Two experiments investigated the role of ego-involvement in perceived media effects. Subjects, 34 pro-Israeli, 34 pro-Palestinian, and 34 neutral college students, viewed a specially constructed videotape of footage of the 1982 war between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that portrayed both sides equally as aggressors and victims. Participants, who were not told the real purpose of the study, were then asked questions designed to elicit their personal opinions of the tape. In the second experiment, 24 communications students viewed the videotape on the Middle East war, while 24 others assigned to a control group watched an excerpt from a PBS program on political advertising. The groups were then surveyed about attitudes toward Arabs and Jews. Results of the first study indicated that ego-involvement exerts strong and pervasive effects on perceived media effects. Ego-involved partisans believed that neutral persons would see their side as the aggressor and their antagonists as the victim, and that viewers would feel more positive toward the out-group's ethnic identity. Partisans even believed that viewers would recall facts casting their side as the aggressor and their antagonists as the victim. In contrast to these perceptions, the second experiment demonstrated that news coverage did not change attitudes toward Israel or the PLO, and that viewers primarily remembered random incidents of violence and inhumanity--incidents that they did not associate with either Israel or the PLO. (Tables of data and references are appended.) (NKA)