We must be more tentative in concluding that the processes we found to operate in our data are taking place in the general population. Our survey experiment demonstrates how people react when exposed to race, genes, and health content like that found in news accounts. We have shown that this content is represented in the news and that its presence has increased with progression of the genomic revolution. However, we lack a direct measure of public exposure to the messages represented by our vignettes. Having such data would strengthen our confidence that the backdoor effect is underway in the general population. If the public is increasingly exposed to these messages, which we believe is a reasonable assumption given their increased presence, then our results probably underestimate their effects on belief in essential racial differences for two reasons. First, our findings are based on a single presentation of a single story about race, genes, and health. Although we do not know whether exposure to such items has a lasting effect on attitudes, our content analysis suggests these messages are repeated again
