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August 1981 - present
Publications
Publications (96)
Two studies examine how experiencing a social need threat (ostracism and rejection) impacts subsequent preferences for self-disclosure to various digital audiences. Findings consider how contextual/situational factors like need threats may impact the appeal of two established perceived social affordances of media: personalization and privacy/visibi...
Prosocial and antisocial media content and effects have been a major focus of media scholars. Given this importance, we might expect the terms prosocial and antisocial to be well defined in this context. Yet, these terms as well as the media content and effects they describe do not have definitions that are widely shared by scholars. We reason that...
A heuristic model aims to organize and synthesize the substantial body of work examining the social influences that shape media selection, experiences, and effects. The Social Influences and Media Use (SIMU) model describes three broad social forces (users’ internal social needs, their social environment, and the social affordances of media) and th...
Logic from the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME) suggests that narrative media emphasizing moral intuitions can increase the salience of those intuitions in audiences. To date, support for this logic has been limited to adults. Across two studies, the present research tested MIME predictions in early adolescents (ages 10–14). The sal...
To distinguish and systematically categorize message content emphasized by children’s educational media, we applied a coding scheme based on the model of intuitive motivation and exemplars to a sample of educational television series recommended by CommonSenseMedia.org. Results revealed a preponderance of the egoistic motivation of competence (over...
Audiences’ engagement with mediated messages lies at the center of media effects research. However, the neurocognitive components underlying audience engagement remain unclear. A neuroimaging study was conducted to determine whether personal narratives engage the brains of audience members more than non-narrative messages and to investigate the bra...
This handbook provides a strong collection of communication- and psychology-based theories and models on media entertainment, which can be used as a knowledge resource for any academic and applied purpose. Its 41 chapters offer explanations of entertainment that audiences find in any kind of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, from classic novels to VR video ga...
This handbook provides a strong collection of communication- and psychology-based theories and models on media entertainment, which can be used as a knowledge resource for any academic and applied purpose. Its 41 chapters offer explanations of entertainment that audiences find in any kind of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, from classic novels to VR video ga...
This chapter describes the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME), which ex amines connections between moral judgment and exposure to narrative media. The MIME explicates distinct, a priori–defined domains of moral intuitions that cut across cul tural boundaries and identifies underlying processes that shape related social percep tions...
Recent research suggests that political beliefs in different geographic locations shape religious groups’ sensitivity toward and representation of moral intuitions. Guided by moral foundations theory, we test this possibility with content analysis. We compared moral intuitions represented in church sermons of one religious denomination located in c...
Applying logic from both the model of intuitive morality and exemplars and construal level theory, we examined the impact of baseline moral intuition salience and social distance on the moral judgment of a narrative character confronted with a moral dilemma. After completing a measure of baseline intuition salience, participants in an experiment fi...
Although the social implications of children’s media have been a central public concern for millennia, there has been no systematic attempt to quantify the representation of other- versus self-serving values in children’s literature. A coding scheme based on the model of intuitive motivations and exemplars was applied to examine the representation...
Researchers have traditionally studied media's impact on morality indirectly, by examining topics of moral concern (e.g., sex and violence). Most of this research was based on rationalist models, which argued that moral judgment resulted from deliberative reasoning about right and wrong. Contemporary dual‐process models in moral psychology argue, i...
The model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME) predicts that moral representations in media content can activate related moral intuitions in audiences, and that audience members in turn are influenced by their moral instincts to select content featuring corresponding moral values. This proposition was tested and confirmed in a two-phase study...
Previous research demonstrated that exposure to news of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, France increased the salience of moral intuitions associated with respect for authority and purity in a sample of U.S. participants. The present study attempted to replicate this finding with news of domestic terrorism by examining the effect of exposure to...
Previous research distinguishing terrorist groups has employed categorical schemes that are (1) ideologically broad and ambiguous (e.g., right‐wing versus left‐wing) or (2) focused on single‐issues (e.g., guns, abortion). Broad schemes often fail to clearly distinguish groups’ motivations, and single‐issue schemes provide no coherent theoretical st...
Recent literature suggests that affective disposition theory (ADT) has difficulty explaining the appeal of protagonists that sometimes do bad things. We addressed this issue by integrating logic from attribution theory with ADT. Three studies examined whether causal factors identified in attribution theory’s covariation model (consensus, distinctiv...
Content analyses examining the values expressed in popular music have been predominantly ad hoc, limited to antisocial themes, and lacking a comprehensive theoretical coding scheme. We applied a content analytic scheme based in the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME) to examine altruistic and egoistic values in popular music over 60 ye...
Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) and the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME) contend that moral judgments are built on a universal set of basic moral intuitions. A large body of research has supported many of MFT’s and the MIME’s central hypotheses. Yet, an important prerequisite of this research—the ability to extract latent moral conte...
Trust toward outgroup members is generally lower than it is toward ingroup members. Behavioral synchrony with virtual outgroup characters has been identified as a means of improving attitudes toward racial outgroup members, but this effect has not been tested for outgroup trust. We tested the effect of synchrony with an ingroup/outgroup virtual age...
Using logic suggested by the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME), we examined the impact of exposure to terrorist attack news coverage on the salience of moral intuitions and prosocial behavioral intentions toward outgroup members. In an experiment, participants were randomly assigned to watch news of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks o...
The desire to understand the relationships between media and morality has driven mass communication research for over a century. An overview of work in this area shows the dominant theories that have shaped it and current understandings that might guide future studies. The present entry reviews, first, initial efforts, grounded in cognitive framewo...
A content analysis of children’s television examined the frequency with which behaviors were (a) driven by altruistic versus egoistic motivations, (b) performed by affable/surly characters, (c) rewarded/punished, and (d) present in content popular among different age groups (2–5, 6–11, and 12–17 years old). We found that portrayal patterns stressed...
A content analysis examined the frequency with which altruistic versus egoistic motivations were acted upon in television content where these motivations were in conflict with each other. The sample was drawn from children’s television programs popular among different age groups (ages 2–5, 6–11, and 12–17 years). It also examined whether the motiva...
The model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME) predicts that media content can increase the accessibility of preconscious moral intuitions, which shape subsequent moral decision making. To date, attempts to demonstrate evidence of this intuitive, preconscious process with self-report measures have met with little success. The current paper pr...
The model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME) highlights the central influence of innate moral instincts (or intuitions) in media use. Recent experimental research on the MIME found that moral intuitions that are chronically accessible in video gamers are likely to influence players to uphold related moral principles in the game. This study...
Previous research suggests that media featuring exemplars of specific altruistic motivations can make those motivations more accessible in viewers’ minds. The present study extends this research to also examine egoistic motivations. We (a) developed a coding scheme to examine how frequently exemplars of altruistic and egoistic motivations appear in...
This study tested the relationship between morality and disposition formation proposed by disposition theory using intuitive moral intuitions as indicators of membership in a morality subculture. After completing a measure of intuitive morality, participants read a short scenario varying the morality of a character's behavior, and then rated their...
Statements supported mostly by correlational and cross-sectional studies suggest that playing violent video games can cause emotional desensitization. A longitudinal experiment examined (a) whether repeated violent game play leads to emotional desensitization and (b) whether desensitization generalizes to other play and real-life experiences. Parti...
Six program versions of a televised children's story were produced to represent all combinations of two stimulus factors. The first factor varied communication style employed in presenting pertinent information by using (a) interspersed curiosity-arousing questions, (b) the same questions addressed directly to the viewer (through the use of “you”),...
Past research on consequences of video game play have conflated two distinct psychological mechanisms, habituation and generalization, into a unified process dubbed “desensitization.” The current paper reports the results of two studies, a repeated exposure study and a single exposure study, which examine habituation and generalization of biophysio...
Following the death of Osama bin Laden in the late hours of May 1, 2011, many print newspapers throughout the United States and the world ran front-page coverage of his death the following day. Although public support for bin Laden's death was largely consistent, newspaper headlines across the country varied in their presentation of the story, from...
Abstract Several researchers have demonstrated that the virtual behaviors committed in a video game can elicit feelings of guilt. Researchers have proposed that such guilt could have prosocial consequences. However, this proposition has not been supported with empirical evidence. The current study examined this issue in a 2×2 (video game play vs. r...
This study investigates disposition-formation processes in entertainment by predicting perceptions of media heroes and villains by their behavior in specific moral domains. Participants rated self-selected heroes and villains from television and film along the moral domains of care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity (Haidt & Joseph, 20079....
This article presents a dual-process model of media entertainment representing 2 psychological appraisal processes, and examines how these processes evoke appreciation or enjoyment as a function of the presence/absence of cognitive conflict. The first process (which characterizes experiences of appreciation) is deliberative and slow, and results fr...
R. Tamborini (2011, 2012) recently proposed the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME), which combines theoretical developments in moral psychology with media theory to predict the influence of media exposure on morality. To test predictions from this model, a quasi-experimental study conducted over 8 weeks exposed selected participants t...
Historically, debates over media violence have been a central focus of media research. Yet lacking from these debates is a meaningful discussion about the conceptualization of media violence. We argue that violence is not a monolithic construct, and is based on viewer perceptions of
specific types of images and framing in media content. This idea h...
Zillmann's moral sanction theory defines morality subcultures for entertainment as groups of media viewers who evaluate character actions with shared value systems. However, the theory provides no a priori means to identify these shared value systems. The model of intuitive morality and exemplars incorporates a theoretical framework for identifying...
Previous research shows that the influence of a computer game’s task demand on the mood-repair capacity of game play follows a quadratic trend: mood repair increases as task demand goes from low to moderate levels, after which further increases in demand reduce repair. Applying selective exposure logic to this finding, we reasoned that familiarity...
The current study implements the drive theory of social facilitation to explain the influence of audience presence in video game play. This integration is an important one for research aiming to understand the experience of video game play, as the social aspect of video game play is a relevant dimension of the technology often ignored in research o...
It is argued that computer game play has great potential to intervene in noxious mood states because it is a more demanding task than consuming other forms of media. From mood management theory, this increased intervention potential should make computer games particularly adept mood repair agents. To test this assertion, a study was conducted that...
This study attempted to (a) extend traditional mood management theory research by investigating the influence of the intrinsic needs for competence and autonomy on selective exposure to video games and (b) test the influence of satisfying these needs on resultant mood repair. An experiment varied satisfaction of competence and autonomy needs using...
This essay describes the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME). The MIME combines logic from moral psychology with media theory to describe how moral intuitions and an individual’s environment (both mediated and non-mediated) are intertwined in a reciprocal influence process. The model’s short-term and long-term components are described...
Two studies examined how disposition theory-based morality subcultures predict the acceptance and appeal of violence. Study 1 used groups formed by median splits of individual difference variables (religiosity, aggression, and sex) thought to be trait correlates of morality subcultures in three 2 × 2 × 2 designs varying trait, perpetrator dispositi...
Explicating the underlying neural processes underlying the perception and judgment of media characters and their behaviors is of central importance to understanding many theories of media effects. This experiment uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify neural indicators of hypothesized connections between moral judgment and pe...
Most early research on entertainment defines media enjoyment in functional terms as the satisfaction of hedonic needs. Two studies demonstrate the value of including nonhedonic and hedonic need satisfaction in defining enjoyment. Both studies find support for a need-satisfaction model showing that hedonic (arousal and affect) and nonhedonic (compet...
This investigation examines how video game interactivity can affect presence and game enjoyment. Interactivity in the form of natural mapping has been advocated as a possible contributor to presence experiences, yet few studies to date have investigated this potential. The present work formulates a preliminary typology of natural mapping and addres...
This paper applies the social intuitionist perspective of moral foundations theory (MFT) to the study of media entertainment. It begins by introducing the MFT’s conception of morality as an intuitive evaluative response governed by the association of moral codes organized in five mental modules. These include harm/care (concerned with suffering and...
This study examined the influence of prolonged exposure to soap opera on character dispositions and real-world moral judgments. Eight groups viewed from 0–7 weeks of soap opera prior to a final week after which participants completed measures of disposition towards show characters as well as perceptions of morality in real-world situations. Results...
This article presents a model of enjoyment rooted in self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) that includes the satisfaction of three needs related to psychological wellbeing: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In an experiment designed to validate this conceptualization of enjoyment, we manipulate video game characteristics related to the...
Extending Raney and Depalma’s research, this study examined effects of sport production on sport consumption. An experimental design crossed scripted (vs. unscripted) sport with violence (vs. nonviolence) to investigate the effects of both variables on violent outcomes and enjoyment. After viewing one of four clips, participants responded to three...
El Suspenso de los Espectadores de Deportes: El Afecto y la Inseguridad en el Entretenimiento de los Deportes Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick1, Prabu David1, Matt Eastin2,Ronald Tamborini3, & Dara Greenwood4ResumenPara explicar la atracci??n a los deportes en los medios, la teor??a de suspenso es extendida para predecir el suspenso durante la exposici??...
This article reconceptualizes the psychological concept of “flow” as it pertains to media entertainment. Our goal is to advance flow theory in ways that highlight the necessity of reliable and valid operationalization. We posit flow as a discrete, energetically optimized, and gratifying experience resulting from a cognitive synchronization of speci...
Multiple studies have been addressing effects of playing violent video games. However, most such studies neglect users' individual experiences. In fact, each player's gameplaying choices creates his or her own specific game content. Within this study we analyzed the individually generated content of a typical first-person-shooter game with high tem...
This investigation examined how exposure to a humorous persuasive message affects antecedents of presence (i.e., the sensation of being “in” a mediated environment) facilitating message recall. Participants in an experimental study viewed either a humorous or non-humorous version of an alcohol public service announcement and then completed measures...
Though lacking empirical evidence, professional wrestling has been criticized for portraying excessive violence in harmful contexts. This study focused on the equity of violent reprisal perpetrated by liked versus disliked protagonists with socially sanctioned or unsanctioned motives. Results of a quantitative content analysis show that most violen...
Drama's appeal is driven in part by dispositions toward story characters and the deservingness of fortunes that befall them. This article reports the results of longitudinal research testing disposition theory's ability to predict viewer responses to daytime soap opera. A student sample completed a survey asking them to evaluate characters over 10...
The current study presents the results of a content analysis of the verbal aggression found in 36 hours of televised professional wrestling. The coding scheme was adapted from the National Television Violence Study and past research on television verbal aggression. Results show that an abundance of verbal aggression occurs in televised professional...
Previous research (Zillmann & Bryant, 197518.
Zillmann , D. and Bryant , J. 1975 . Viewer's moral sanction of retribution in the appreciation of dramatic presentations. . Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 11 : 572 – 582 . [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references) suggests that over-retributive and under-retributive violent acts a...
This investigation examines the extent to which interactive social agent technology can influence social presence, information processing, and persuasion. Specifically, it looks at how interactive media using virtual agents can increase the sensation of social presence, or the extent to which a person feels “with” a mediated being. Using logic base...
The Door-in-the-Face (DITF) compliance-gaining tactic occurs when a large request, expected to be rejected, is followed by a more reasonable request that is granted. The mechanisms underlying the DITF strategy remain unclear. Researchers have posed different explanations for the effectiveness of DITF, including the reciprocal concessions and the so...
Within the context of Internet pornography, a survey of both U.S. and South Korean college students (N= 232) examined the influence of individualism-collectivism and media self-efficacy on the third-person effect. Two findings emerged: First, this study demonstrates the third-person effect of the Internet for the first time within Western culture....
This study examines the potential for natural mapping to affect presence-related outcomes of video game exposure. Interactivity in the form of natural mapping has been suggested to be a possible contributor to presence, but few studies to date have investigated this potential, particularly as it applies to video games, which are expected to make ex...
The present study addresses the role of the media in the self-categorization-based process of depersonalized attraction. Results provide tentative support for the proposition that prototype embodiment impacts subsequent judgments of celebrity social attractiveness. Specifically, social attraction was most effectively predicted by ingroup prototype...
Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California This study examined physical violence portrayed in a sample of televised professional wrestling. Trained research assistants coded the frequency of violent interactions, perpetrator characteristics, and contextual features (extent of violence, use of weapons, consequence of...
Americans are increasingly concerned about video games, presumably due to the amount and graphicness of violence they contain. Social Cognitive Theory suggests that people are more likely to imitate characters they see as attractive or similar to self. To date, however, little research has examined attributes of violent characters in video games re...
The purpose of this article is to determine the amount and context of gun violence across 2 electronic media. Study I focuses on the landscape of gun violence on television, including the number of high risk portrayals. Study 2 provides data on the attributes of gun violence in video games. Results for each study are reported in terms of amount per...
A violent virtual-reality (VR) video game's short-term impact on telepresence and hostility was studied. Five weeks before a lab experiment, participants completed a questionnaire measuring prior violent video game use and trait aggression. Participants were randomly assigned to play a VR violent video game, play a standard violent video game, obse...
Past fictional television has tended to portray doctors in an extremely positive manner, while more recent fictional programming appears to portray physicians less positively. Based on Pfau, Mullen, and Garrow's (1995) suggestion that exposure to television's newer medical shows may lead to more negative feelings toward doctors, the present study e...
The aim of this study was to content analyze 60 of the most popular video games for violence from three gaming systems: Nintendo 64, Sega Dream-Cast, and Sony PlayStation. Games were played for 10-minutes and videotaped for later content analysis. Adapting the coding scheme from the National Television Violence Study (Wilson et al., 1997, 1998, Smi...
The present study has been designed in an attempt to replicate and expand the parameters of D. Zillmann and J. Bryant's selective exposure approach to use of the Internet. In applying this theoretical framework to the Internet, it was expected that persons experiencing unpleasant levels of excitation would arrange their Internet environment in orde...
Although fictional television traditionally has portrayed doctors positively, recent fictional programming appears to portray physicians in a less positive manner. It has also been suggested that these images may conflict with depictions of doctors found on non-fictional television. A content analysis conducted here indicates that television's phys...
The present study's purpose is to assess the impact of target's compliance‐resistance strategies on the actor's behavioral and evaluative responses. It is proposed that the actors have certain expectations about the compliance‐gaining interaction based upon their perceptions of rights to seek compliance. Resistance strategies vary in negative valen...
This content analysis examines portrayals of Whites, African Americans, and Latinos in the criminal justice system as representatives of the court and as criminals. Results indicate that African Americans and Latinos were similar to White characters in their roles, personalities, and aggressive behaviors. Most African Americans and Latinos were dep...