The Power of an Image

Five years after the attacks on Sept. 11, images of the Twin Towers in flames still have the power to make modest changes in people's opinions about President Bush and U.S. foreign policy, according to a survey-based experiment sponsored by The Washington Post. In the experiment, more than 2,500 online respondents were broken into groups, and each was shown a brief news clip before being asked to reply to a series of questions. As shown below, opinions varied depending on which video clip people saw. The images depicted are similar to the ones respondents saw in the videos.