Abstract
There has been extensive research concerning Congress and how partisan attachments and attitudes affect views toward it. In addition, a burgeoning area of research has developed concerning how media influences a person's attitudes and beliefs. In our study we test three hypotheses: viewing partisan House rhetoric will increase partisanship, negative attitudes toward Congress, and negative attitudes toward the federal government as a whole. We test these hypotheses with an experimental design in which we manipulate the independent variable at two levels: viewing partisan speeches and viewing bipartisan speeches. We find that direct exposure to congressional partisan rhetoric leads to lower levels of support and increased partisan polarization. Surprisingly, we also find that exposure to bipartisan floor rhetoric, while decreasing party polarization fails to generate increased levels of support for Congress or the government as whole.
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