Media entertainment consumes an increasing amount of leisure time, and can help us restore vitality, combat depletion, and contribute to psychological well-being. Yet, entertainment media is often considered a “guilty pleasure” or an “addictive” behavior. In this talk I present a program of research demonstrating how perceptions (and selection) of entertainment media vary with a) the ability of the user to self-regulate and b) features of the media content. When we are low on self-regulatory resources, we are drawn to media choices which may appeal in the moment but be out of sync with long term goals. This may lead to negative perceptions of media use and impair the recreation potential of media. Results are discussed in terms of the “Recreation/Challenge model of media use” examining the functional role of entertainment in psychological well-being.

Scholarship in media psychology has significantly expanded to investigate the role entertainment media and experiences play in encouraging audiences to think more deeply, feel inspired, encourage prosocialness, and otherwise serve in the interest of social good. Many scholars suggest that media, including entertainment, are a significant cultural force in that they can articulate identities and values of a culture, but also serve as sites where these same values and identities are discussed and challenged. Much entertainment content presents narratives that discuss some of the toughest challenges faced by organizations, governments and societies, prompting audiences to challenge existing social attitudes. In this talk, I discuss various theoretical frameworks that could help advance our understanding of the psychological mechanisms related to the effects of socially conscious experiences. I will also share preliminary findings specifically related to how audiences conceive of these experiences as well as the influences of emotions and narrative engagement on how these experiences relate to our broader worldviews as they pertain to social justice.

Our lab has long-studied whether imagined experiences within the realm of fictional story-worlds might impact the way we think and feel in reality. This research has recently turned to examine the role of intimate relationships in shaping how we engage with stories. In this talk, I summarize research two former students, Dr. Marina Rain and Dr. Elizabeth van Monsjou, which illustrate this complex process. In the work by the former, adult attachment is shown to predict how people engage with stories. Moreover, the results of this research hint at the different needs satisfied by those with different attachment styles. Research by the latter engages with the idea of “shipping,” a truncation of “relationshipping,” in which people become strongly invested in the coupling of fictional characters. An exploratory study and a pre-registered replication explored whether this is a unique form of media engagement, who is likely to ship, and also why they may engage in shipping. A follow-up study using data from Twitter further explored the relationship between shippers and story creators.

What happens when we make a deep connection with a character in a favorite story? In this talk, we consider the dynamic process of engaging with our favorite fictional characters and the actors who play them. These ubiquitous experiences with social simulations touch upon a number of core ideas in social psychology including the self and social identity, social influence, person perception and the role of emotions like empathy in persuasion. Over the years, scholars in this field have focused on parasocial phenomena and identification, but have often called for clarification of terms that has yet to be fully realized. In this presentation, we also consider how a theory currently under development by Shackleford, Oatley and Green could address some of the issues of imprecision of terms while proposing a self-other continuum as an organizing structure to understand the nature of these complex and consequential social experiences.

This presentation examines the viewership of U.S. television entertainment programs over the past two decades. We find increasing differentiation in the shows watched in primarily Democratic versus primarily Republican markets. Notably, these years coincide with partisan sorting in news consumption and an increasingly fractured U.S. television landscape. These findings are discussed in light of recent work on the importance of entertainment to political attitudes, and on the relationship between technological change and political polarization.