Serena Daalmans

Radboud University | RU · Behavioural Science Institute

Research into television's ethical value has mostly focused on scandal genres, such as Big Brother, Jersey Shore, and Jerry Springer. Only recently have researchers started to explore television's moral content with a broader focus. In this study we explore and describe the types of morality and moral content of a night of Dutch prime time televisi...

The current project aims at better understanding how narrative characteristics in stories function in the liking, moral evaluation, and enjoyment of narratives featuring morally ambiguous characters (MACs). Shafer and Raney (2012) found that viewers differently enjoyed a heroic versus MAC-centered narrative. Building on this approach, a mixed-metho...

This study investigates if morally conflicted and controversial content, which is often denounced as morally desensitizing, may play an important role in leading to moral rumination in viewers. The results of a quasi-experiment reveal that moral rumination was predicted by transportation into the narrative and was related to increased appreciation...

This study aims to inform the discussion over the proposed merit of morally ambiguous dramas as a tool in moral education in the professional domain, by providing insight into student groups’ moral evaluations of Dexter. In-depth interviews (N = 61) were conducted among a diverse sample of law and (developmental) psychology students. The results de...

Video on Demand (VOD) has become the most popular way for adolescent viewers to consume entertainment media, often without parental supervision. Given the potential for modeling, this study aims to investigate the prevalence and nature with which risky health behaviors are portrayed in popular VOD programs. A quantitative content analysis of trendi...

Studies of mediation practices typically focus on parental mediation, but during adolescence parents’ impact decreases relative to that of peers. This study compares perceived parental and peer mediation in the context of media portrayals of risk behavior and adolescents’ perceptions thereof. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 278 adolesc...

Social role theory posits that binary gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in less egalitarian countries, reflecting these countries’ more pronounced sex-based power divisions. Conversely, evolutionary and self-construal theorists suggest that gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in more egalitarian countries, reflec...

Controversial media content has mainly been dealt with in relation to concerns about how the media we consume might be detrimental to its viewers as individuals and society at large. Nevertheless, researchers have started to take a different approach to these types of content, namely that these might lead to processes of reflective appropriation, m...

To develop guidelines for more effective news literacy interventions, we conducted focus groups with early adolescents (12-15 years old) on what these interventions should be like. Participants ( N = 55) discussed that motivating early adolescents is a challenge, but did provide more insight into their preferences and needs. Future interventions sh...

Girls’ magazines play an important role in the maintenance of gender perceptions and the creation of gender by young girls. Due to a recent resurgence within public discussion and mediated content of feminist, postfeminist, and antifeminist repertoires, centered on what femininity entails, young girls are growing up in an environment in which confl...

Precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action. Here, we present cross-cultural data on a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs (the Precarious Manhood Beliefs scale [PMB]) that covaries meaningfully with other cross-culturally validated ge...

Samenvatting Om een actueel beeld te krijgen van angstreacties van kinderen op het NOS Jeugdjournaal is een survey afgenomen onder 892 kinderen (9-12 jaar). Bijna alle participanten (94.5%) kijken regelmatig naar het NOS Jeugdjournaal. Het merendeel van deze kinderen ervaart angstreacties door dit nieuws, maar gemiddeld worden ze slechts een klein...

Men sometimes withdraw support for gender equality movements when their higher gender status is threatened. Here, we expand the focus of this phenomenon by examining it cross‐culturally, to test if both individual‐ and country‐level variables predict men's collective action intentions to support gender equality. We tested a model in which men's zer...

To function as well-informed citizens in democracy, early adolescents (12–16 years old) should become news literate news consumers. In this time of fragmented media use and evolving conceptions of (the importance and relevance of) news, this is not easy. Therefore, this focus group study investigated news consumption and news literacy through the e...

‘Wat mannen doen, kunnen vrouwen net zo goed’. Een kwalitatief interviewonderzoek naar de rol van genderstereotypering in de media speelt bij de perceptie en creatie van gender door late adolescenten Late adolescenten zijn grote consumenten van media inhoud, waarin mannen en vrouwen over het algemeen op een stereotiepe manier worden afgebeeld. Eerd...

The European refugee crisis is an important topic on media, political, and public agendas. Due to its scope and impact, its continuing prevalence on the media-agenda and the divisiveness of public debate, new research is needed to understand the media’s framing of the issue. This study inductively analyzes framing of the refugee crisis of 2015–2016...

The present study examined stereotyping in the representation of gender, age and ethnicity in positive and negative award-winning commercials. Commercials were coded for the presence of males and female, different age groups and different ethnic groups, as well as for stereotyped portrayals of these groups. Overall results indicated that women and...

The current study investigated the differences in the representation of gender on male- and female-targeted channels with regard to recognition (i.e., the actual presence of men and women) and respect (i.e., the nature of that representation or portrayal). To this end, the presence of men and women on two female- and two male-targeted Dutch channel...

This study focused on the representation of minority groups on television , following the idea(l) that television as a mirror of society should convey a well-balanced representation of society. Results of a quantitative content analysis (N = 325) revealed an underrepresentation of women, seniors and sexual minorities on Dutch prime time television...

This study explores the presence of different moral natures—neutral, good, bad, ambivalent—and its association with sociodemographic characteristics in 3 television genres, through content analysis (N = 3,993). Results show that morally ambivalent characters dominate the cast of fiction, whereas neutral characters form a majority in news and inform...

This study investigates the effect of manipulated Instagram photos on adolescent girls’ body image, and whether social comparison tendency moderates this relation. A between-subject experiment was conducted in which 144 girls (14–18 years old) were randomly exposed to either original or manipulated (retouched and reshaped) Instagram selfies. Result...

According to Zillmann (2000) viewers function as “untiring moral monitors”; relentlessly coming to moral judgments about the actions and motives of protagonists and antagonists. How does this “moral monitoring” apply to morally ambiguous crime TV drama that features unlawful protagonists? The current exploratory study is based on qualitative interv...

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the motives and goals that underlie the use of the popular dating app Tinder. Based on in-depth interviews with twelve Tinder users, we found that there are at least five different motives to use the app and these motivations differ between men and women. The motives are dependent on the goals the...

Samenvatting Dit onderzoek had tot doel inzicht te verkrijgen in de doeleinden en beweegredenen waarmee de populaire applicatie Tinder wordt gebruikt. Aan de hand van diepte-interviews met gebruikers wordt duidelijk dat er een vijftal gebruikswijzen bestaan voor de applicatie, dat deze verschillen voor mannen en vrouwen en dat de applicatie naast r...

Recently, both popular and academic communities focused on the presence and effects of morally ambiguous characters (MACs) in television. Scholars studying these effects have called for more specific exploration of the prevalence of MACs in entertainment, to better understand potential effects on moral judgments. This study explores changes in the...

Samenvatting De publieke opinie en wetenschap besteden steeds vaker aandacht aan de effecten van moreel ambivalente personages, omdat verondersteld wordt dat ze een groot deel van de cast van televisie zouden vormen. Deze inhoudsanalyse verkent de longitudinale veranderingen in de representatie van de morele aard en socio-demografische kenmerken va...

Background: Research shows that medical students like to watch the morally ambiguous medical drama House, M.D., but there is some concern about how the unethical behavior of the main character might eventually affect their professional behavior. The aim of the current study is to provide insight into medical students’ and physicians’ (varying) mora...

Children's television and movies aimed at children provide young viewers with male and female characters representing behaviors and traits that can promote or counter gender stereotyped perceptions. The present study examined twenty-three Disney features as a major source of gender stereotypical images that may influence children’s gender perceptio...

Research in the affective disposition theory tradition posits that the nature of characters, their intentions and behavioral outcomes influence the perceived realism, transportation, liking (affective dispositions), identification, character perception, perceived character morality and enjoyment. In this study the possibility that the moral nature...

Recently, both popular and academic communities focused on the presence and effects of morally ambiguous characters (MACs) in television. Scholars studying these effects have called for more specific exploration of the prevalence of MACs in entertainment, to better understand potential effects on moral judgments. This study explores changes in the...

After more than 30 years of studies focused on stereotyping in gender portrayal in television commercials, there are only a handful of studies that analyze gender stereotyping in TV com-mercials over time. The conclusions of previous studies fall into two categories: those who posit that stereotyping in gender portrayal in TV commercials continues...