Chapter 10 - The SAGE Handbook of Media Studies

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Interdisciplinarity is one of the hallmarks of research on media content,use, and effects. With regard to use, the preceding chapter focused on

the sociology and anthropology of media use, that is, who uses whichmedia, how much, where, when, and so forth. Scholars in communica-tion studies often do such research. One of their theoretical perspectiveson media use focuses on its functions and gratifications. Another com-munication studies perspective on media use and its effects, known ascultural studies, emphasizes the role of sociological factors—especiallygender, class, and culture—in determining the different meanings, read-ings, and interpretations that people find in and take away from mediacommunications. Like the preceding chapter, this one focuses on mediause but from another social science perspective—that of psychology. Thedistinctions amongst sociological, communication studies, and psycho-logical perspectives in media research are blurred rather than distinct,and all three types of scholars take an interdisciplinary approach. It is,nevertheless, useful to keep their varied theoretical and methodologicalapproaches in mind when reading and evaluating media research.

From a psychological point of view, what processes are involved inmedia use? What is the research evidence regarding attention to, com-prehension of, and memory for media products? What theories havebeen offered to explain these processes? These and related questions arethe focus of this chapter. Rather than providing an exhaustive review ofthe relevant media research, examples are provided, most of whichinvolve television, the most-studied medium. Let’s begin by consideringthe theories.

10PSYCHOLOGY OF MEDIA USE

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♦♦ Psychological Theories andProcesses Relevant to MediaUse and Effects

SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

The social psychologist Albert Banduraconducted his pioneering laboratory studiesof the effects of watching filmed aggres-sion on children’s behavior (e.g., Bandura,Ross, & Ross, 1963) to illustrate his then-new theory that children could learn merelythrough observation, without reinforcement(reward or punishment), which had beenthe hallmark of earlier learning theoriesinvolving classical or operant conditioning.This process of vicarious learning throughobservation of models, in real life or themedia, involves

1. noticing/attending to the modeledbehavior (including, for example,verbal or facial expressions),

2. coding the behavior in memory visu-ally or verbally,

3. enacting the behavior, and

4. motivation, that is, evaluating theconsequences (Bandura, 1977, 1983,1994).

In this process of social learning, Steps 1and 2 comprise the acquisition phase andSteps 3 and 4 the performance phase. It isonly when performance occurs, however,that learning can be demonstrated, eventhough behaviors may be acquired and notperformed at all or not performed until muchlater. Whether an acquired behavior will beperformed depends in part on observers’ cog-nitions, including their perceptions of theirown similarity to the model and their expec-tations that if they do imitate the behavior,they will be rewarded or punished. In short,the emphasis in social cognitive learningtheory is on explaining the processes involvedin the imitation of behavior observed in reallife or through media use.

SCHEMA THEORY

Some cognitive psychologists (e.g.,Abelson, 1981; Piaget, 1963; Schank &Abelson, 1977) emphasize that throughtheir experience, humans construct andmodify mental models, beliefs, and expec-tations, which govern their behavior. Theterm schema1 (plural: schemas or schemata)is used to refer to a cognitive model or pro-totype, which could be relatively simple(e.g., a person’s notion of the “average,” orprototypical, dog) or complex (e.g., his orher gender schemas). The term scriptis used to refer to sequentially organizedevents, for example, going to a restaurant(Fiske & Taylor, 1984). The everydaynotion closest to a schema is a stereotype.Schemas and scripts guide our informationprocessing and social behavior. We try tofit incoming information into our existingmodels—that is, our schemas/scripts—andwe notice, remember, and respond to infor-mation by making it consistent with thosemodels. We tend not to notice informationinconsistent with our stereotypes, and evenif we do, we may forget it or distort it inmemory, which is why schemas and scriptsare so difficult to change and why stereo-types are so dangerous. For example, wemake Fred, our hard-working friend, anexception to our belief that members of hisgroup are lazy, when we should insteadchange our belief because the only personin that group whom we know doesn’t fitthe stereotype.

In the realm of gender, Cordua,McGraw, and Drabman (1979) foundthat 100% of a group of elementary schoolchildren who saw a film about a malephysician and a female nurse correctlyremembered their roles, but only 50% ofthose who saw a female physician and amale nurse did so. The other 50% presum-ably did not notice the role reversal whenviewing or distorted the information inmemory or at retrieval. That is, they eitherdid not notice the mismatch between thefilm content and their gender-stereotypedschema(s) or changed the information to be

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schema (stereotype) consistent and recalledincorrectly that they had seen a malephysician and a female nurse.

Children and adults construct schemasand scripts through their interactions andexperiences, both in the real world andthrough media. North American infantsshow interest in television and begin watch-ing regularly as early as 18 months, soit provides an “early window” (Liebert,Sprafkin, & Davidson, 1982) on the world.Media, including television, books, andvideos, provide information about a varietyof social interactions, types of people, andplaces before children have analogous real-life experiences. Thus, media likely play animportant role not only in the maintenancebut also in the initial construction ofchildren’s schemas. If so, these media-basedschemas and stereotypes influence percep-tions and behavior in the real world. Forexample, researchers who studied secondand fifth graders’ beliefs about occupations(nurse, police officer) concluded thatchildren form separate schemata for socialinformation acquired from TV and fromreal-world experience, but those whoperceive fictional TV as socially realisticare more apt to incorporate TV messagesinto their schemata and their aspirations(Wright et al., 1995).

Story schemas/schemata are particularlyuseful for processing media content. Theyare organized clusters of knowledge aboutstories and how they are typically struc-tured, and children with a good under-standing of story schemas have bettermemory of central story content withreduced processing effort (Meadowcroft,1985; Miron, Bryant, & Zillmann, 2001).Children in the preoperational stage of cog-nitive development—that is, up to about5 or 6 years of age—can only use storyschemas when the content is structuredsimply with clear causal links (Mandler &Johnson, 1977). With achievement of con-crete operational thinking, around 5 to 7years, children are more readily able to usethem as frameworks for encoding, storage,and retrieval (Miron et al., 2001).

PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

Several aspects of psychoanalytic theoryare potentially relevant for the psychologyof media use. Media content (e.g., violenceor sex) might trigger aggressive or sexualimpulses. Or it might, through the conceptof catharsis, predict a decrease rather thanan increase in the probability that theviewer would behave aggressively or sexu-ally because he or she would experience theviolence or sex vicariously and, as a result,would cathartically release her or his ownaggression or sexually related impulses.However, there is little, if any, empiricalsupport for catharsis with regard to mediause and effects.

Another psychoanalytic concept relevantto media use is Freud’s distinction betweentendentious and nontendentious humor.The current notion of being “politicallycorrect or incorrect” is reminiscent of thisconcept. Zillmann (2000) discussed Freud’s(1905/1958) psychoanalytic theory in thiscontext of incongruity in humor. In tenden-tious humor, someone or something is vic-timized (ridiculed, debased, or humiliated),whereas nontendentious humor is victim-less. Freud argued that, for reasons ofsocial censure, people cannot enjoy blunt,demeaning hostility unless it is embellishedwith innocuous “jokework.” The innocu-ous element camouflages the tendentiouscomponent of humor, so we can laugh andavoid social censure, but we also commonlymisconstrue what we laugh about, makingit possible to avoid self-censure.

Zillmann and Bryant (1980) formalizedFreud’s hypotheses in a misattributiontheory of humor and tested it in an experi-ment involving comedy and misfortune.Their expectations were confirmed. “Amuse-ment was exceedingly high when all theingredients of good comedy were present:despised protagonists, their victimization,and humor cues that set the audience freeto enjoy these characters’ demise” (p. 149).The presence of an innocuous humor cueallowed the onlookers to be “maliciouswith dignity” (p. 149). Zillmann (2000)



contended that comedy is the most populargenre of media entertainment for both thefilm and television industries in NorthAmerica and cited research evidence in sup-port of his mood management theory(Zillmann, 1988). Through trial and error,viewers acquire at least a tacit understand-ing of how to improve their affective state.They prefer comedy to drama when theyare stressed or feel gloomy, frustrated,angry, and so forth (e.g., Anderson, Collins,Schmitt, & Jacobvitz, 1996; Zillmann,Hezel, & Medoff, 1980). There also is evi-dence, however, that they may avoid com-edy when there is a reason to maintainnegative emotions (O’Neal & Taylor, 1989)or when such emotions are very strong(Christ & Medoff, 1984). Other researchaddressing Zillmann’s mood managementtheory in relation to empathy is discussedlater in this chapter.

COGNITIVE SCIENCE

Behaviorism was, for many years, thepreeminent psychological theory in NorthAmerica. In part as a reaction to Freud’semphasis on the unconscious, the behavior-ists argued that mental processes such asperception, memory, and emotion are notthe concern of psychology, which mustfocus exclusively on predicting behavior.Indeed, they referred to all events betweenany sensory input and a behavioral responseas a black box. Along with the developmentof computers and the field of artificial intel-ligence (AI) came the demise of behaviorismand the establishment of cognitive science,with its emphasis on the mind as an infor-mation-processing system. Cognitive scien-tists have subscribed to a functionalistdoctrine that states that information pro-cessing and the functional organization ofthe mind can be studied and understoodwithout reference to the underlying humanhardware, that is, the brain (LeDoux,1996). Moreover, they avoid the longstand-ing philosophical debate about the natureof consciousness and focus instead on the

mind’s unconscious processes rather thanon its conscious contents. These cognitiveunconscious processes include perceptualanalysis of the physical environment by oursensory systems, memory, speaking more orless grammatically, imagination, decisionmaking, and so on, as distinct from Freud’sdarker conceptualization of the dynamic,emotionally charged unconscious. The cog-nitive unconscious processes “take care ofthe mind’s routine business without con-sciousness having to be bothered”(LeDoux, 1996, p. 30). For most cognitiveprocesses, mental operations, and computa-tions, we are only aware of the outcome,not the operations themselves. “The innerworkings of important aspects of the mind,including our own understanding of whywe do what we do, are not necessarilyknowable to the conscious self” (LeDoux,1996, p. 32). Indeed, our conscious aware-ness consists primarily of the processesinvolved in our working memory, whichconsists of (a) a general-purpose temporarystorage system used in all active thinkingprocesses, (b) several specialized tempo-rary storage systems (called buffers) usedfor specific kinds of information, and(c) executive functions that coordinate theworking memory activities. Working mem-ory creates and manipulates symbolicrepresentations.

The cognitive science theoretical per-spectives are particularly relevant for themedia research on attention, comprehen-sion, and memory, discussed later in thischapter.

EMOTION AND FEAR

LeDoux (1996) argues that subjectiveemotional states, like all other states of con-sciousness, are the end result of informationprocessing occurring unconsciously. Cogni-tive scientists could have them fit into thecognitive framework, but instead, theymade an artificial separation between cog-nition and the rest of the mind. LeDouxcontends that the processes underlying



emotion and cognition involve unconsciousinformation processing and, sometimes, thegeneration of conscious content based onthat processing. He would prefer to includeboth under the term mind science.

Cognitive scientists use the term cogni-tive appraisal to describe the processes weuse to assess our situation. For example,when we encounter an animal while walk-ing in the woods, we integrate our percep-tion (visual, auditory, etc.) with ourlong-term memory to conclude, in ourworking memory, that it is a rabbit or abear. According to LeDoux (1996), what isneeded to turn our cognitive appraisal (rab-bit vs. bear) into emotions (fear of the bear)is the activation of the physiological systembuilt by evolution to deal with danger, andthe amygdala plays a crucial role. Hedescribes in some detail the connectionsbetween the amygdala and other partsof the brain, as well as other somaticresponses that play a role in making anexperience emotional. The essential compo-nents of his model are as follows. Workingmemory is the gateway to subjective experi-ences, emotional as well as nonemotional,and is indispensable for the creation of aconscious emotional feeling. The activationof the amygdala is crucial for a completefeeling of fear, and the activation of arousalis essential for a sustained feeling of fear.Bodily or somatic feedback, or long-termmemories based on real-life feedback fromthe body, also is essential for a sustainedemotional experience. You can, however,have an emotional feeling without directprojections from the amygdala to the cortexand without being conscious of the stimulusthat elicited the feeling. “If emotions aretriggered by stimuli that are processedunconsciously ([i.e.], if working memory isnot involved) you will not be able to laterreflect back on those experiences andexplain why they occurred with any degreeof accuracy” (LeDoux, 1996, p. 299).

So conscious emotional feelings andconscious thoughts both involve symbolicrepresentation in working memory of sub-symbolic processes carried out by systems

that work unconsciously. The difference isthat thoughts and emotions are generatedby different subsymbolic systems and thatemotions involve many more brain systems.In other words, the neurological and physi-ological processes involved in thoughtsand emotions differ in important ways,though both involve unconscious processesand systems, and for both, our consciousawareness, if present at all, is through ourworking memory. Moreover, within theemotional realm, processing of negativematerial is quick and automatic, and thisis primarily what LeDoux (1996) hasdescribed. Processing of positive materialis elaborated, difficult, discretionary, andmore likely to involve cognition (seeReeves, Newhagen, Maibach, Basil, &Kurz, 1991, for a discussion in relation totelevision messages).

According to LeDoux (1996), the amyg-dala has a greater influence on the cortexthan the cortex has on the amygdala, soemotional arousal dominates and controlsthinking, rather than vice versa. Ourthoughts can easily trigger emotions (byactivating the amygdala), but we are noteffective at willing ourselves to turn off emo-tions (by deactivating the amygdala). I findthis useful in trying to understand whypeople continue to watch scary movies eventhough they know they may have a long-lasting fright reaction that may interferewith their lives, as Cantor (e.g., 1996) has sowell documented.

There is abundant evidence that mostchildren and adults have been frightened bysomething they have seen or heard inthe media and that these media-inducedfears are often severe and long lasting (seeCantor, 2001, for a recent review). Forexample, in one study of undergraduates,all reported vivid memories of enduringmedia-induced fear (Hoekstra, Harris, &Helmick, 1999), and in another, 90% didso (Harrison & Cantor, 1999). It is com-mon for children and adolescents who havebeen frightened by media to say they likescary films and TV but also to say thatthey have regretted watching them. What’s



the attraction? Why do people exposethemselves to scary media? Zuckerman(1979) contends that sensation seekinghelps people find their optimal arousallevel. Apter (1992) argues that if danger isconfronted in a “protective frame,” theexperience can be exciting rather than anx-iety provoking. Cantor (2001) takes theposition that a frightening depiction mayalleviate anxiety on occasion but onlyunder the limited circumstance that thestory induces only mild fear and the out-come reveals that danger can be counter-acted effectively (Bryant, Carveth, &Brown, 1981; Cantor & Nathanson, 1997).The psychoanalytic concept of catharsis, inwhich scary images might reduce ratherthan increase anxiety in a safe context, putforth by Bettelheim (1975) with regard toviolent fairy tales presented orally, has notbeen substantiated (Cantor, 1998).

Zillmann (1980) proposed that excita-tion transfer might occur during media use;that is, media exposure may generate excita-tional states that intensify postexposureemotional responses. The physiologicalarousal experienced may be transferred orlabeled by the viewer or reader in an effortto ascribe meaning to the experience.Zillmann has argued that what people likeabout being frightened by media is the sus-pense associated with threatened negativeoutcomes, which produces physiologicalarousal that, in turn, intensifies the enjoy-ment of a “happy ending” or resolutionwithin the story as episodes induce and thenreduce suspense (Zillmann, 1980; Zillmann,Hay, & Bryant, 1975). Different conceptu-alizations of arousal and some research rel-evant to each are discussed later in thischapter.

Johnson (1995) studied adolescents’motivations for viewing graphic horror andfound that their reasons varied (gore watch-ing, thrill watching, watching to deal withtheir own problems, watching to masterfears), as did its impact. It is self-evident butworth mentioning that whereas somemedia-induced fears occur when an individ-ual chooses to watch or read somethingknown to be scary, others, some of which

may be very traumatic, are experiencedunwittingly. This includes violent/frighteningscenes in a film or story in which they werenot expected, as well as events depicted innews that provide graphic images, whetherin a print headline or story or on film.

BACKSTAGE BEHAVIOR,PARASOCIAL INTERACTIONS,MEDIA FRIENDS, AND SLIDINGSIGNIFIERS

His experiences with television as a childled Meyrowitz (1985) to argue that hisprimary response to TV was neither to imi-tate behaviors seen on it nor to be per-suaded that he needed to own productsadvertised. Instead, social interactions hesaw on television, especially amongstadults, affected his willingness to acceptother people’s behaviors and claims at facevalue. He responded to television as a“secret revelation machine” that providedaccess to people’s backstage behavior, thatis, behavior not normally exhibited in pub-lic, including various aspects of adults’ per-sonal lives. Access to backstage behaviorprovides viewers with a sense of closeness/intimacy with authority figures (i.e., famil-iarity) but often with a loss of respect (i.e.,contempt). This occurs both for real-worldpeople seen on TV (e.g., politicians) and foroccupations and professional roles depictedby actors in fiction (e.g., lawyers, teachers,police).

According to Meyrowitz (1985), differ-ent media foster different patterns of infor-mation flow about social behavior. Forexample, television is likely to have astronger impact than print on respect forauthority figures because it provides moredetailed images about behavior, includingnonverbal behavior.

Media provide parasocial interaction(Horton & Wohl, 1956) to their users, thatis, the illusion of knowing and interactingwith characters depicted, whether real orfictional. These media friends (Meyrowitz,1985) are especially important for peoplewho are, in their own lives, socially isolated,



socially inept, aged and/or invalid, or timidand rejected. Media convergence (e.g., Websites and “chat” rooms for radio and tele-vision programs) undoubtedly intensifiesthe role of those media in our social world(Ward & Greenfield, 1998).

Just as Meyrowitz (1985) asked whethermedia, especially television, affect ourunderstanding of the social word, Kinder(1991) asked whether growing up with tele-vision and other electronic media changescomprehension of the relationship betweenreal-life things (e.g., elephants), that is,what is signified, and their signifiers (e.g., aphotograph or video, or film). Meyrowitzfinds Horton and Wohl’s (1956) parasocialframework particularly useful for explain-ing why it is that when a “media friend”dies, millions of people may experiencesuch a great sense of loss. He points out, aswell, that the media provide the most ritu-alized channels of mourning, with the finalirony that the parasocial performer doesnot die because the only means throughwhich people came to know him or her(films, records, photographs, books, video-tape) are still available. Does early experi-ence with television encourage “the slidingof the signifier, so that by the time one firstencounters, say, an elephant in the zoo, theliving animal is merely another signifier ofthe image already seen on TV in documen-taries and animated cartoons, that is,merely part of the paradigm of elephant sig-nifiers?” (Kinder, 1991, p. 35). Ward andGreenfield (1998) asked what the impact ofsuch media priority may be on our under-standing of relations with real people, espe-cially those for whom we have littlereal-world interaction, and how this influ-ences our attitudes, beliefs, expectations,and stereotypes regarding age, gender,occupation, ethnicity, and nationality.

MOOD MANAGEMENT,EMPATHY, AND SOCIALCOMPARISON

With regard to emotional responses tomedia, Zillmann’s mood management

model (Zillmann, 1988; Zillmann &Bryant, 1985) predicts that people choosemedia that are likely to affect their moodpositively. One of the ways that media canaffect the viewer’s mood is through empa-thy, which Zillmann (1991a) defines as anexperience in response (a) to informationabout circumstances presumed to causeacute emotions in another, (b) to the facialand bodily expression of emotional experi-ences of another, and/or (c) to another’sbehaviors presumed to be caused by acuteemotional experiences, and this experience(d) is associated with an appreciable increasein excitation that (e) someone interprets asfeeling with or feeling for another. Moodmanagement theory predicts that if empa-thy occurs, media users will prefer positiveto negative portrayals and will feel betterafter exposure to positive material. It alsospecifies that when in a negative mood,people are drawn to media with a positivehedonic tone in the hope of improving theirmood, whereas people in a good mood areless likely to select media content for itshedonic nature (Zillmann, 1988; Zillmann& Bryant, 1985). Results obtained by sev-eral researchers are consistent with thesepredictions. For example, people whoreport negative feelings early in the after-noon are more likely to report later that daythat they watched a lot of TV, whereasthose who report feeling better in the after-noon are more likely later to report a lightevening of viewing (Kubey, 1984; Kubey &Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). These and otherresults (e.g., McIlwraith & Schallow, 1983)show that mood influences viewers’amount of TV viewing, but they do notspeak directly to the impact of mood ontype of content chosen.

Mares and Cantor (1992) studied elderlyviewers’ (mean age 75 years) responses totelevised portrayals of old age. Participantsin this study scored either in the top or bot-tom 20th percentile on a loneliness test butdid not live in nursing homes. In an initialsession, they were given descriptions of tele-vision programs. The lonely group showedgreater interest in watching negative por-trayals, and the nonlonely group showed



greater interest in positive portrayals. Ina second session, they were randomlyassigned to watch a negative portrayal (anunhappy, isolated old man) or a positiveone (a happy, socially integrated old man).The lonely elderly reported feeling betterafter watching the negative portrayal thanthey had felt before watching it, but therewas no change in the mood of the lonelyparticipants who saw the positive por-trayal. The lonely also expressed lessinterest in the first session in watching aprogram about happy young people than inwatching programs about unhappy elderlypeople. For the nonlonely, their moodbecame more negative after viewing thenegative portrayal, but it did not changepre- to postviewing if they saw the positiveportrayal of the integrated man. The onlyway in which these findings support themood management theory is that theelderly participants did make choices in thefirst session that were found in the secondsession to have a beneficial effect on mood.But the choices they made contradictedmood management theory’s predictionsand, instead, were more consistent withsocial comparison theory.

In his social comparison theory,Festinger (1954) contended that people(a) compare themselves to others to evalu-ate themselves, (b) prefer to comparethemselves to similar others, and (c) chooseupward comparisons, probably becausethey want to feel similar to superior othersor because this provides information abouthow to improve. More recently, it has beenargued that comparison with a more suc-cessful person may produce negative affectbecause it highlights the individual’s poorersituation or characteristics and that self-esteem may be enhanced in some situationsthrough downward comparison with a lessfortunate other (e.g., Brickman & Bulyer,1977; Suls, 1977; Wills, 1981; Wood,Taylor, & Lichtman, 1985). The otherwisecounterintuitive findings obtained byMares and Cantor (1992) for elderly view-ers fit this social comparison model betterthan the mood management one.

COGNITIVENEOASSOCIATION THEORY

Leonard Berkowitz, (1984, 1986),another eminent social psychologist knownfor his research on the impact of media vio-lence on aggressive behavior, has reframedhis earlier version of social learning theoryin terms of the cognitive neoassociationisttheories of Anderson and Bower (1973) andLandman and Manis (1983). He contendsthat aggressive thoughts, feelings, andactions are linked within an associativenetwork, with the pathways amongst thesethought, feeling, and action nodes strength-ened by similarity and semantic related-ness. Thus, media violence might primeother aggressive ideas, feelings, memories,and action tendencies, as might other cues(e.g., a gun) to one or more components ofthe associative network. Another psycholo-gist, Rowell Huesmann (1986), also empha-sizes cued imitation as important forunderstanding the role of media violence forviewers’ behavior.

Josephson (1987) conducted a fieldquasi-experiment (MacBeth, 1998) inwhich she randomly assigned boys inGrades 2 and 3 to watch either a violent ora nonviolent, but equally exciting, televi-sion excerpt. In the violent excerpt, somesnipers used walkie-talkies to communicatejust before a SWAT team attacked them.After viewing their excerpt, the boys weretaken to the school gymnasium, where areferee did a “pregame interview” usingeither a microphone and tape recorder or awalkie-talkie. Then they played floorhockey. Their teachers had previously ratedthem on trait aggression, that is, their char-acteristic level of aggression. During thefloor hockey game, the boys who behavedmost aggressively were those who had seenthe violent excerpt, had been interviewedwith a walkie-talkie, and were rated bytheir teachers as high in trait aggression.The walkie-talkie apparently served as acue to activate their network of associationsamongst aggressive thoughts, feelings, andactions.



Individuals who are characteristicallymore aggressive—that is, higher in traitaggression—are presumed to have moreextensive associative networks of aggressivethoughts, feelings, and actions, so exposureto violence should have its strongest effecton such individuals. Experimental evidencefrom studies conducted with adults (e.g.,Bushman, 1995; Bushman & Geen, 1990)and children (e.g., Josephson, 1987) usingfilm/TV as well as video games (Anderson &Dill, 2000) supports this hypothesis. Imme-diately after exposure to media violence,people higher in trait aggression havemore aggressive thoughts and ideas, feelangrier, and behave more aggressively thando those who are characteristically notaggressive.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) has been used in recent research tostudy 8- to 13-year-old boys’ and girls’brain responses when viewing violent andnonviolent video images (Murray, 2001).TV violence viewing appears to activatebrain areas involved in arousal and atten-tion, detection of threat, episodic memoryencoding and retrieval, and motor pro-gramming. These findings are consistentwith the concept of associative networksinvolving aggressive thoughts, feelings, andactions, as well as LeDoux’s (1996) cogni-tive models regarding emotion and fear(described earlier in this chapter).

COGNITIVE JUSTIFICATION

Research evidence indicates that the rela-tionship between exposure to media vio-lence and aggressive behavior, thoughts,and attitudes is transactional (Rosengren,Roe, & Sonesson, 1983). In a transactionalmodel, one behavior (e.g., exposure to vio-lence) increases the probability of another(e.g., aggression), which in turn increasesthe other, and so on.

Huesmann (1982) argues that peoplewho are more aggressive watch violence inpart because it allows them cognitively tojustify their own beliefs and attitudes as

normal. In their research on the effectsof TV/film (Bushman, 1995) and videogame (Anderson & Dill, 2000) violence,researchers have found that adults whoare high in trait aggression report usuallywatching more violent fare and liking itmore. As well, given a choice of what toview in a research setting, they are morelikely than adults low in trait aggression tochoose a violent movie or video game.

AROUSAL

A number of researchers working from avariety of perspectives have emphasized theimportance of the viewer’s arousal level forattention to, comprehension of, and mem-ory for media products. Learning, whichinvolves all three processes, is best whenarousal is optimal, that is, in a middle rangerather than too high or too low (Berlyne,1960).

Some media researchers have focused onphysiological arousal. For example, Krulland Watt (1973) talked about the indepen-dent contributions of the excitatory andviolent components of television for view-ers’ aggressiveness. Both Berkowitz (1986)and Huesmann (1988) have emphasizedthe importance of viewers’ preexisting emo-tional states, in terms of both their rela-tively stable physiological predispositionand their recently induced arousal just priorto viewing.

Vigilance is one aspect of selective atten-tion; the viewer experiences it as alertnessto expected stimuli (Miron et al., 2001). Interms of arousal, vigilance is performed bythe cortical (reticular activating) system, asdistinct from emotional (limbic or auto-nomic system) arousal. This distinctionbetween cortical and autonomic arousal(Routtenberg, 1968, 1971) is useful becauseit separates arousal processes involved inattention, perception, and behavioralresponse preparation from those associatedwith affective/emotional reactions (Zillmann,1991b). Zillmann (1991b) contends thatfor media research, the realm of cortical



arousal is attention, alertness, and vigilance,on one hand, and information processing,acquisition, and retrieval, on the other. Therealm of autonomic arousal, in contrast, isaffective and emotional reactions that areinduced, changed, or neutralized by mediaexposure or that occur shortly after expo-sure. Alpha wave blocking is most oftenused to measure cortical arousal, whereasheart rate, blood pressure, blood pulsevolume, skin conductance, and skin temper-ature measure autonomic (limbic) arousal(Zillmann, 1982, 1991b). In televisionresearch, cortical arousal has been treatedas a hypothetical construct (Zillmann,1991b). Blood pressure is the least reli-able of the measures of autonomic arousal(Zillmann, 1979). Miron et al. (2001)reviewed research evidence that contradictsthe “zombie-viewer” line of research con-tending that TV viewing is associated withdominant alpha activity, that is, low corti-cal arousal.

As Zillmann (1991b) pointed out, formost North American viewers, televisionsometimes serves as an “unwinder.” Onsuch occasions, they choose content thatwill diminish their noxious states of hyper-arousal. Kubey’s (Kubey, 1984, 1986, 1996;Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) researchevidence documents the effectiveness oftelevision for inducing relaxation. But view-ers also, on other occasions, use televisionfor excitement; exposure can be highlyarousing. Zillmann discusses the circum-stances under which television serves as anunwinder versus for excitement. The sameis undoubtedly true of other media.

METACOGNITION

As Miron et al. (2001) point out,metacognition (Flavell, 1979; Flavell &Wellman, 1977) plays an important role incomprehension and memory. This termrefers to an individual’s knowledge abouthis or her own cognitive capabilities,including strategies to enhance perfor-mance (e.g., if I need to remember this

phone number, it will help to repeat it in myhead or, better still, write it down).

If we consider vigilance during televisionwatching from a metacognitive perspec-tive, a child’s attentional self-regulationwould involve awareness of his or herability to sustain attention to television,assessment of how much attention isneeded to understand a program (andeventually to learn from it), and the useof skills and strategies for maintainingattention. (Miron et al., 2001, p. 164)

Some media researchers have focused onconscious awareness of cognitive arousal, ina metacognitive sense. Salomon (1981,1983), for example, emphasized the role ofattentive involvement, which he calledamount of invested mental effort (AIME),for learning from media. He found that inthe United States, 12-year-olds believe boththat it is easier for them to learn from TVthan from print and that they are better atlearning from TV (Salomon, 1984), whichmay lead them to invest less mental effortwhen watching TV than when reading. In asimilar vein, Langer and Piper (1988) havedistinguished between “mindful” and “mind-less” viewing. References to using media asa “couch potato” or being “mesmerized”seem to reflect the distinctions made bythese researchers. Unfortunately, if peoplehabitually approach some media in a rela-tively mindless way and more often torelax/unwind than to learn, this will make itdifficult for media designed to be educa-tional to be effective. It is encouraging,therefore, that producers of TV programssuch as Sesame Street have found ways to doso (Anderson, Huston, Smith, Linebarger, &Wright, 2001; Bickham, Wright, & Huston,2001; Fisch & Truglio, 2001).

DESENSITIZATIONOR HABITUATION

With repeated exposure to any particulartype of media content, users may become



habituated or desensitized to similar content,and this may have an impact on attention,comprehension, and memory. Thus, useof media with particular content such asviolence or sex, or their combination, mayinfluence subsequent media use as well as theimpact of such content on the viewer’s atti-tudes and behavior (see Zillmann, 1991b,for a review of relevant research).

DISINHIBITION

Through various socialization processes,we try to help children learn to inhibit anti-social and other negative behaviors. To theextent that such behaviors are portrayed invarious media, especially if they are por-trayed as justified, successful, and notpenalized, previously acquired restraintsagainst such behaviors may be disinhibited.This is likely to occur most readily forthose with the fewest inhibitions—that is,those highest, for example, in trait aggres-sion. Recall that in Josephson’s (1987) fieldexperiment, the boys who were mostaggressive in the floor hockey game werethose who were interviewed with a walkie-talkie, saw the violent excerpt, and wererated by their teachers as high in traitaggression. And in his laboratory experi-ment with adults, Bushman (1995) foundthat those high in trait aggression scoredhigher in anger/hostility and behavedmore aggressively after watching a violentexcerpt than did adults low in trait aggres-sion, even after previewing anger/hostilitywas controlled.

Disinhibition probably occurred in thenatural experiment my colleagues and Istudied in Notel, Unitel, and Multitel (Joy,Kimball, & Zabrack, 1986; MacBeth,1998, 2001). Aggressive behavior on theschool playground was significantly higher2 years after than before a town (Notel)acquired TV reception, and this was true forboth physical and verbal aggression, girlsand boys, and children initially low andhigh in aggressive behavior. In contrast,aggression in the comparison towns, Unitel

and Multitel, which had television receptionin both phases of the study, did not changeappreciably over the same period.

Note that if media are shown to have thenegative effect that exposure leads to anincrease in some antisocial behavior, theeffect must be strong enough to overcomethe child’s or adult’s inhibitions againstbehaving that way. For this reason, it maybe easier to demonstrate a prosocial than anantisocial effect. Ethical constraints alsoplay a role. Researchers cannot ethicallyexpose participants in their studies to thelevels of violence found in many films andother media.

GENDER AND MEDIA USE

As the popular phrases “chick flick” and“football widow” indicate, use of differentmedia varies by gender, both in childhoodand beyond (for reviews summarizing view-ing patterns, see Huston & Wright, 1998;Comstock & Scharrer, 2001; see alsoChapters 8 and 9, this volume). Oliver(2000) summarized this gender gap acrossgenres—“The romantic yet heart-wrenchingworld of the melodramatic tear-jerkerbelongs to females, whereas the moreaction-packed and explicit world of sports,violence, and pornography belongs tomales” (p. 222)—while making the impor-tant point that variations exist within same-gender groups. She went on to ask whyfemales and males experience the world ofentertainment in different ways, the ques-tion most pertinent to the focus of thischapter, the psychology of media use. Sheconcluded that characteristics of both themedia content and the viewer interact incomplex ways.

Content characteristics that may con-tribute to gender differences in media useand exacerbate differences in reactionsinclude the widely documented overrepre-sentation of male characters in mostdramatic fiction (with soap operas theexception), as well as the greater coverage ofmale-oriented entertainment (e.g., in sports).



Oliver (2000) also reviewed evidence thatmore females than males enjoy dramaticcontent featuring issues about relationships,whereas more males prefer themes relatedto aggressive conflict. She distinguishedbetween conflict and violence, pointing outthat many females seem to have a strongdistaste for the latter but not the former,which is featured prominently in soapoperas. Females also enjoy the experienceof suspense elicited by frightening films, butnot if this is achieved through explicit, grue-some violence (Zillmann & Weaver, 1996).

What theories have been offered toexplain the gender differences in preferencefor and response to media content (Oliver,2000)? Sociobiologists and evolutionarypsychologists say that males’ lesser invest-ment in rearing their offspring and greaterconcern for maximizing their genes in thenext generation would predict a greatermale interest in media content that providesmany potential female “partners,” even ifonly at a fantasy level (Malamuth, 1996).Evolutionary theorists use the same argu-ments to explain females’ greater apprecia-tion of pornography that more prominentlyfeatures affectionate displays.

Cognitive-developmental, social learning,and schema theory perspectives emphasizethe role of culture and socialization for gen-der differences in attitudes and behavior.Once children know the two gender cate-gories and can label their own (there aregirls and boys, and I am a _______), theyseek self-relevant information, so attendselectively more to their own gender, whichexplains greater attention to same-sex mod-els both in real life and in the media.

♦♦ Attention, Comprehension,and Memory

CHILDREN

Cognitive Development. Children’s atten-tion to the comprehension of and memory

for events they encounter, in both the realworld and through media, is constrained bytheir cognitive development. To the extentthat their knowledge is faulty, their pro-cessing of information will be affected. Forexample, if their knowledge of time (e.g.,tomorrow, today will be yesterday) is notyet fully developed, this will limit theirability to comprehend sequences of actions.They may not, for example, link the pun-ishment at the end of a TV program orstory to the crime committed at the begin-ning. Or, if their knowledge of money andrelated phenomena (payment for work,income, etc.) is not fully developed, theywill be incapable of understanding theirparent’s response, “We can’t afford it,” totheir request for something advertised.Instead of understanding that their parentshaven’t enough money for the purchase,such children may wonder why theirparents don’t just use their credit card andmay think it’s because their parents don’tlove them as much as do parents who buysuch items for their children. Working fromthe perspective of Piaget’s (1963) theory,Furth (1980) found that children’s under-standing of money, income, finances, andso on is surprisingly poor.

With regard to concepts of time,money, taking the perspective of another,hypothetico-deductive reasoning, reversibil-ity of actions (concrete operational thinkingin Piaget’s [1963] theory) and ideas (formaloperations), and many other importantaspects of knowledge, children must con-struct that knowledge gradually throughtheir interactions with people and objects.Unlike facts (e.g., “Ottawa is the capitalof Canada”), such knowledge cannot belearned or memorized. And until such knowl-edge has developed to its mature form,children’s attention, comprehension, andmemory will be driven by their incom-plete/inaccurate knowledge in any givendomain. But, until their schemes1 (theword Piaget used for the cognitive “build-ing blocks” that others call schemas,schemata, or scripts) are able to processinformation in a mature way, the child



will not (a) notice or attend to discrepantinformation, (b) comprehend their experi-ences fully, or (c) remember them accurately.Through the twin processes of assimilation(taking in relevant information) and accom-modation (modifying the scheme, schema,or script in line with the new information),these cognitive structures gradually developfrom their earliest to their most matureform.

Collins (1983a, 1983b) found that priorto middle childhood (Grade 4 or 5), mostchildren watching adult programs (e.g., sit-uation comedy, action adventure) could notmake inferences or connect logically andcausally related plot elements that were sep-arated by subplot events, incidental con-tent, or commercials. The separatorscommonly used in Saturday morningchildren’s programs do not improve com-prehension (Palmer & McDowell, 1979).

Attention. Most of the research onchildren’s attention to media has focusedon television, and in that research, attentionhas been most often defined as visual orien-tation to or looking at the screen. In theirwork in this area, Dan Anderson and hiscolleagues (e.g., Anderson & Burns, 1991)have found that the longer an individualeither does or does not look at the TVscreen when in the room with a set on, thegreater the probability that the look (ornonlook) will continue. They call this resis-tance to change attentional inertia, in con-trast to the more usual phenomenon invisual perception research in which aninfant or child habituates to or tires of look-ing at something that was initially of inter-est and, with repeated presentations, looksfor increasingly shorter periods. In the lat-ter case, the same visual stimulus is pre-sented repeatedly, whereas in the case oftelevision, the visual material continuallychanges (Anderson & Burns, 1991). Someresearchers have suggested that attentionalinertia maintains looking during the lessinteresting moments or across contentboundaries, for example, between differentsegments of Sesame Street during longer

viewing periods (Anderson & Lorch,1983; Anderson, Choi, & Lorch, 1987;Calvert, Brune, Eugia, & Marcato, 1991;Meadowcroft, 1996).

Rolandelli, Wright, Huston, and Eakins(1991) measured children’s auditory atten-tion to television by periodically degradingand distorting the soundtrack and observ-ing how quickly children would manuallyrespond to clear the soundtrack. Longerlatencies imply listening less carefully. Theyfound that auditory attention predictedauditory comprehension (recall of the ver-bal soundtrack) and that visual attentionpredicted recall of visual content, leadingthem to conclude that looking and listeningcontribute separately to understanding.They also found that for boys, there is lessdissociation in attention to the audio andvisual TV tracks, and that girls more oftenlisten without looking but still retain asmuch information as boys.

In the preschool years, much ofchildren’s attention to television involvesauditorily monitoring for sound signalsassociated with content they will likelyfind interesting or, more important, com-prehensible, at which point they look at thescreen and continue to do so until the con-tent becomes incomprehensible (Lorch,Anderson, & Levin, 1979; also see sum-maries by Anderson & Burns, 1991;Huston & Wright, 1998). But attentionalinertia serves to keep them attending longerand thus increases, up to a point, the prob-ability that they will comprehend some-thing. Children are likely to turn toward thescreen at the sound of children’s, non-human, and women’s voices but to turnaway from male adult voices, which tend tosignal adult content (Anderson, Alwitt,Lorch, & Levin, 1979; Calvert, Huston,Watkins, & Wright, 1982).

These and similar findings form the basisof Huston and Wright’s (1983, 1998)feature-signal hypothesis that the formalproduction features (e.g., animation, soundeffects) are the recognizable constants of pro-gram genres and, like the superordinate storyscripts underlying content, are its markers.



Children can, after a moment’s glance ata new channel determine from form,rather than content, the genre of theprogram—whether it is for adults orchildren, whether it is funny or serious,whether it is informative or entertainingin intent, and whether it is worthy oftheir further investment of attention.(Huston & Wright, 1998, p. 1018)

The fact that young children use formalprogram production features as signals toattend to content that they are more likelyto comprehend suggests that their TV view-ing is an active rather than a passive process.But many television critics imply the oppo-site, describing the child as a passive, possi-bly addicted, victim. The either/or characterof this debate is misleading. Sometimes,children monitor auditorily and selectivelyattend to content they comprehend. Onthese occasions, they often are time-sharingTV viewing with some other activity (e.g.,playing with toys). Which one is the pri-mary activity and which is secondary mayshift. On other occasions, children mayattend more constantly and be less physi-cally actively involved with other objects ortoys. For example, even Anderson (personalcommunication, April 1984), a leadingproponent of the “child as active viewer”position, has found that young children’sSaturday morning TV viewing is more likelyto follow this latter model. That program-ming is typically cartoons intended forchildren, thus relatively easy for them tounderstand.

Anderson and Lorch (1983) differenti-ated between automatic viewing or process-ing, which probably is more characteristicof cartoon viewing, and strategic viewing,which involves active attention. The latteris usually schema dependent and schemadriven—that is, by some prior knowledge, astory schema, or some other cognitive orga-nizer that makes thoughtful processing pos-sible (Meadowcroft & Reeves, 1989). Anexample given by Huston and Wright(1998) is the greater attention by boysto male characters in the media, once

they understand that gender is a constantand permanent attribute (Luecke-Aleksa,Anderson, Collins, & Schmitt, 1995).They proposed (Huston & Wright, 1983;Wright & Huston, 1983) that at veryyoung ages or for very shallow, superfi-cially humorous, or stereotyped material,the perceptual salience or “formal features”of the production techniques would deter-mine selective attention and level of process-ing and that, with cognitive development,children’s attention would become moreinternally governed and goal directed, basedon their interest in the content.

In the context of this discussion of levelof processing and the passive versus activechild-viewer debate, it is important toremember that (a) there is considerable evi-dence that watching age-appropriate educa-tional programming intended for childrenhas a positive impact (e.g., Anderson et al.,2001; Bickham et al., 2001; Fisch &Truglio, 2001), (b) this is not the case fornoneducational children’s programming(indeed, there is evidence of negative effects;see MacBeth, 1996 for a review), and(c) most TV programs watched by childrenare intended for adults, so their compre-hensibility will vary with the child’s cogni-tive development.

A model describing the changes withdevelopment for children’s attention to andcomprehension of television, which in myopinion applies to other media as well, wasproposed by Rice, Huston, and Wright(1982). This traveling lens model (see alsoBickham et al., 2001) is based on Berlyne’s(1960) notions of optimal levels ofcomplexity, novelty, and so forth. In thetraveling lens model, arousal, interest, andattention increase from low to high upthe ordinate (y-axis) of a graph. Compre-hensibility increases on the abscissa(x-axis) from low (boredom) up an invertedU-shaped curve to a maximum and thendecreases again down the other side of theinverted U to incomprehensibility. An indi-vidual child’s attentional lens travels withage and experience from left to right alongthe x-axis, with interest increasingly focused



on previously incomprehensible mediacontent.

Does attention to television vary bygender? Yes, and it does so fairly consis-tently. As was mentioned earlier, boys’visual attention to the set is greater thangirls’ (e.g., Alvarez, Huston, Wright, &Kerkman, 1988; see Miron, et al., 2001, foradditional references). This gender differ-ence in attention is not, however, associ-ated with differences in comprehension orrecall (Alvarez et al., 1988). Girls listenwithout looking more than do boys butremember equally well.

Comprehension. Just as comprehensiondoes not guarantee recall, though it proba-bly facilitates it, the link between visualattention and comprehension is not clear-cut. Anderson and his colleagues haveargued that the correlation between the twooccurs because comprehension increasessubsequent attention (Anderson & Lorch,1983), and they have shown that althoughchildren with toys available looked at theTV screen less than did children withouttoys, their comprehension was equivalent(e.g., Landau, Lorch, & Milich, 1992). Inanother study of children’s programming,both visual attention to and comprehensionof educational messages increased for5- and 6-year-olds when humorous insertswere included, even though the inserts werenot related to the educational messages(Zillmann, Williams, Bryant, Boynton, &Wolf, 1980).

In contrast, when adult-oriented ratherthan child-oriented formal production fea-tures were used (Campbell, Wright, &Huston, 1987) or narration was added(Rolandelli et al., 1991), comprehensionvaried, indicating that mental effort ratherthan just attention to the set was affected.Putting these and other findings together,Bickham et al. (2001) concluded that“looking and listening make separate andsometimes identifiable contributors to under-standing, while perceptions of comprehensi-bility and interest strongly contribute to thedecision to attend” (p. 103).

Some formal production features havemore complex meanings that are acquiredwith experience with the medium in interac-tion with the viewer’s level of cognitivedevelopment. For example, montage is usedto indicate change in location, time passing,and other contextual information. Andersonand Field (1983) found that implied timechanges were the most difficult and impliedcharacter actions the least difficult forchildren to draw inferences from, but both4- and 7-year-olds could use and compre-hend montage, although the older childrenwere better at doing so. On the other hand,children younger than age 6 thought that anevent had occurred twice if they were shownan instant replay (Rice, Huston, & Wright,1986). As mentioned earlier, preschoolershave difficulty in distinguishing programfrom advertising content, even with separa-tors (Palmer & McDowell, 1979). Youngerchildren also have difficulty in distinguish-ing central from incidental information,but that difficulty is reduced if salient fea-tures are used to mark the central content(Calvert et al., 1982; Campbell et al., 1987;Kelly & Spear, 1991).

There is some evidence that playing inter-active electronic games may facilitate thedevelopment of certain information-pro-cessing skills such as speed of mental rota-tion (spatial skill) and iconic representation(see Subrahmanyam, Kraut, Greenfield, &Gross, 2001).

Comprehension of various media, par-ticularly for children but also on occasionfor adults, is related to its perceived reality.Huston and Wright (1998) reviewed theevidence and proposed a three-dimensionalstructure for this issue with regard to tele-vision. The first, factuality, corresponds towhat Hawkins (1977) called the “magicwindow” issue, which can be subdivided asfollows:

Did the portrayed events actually happenin the real world pretty much as shownon TV? Did the TV show those eventsor part of them when they actually hap-pened (as opposed to a reenactment of



the factual event)? A yes answer to themain question establishes the contentas factual. A yes answer to the secondenhances the factuality, while a “no”answer diminishes it. (Huston & Wright,1998, p. 1024)

Their second proposed dimension of per-ceived reality, social realism, refers to plau-sibility, that is, similarity to real life. Itincludes an actuarial judgment about thesocial realism of events/situations and apersonal judgment based on identificationby the viewer with one or more majorcharacters portrayed. The third dimension,which Huston and Wright (1998) pro-posed more tentatively, is called videotypy,which refers to the degree to which theprogram’s formal features, including edit-ing and production techniques, dominateto remind viewers that “this is a televisionprogram” (e.g., sports and quiz shows, ani-mated cartoons vs. most dramas and soapoperas). Their three-dimensional modelwas proposed for television, but it also fitsreasonably well to other media. Thecontent of most other media, however,tends to be more homogeneous: Books arefiction or nonfiction with regard to factu-ality (but some, e.g., Midnight in theGarden of Good and Evil, fall in between);most movies are not factual, but some doc-umentaries are; and most newspapers pur-port to be factual, but interactive games donot, and so on. The Internet, like TV, ismixed.

Memory. Children’s memory for adultprograms is better if it matches some oftheir prior knowledge, that is, their socialschemas/scripts. For example, Newcomband Collins (1979) showed a situationcomedy about either a middle-class EuropeanAmerican family or a working-class AfricanAmerican family to children from middle-and working-class families who wereEuropean or African American. Their recallwas better if they saw the program thatmatched their family’s social class, but ethnicgroup was not related to recall.

In studies conducted with elementaryschool children in the Netherlands, recallwas better for television than for newspaperpresentations, even after controlling forreading proficiency and whether thechildren expected to be tested (Walma vander Molen & van der Voort, 1997, 1998,2000). The pattern of findings supported adual-coding explanation in which the supe-rior recall of television is due to the highlyredundant audiovisual information in thechildren’s television news stories used inthese three studies. These results stand incontrast to those for recall by adults(described below) for adult news, whichtypically is much less redundant in its audioand visual characteristics. By comparisonwith North America, a much higher pro-portion of all TV programming, but espe-cially children’s TV, in the Netherlands iseducational and informative, so viewersthere may watch more attentively, mind-fully, or with greater AIME. It also is true,however, that very few elementary schoolchildren in the Netherlands and NorthAmerica regularly read newspapers.

ADULTS

With regard to adults’ processing ofmedia information, the work of BryonReeves and his colleagues is central to theintersection of psychology and mass com-munication (see Reeves & Thorson, 1986,for a review of their experiments on atten-tion, mental effort, and memory for televi-sion content).

Attention. Whereas there has been consider-able research on children’s attention to televi-sion, in research with adults, attention hasnot often been studied directly. Instead, it hasbeen inferred that if memory is enhanced,attention must have been high (Reeves et al.,1991). One example of research in whichattention was measured assessed the impactof positive versus negative public serviceannouncements (PSAs) (Reeves et al., 1991).While doing a secondary task, adults had to



press a button on a game paddle when theyheard a periodic tone while watching avideotape; the quicker the reaction time, thegreater their attention. Negative PSAs werenot attended to as closely as positive onesbut were remembered better.

The PSA results are consistent withother evidence (Reeves, Lang, Thorson, &Rothschild, 1989) that positive and negativescenes in TV entertainment programs pro-duce brain hemispheric differences in elec-troencephalograms (EEGs) (in the frontalregion for the alpha frequency) identical todifferences for nonmedia stimuli. Positivescenes evoke greater left hemisphere arousaland greater overall arousal (lower alphavalues). Negative scenes evoke greater righthemisphere arousal.

Comprehension. In an attempt to explainthe negative transactional relationshipbetween television viewing and schoolachievement (see MacBeth, 1996, for areview), Armstrong and Greenberg (1990)studied first-year university students’ per-formance on cognitive processing tests.They found that when TV was used as asecondary activity, significant performancedecrements occurred for reading compre-hension, spatial problem solving, and cogni-tive flexibility, suggesting that backgroundtelevision causes cognitive processing capac-ity limits to be exceeded on difficult andcomplex tasks.

Memory. Prior to widespread availability ofnews via the internet, about two thirds ofadults in the United Kingdom and UnitedStates typically said that television is theirmain source of national and internationalnews. As well, they said they trusted TVmore than newspapers; if given conflictingTV and newspaper reports of the samestory, they believed the TV one (Gunter,1991). Given this preference for obtainingnews via television, it is surprising how littleof it people remember. For example,researchers who have conducted telephoneinterviews or experiments with adults whoearlier that day watched a TV newscast

have found that spontaneous (unaided)recall was very poor, aided recall (e.g.,providing the headline) was better but stillpoor, and the length of time between view-ing and being interviewed (several minutesto 3 hours) made little difference (e.g.,Faccoro & DeFleur, 1993; Findahl &Hoijer, 1985; Neuman, 1976). Moreover,distortion, misunderstanding, and confu-sions involving two or more stories (calledmeltdown by researchers) were common.Even when people subjectively believed thatthey had learned information, for example,about the weather, their recall, objectivelyspeaking, was poor (Gunter, 1991).

Other researchers have compared recallrates from various forms of media. DeFleur,Davenport, Cronin, and DeFleur (1992)found that first-year university students inthe United States remembered more fromnews stories when they were read in news-papers or off a computer screen than whenseen on TV or heard on radio, and this wastrue for both unaided and aided recall.Faccoro and DeFleur (1993) conducted across-cultural version of that study in theUnited States and Spain. The results wereidentical to the previous study for studentsin the United States. Overall, across the fourmedia and with aided and unaided scorescombined, recall was similar for Spanish andU.S. students. But for Spanish students, com-puter recall was worst, newspaper was best,and television and radio were in the middle.The authors attributed this discrepancy tothe more widespread use of computers atthat time in the United States than in Spain.

Grimes (1991) conducted two laboratoryexperiments in an attempt to explain poorrecall for news. He found that when theauditory and visual messages were highlyredundant (which is not usually the case forTV news), adults perceived them as a singlesemantic unit, but when the two were mildlydiscrepant, they were perceived differently,which divided attention. In the latter case,typical of TV news, attentional capacity mayoften be exceeded, resulting in poor memory.

Two experiments with undergraduatesprovide some insight into the effect of prior



experience schemas on mental encoding andretrieval of media events (Shapiro & Fox,2002). The results suggest that

the intrusion of schema-consistent infor-mation during memory reconstructionprobably has as much to do with ourjudgments about memories as it has todo with our actual ability to retrieve thememory. Therefore, prior experienceseems to strongly shape what we arewilling to believe that we remember.(Shapiro & Fox, 2002, p. 131)

In these studies, memory was better for atyp-ical than typical information even 1 weeklater, but the participants were less willingover time to believe that the atypical infor-mation was true if the topic was unfamiliar.

Graber (1990) found that for the adultsin her study, recall of TV news stories wasenhanced by visuals, especially those thatwere personalized through unusual sitesand human figures. Her findings also indi-cated that schematic processing was a fac-tor in faulty recall but less so for visual thanverbal information.

♦♦ Conclusions

The main goals of this chapter have been(a) to provide a useful framework forunderstanding the psychological theoriesand processes relevant to media use and itseffects and (b) to give examples of mediaresearch within that framework. Becauseof its preeminence to date, theories andresearch about television and, to a lesserextent, print and video games have beenemphasized. Television is still the mainleisure activity for children and adults inNorth America, but computers and otherelectronic media are increasingly heavilyused as well (for reviews, see Montgomery,2001; Subrahmanyam et al., 2001; Tarpley,2001. Note that all three make the impor-tant point that use is strongly related tosocioeconomic status, as is always the case

for new media). To date, most research onuse of the internet and other new techno-logies has focused more on sociologicalthan on psychological factors, but thosemedia undoubtedly will be more prominentin future discussions of the psychology ofmedia use and effects.

Where to from here? Looking back overthe framework and examples of mediaresearch discussed in this chapter, whatwould be some interesting and potentiallyfruitful avenues to pursue in future researchon the psychology of media use?

The availability of fMRI technologyopens up a large and exciting set of possi-bilities for testing and validating or discon-firming many of our theoretical notions.Murray’s (2001) work on children’s brainresponses when viewing violent and nonvi-olent video images provides a good startingpoint. For example, fMRI technology couldpotentially be used to explore the validity ofthe theoretical concepts of cognitive neoas-sociation theory, including linkages withinassociative networks of thoughts, feelings,and actions; priming of these networks bymedia violence or other aggression-relatedcues such as guns; and so forth. Bushman(1995) has shown that university studentswho score high on a measure of physicalaggression—that is, high trait aggressionindividuals—are more likely than thoselow in trait aggression to choose to watcha violent videotape. Moreover, thesestudents’ moods (including anger) andbehavior (aggression) were affected more byviewing violence than was the case for lowtrait aggression individuals. In a laboratoryexperiment that was analogous to Bush-man’s behavioral study but used videogame rather than videotaped violence,Anderson and Dill (2000) found an increasein aggressive thoughts and behavior. Whatcould fMRI or other technology tell usabout the similarities and differences in thebrain processes of high and low traitaggression children, adolescents, and adultsin such situations?

Brain processing associated with prefer-ences for different types of media content



(e.g., comedy vs. drama) in relation topreexisting and subsequent moods andemotions would be interesting to explore.Other topics discussed in this chapter,including vigilance and its relation to corti-cal and emotional arousal, as well aschildren’s media-related attention, compre-hension, and memory also come to mind.

Cross-media comparisons—includinginternet and Web use as well as television,video games, books, radio, and so on—withregard to use, content, attention, compre-hension, memory, and effects strike me asimportant to pursue.

Our role as adults in keeping childrenand youth safe has become much more dif-ficult and complicated with the advent ofsome of the new technologies. We cannotregulate the internet. The cognitive devel-opment of children and preadolescents, forexample, prior to the development ofhypothetico-deductive reasoning, placeslimitations on their ability to perceive someof the possible consequences of their inter-net use, and this is exacerbated by theirparents’ lack of knowledge about theiruse, those with whom they are interactingand exchanging information, and so on.Pedophiles, who typically are very skilled atgetting access to vulnerable children, arefinding the internet ideal for this purpose.As researchers, we have a social responsi-bility to do what we can to understand howbest to limit such negative consequencesand to enhance the many positive conse-quences of the use of all types of media.

♦♦ Note

1. The cognitive structures for which cogni-tive psychologists use the terms schema (pluralschemas or schemata) and script are based onPiaget’s (1963) theory. Piaget used the termschème (plural schèmes) for this type of cogni-tive structure, which is of crucial importance inhis explanation of cognitive development. In histheory, he also said that for some but not allschemes, there is an allied sensorimotor image, a

figurative outline, and he used the term schema(plural schemata) for that concept. In this chap-ter, I have followed the cognitive psychologyconvention of using the terms schema, schemas,and schemata, as well as scripts for sequences, torefer to the concepts for which Piaget used theterms schème and schèmes.

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