Longer term effects, both attitudinal and behavioral, should
be the focus of future research. Theoretically, the essential issue
with regard to both long-term attitude and behavioral change
may be how the message is processed. Enduring attitude
change, and attitudes that are most strongly predictive of corresponding
behaviors, are more likely to occur through central
rather than peripheral information processing (Petty & Cacioppo,
1986). A central route implies active processing in
which the person consciously thinks about the issue; the central
route is activated when the audience is motivated and able to
process the information. Specific pertinent conditions include
repetition and comprehensibility of the message, lack of distraction,
and audience involvement (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). It
is likely that most if not all of these conditions were met in the
present study by the self-selection of participants and the viewing
of a vivid, 2-hr film in a closed environment. For the Japanese
sample, completion of the pretest may have enhanced this
effect.
How corporations and their leaders respond to media criticism,
and the effectiveness of different responses in influencing
the perceptions and behaviors of various stakeholder
groups, are related areas ripe for future study. Ultimately, a key
question is whether public opinion toward corporations, as
shaped by the media, carries any practical import. In Japan, a
film reviewer used Roger & Me as a warning to his country: "If
we cannot make the cars which fit the customers' needs, Japan
will follow the same destiny [as General Motors]" (Hirai, 1990,
p. 44). In the United States, General Motors suffered some bad
publicity at the least. Moreover, the success of Roger & Me and
the kudos afforded its producer may pave the way for more
feature films with an antibusiness agenda. To the extent that
the media are successful at sustaining or increasing cynicism
among workers and other stakeholders, the cumulative impact
could be substantial (Kanter & Mirvis, 1989). Therefore, future
research should continue to assess the impact of the media on
cynicism, other attitudes, and behaviors toward U.S. business
and its leadership.
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Received May 13,1991
Revision received April 17,1992
Accepted April 17,1992 •