Matthias Hofer
Biographic Data
| ID | 128347 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthias Hofer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthias |
| FAMILY NAME | Hofer |
| SIGNATURE | HOFER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Zurich |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1969-9574 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
To leave or not to leave? Expectations, factors, and trajectories of academic careers in the light of doctoral programme reforms
This paper investigates the various career path types and impact factors that influence the career trajectory of PhD graduates, with a view to understanding how they pursue their careers inside and/or outside the academic sector after graduation. Based on data from the Austrian graduate tracking system ATRACK (N = 24,610), seven distinct career types were created. The first three of these career types target a consistent stay within the higher ed…
Daily TV Use and Meaning in Life Among Older Adults: The Moderating Role of Selective and Compensatory TV Use
Older adults (60+) spend a considerable amount of time watching TV. This can have important implications in terms of their daily sense of meaning in their life. Applying the selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) model, we argue that the impact of the daily amount of time spent watching TV on daily perceptions of meaning in life is moderated by whether TV is generally used in a compensatory or selective manner. We present data from an in…
Online social engagement, depression, and anxiety among older adults
As opportunities for social interactions proliferate online, questions arise as to how engagement in such activities may relate to mental health. Given older adults’ shrinking networks and increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), online interactions could offer alternatives for connections that could ultimately benefit older users’ mental health. This article examines associations between older adults’ online social en…
The Paradox of Help Seeking in the Entropy Mastermind Game
Research on Bayesian reasoning suggests that humans make good use of available information. Similarly, research on human information acquisition suggests that Optimal Experimental Design models predict human queries well. This perspective contrasts starkly with educational research on help seeking, which suggests that many students wait excessively long to ask for help, or even decline help when it is offered. We bring these two lines of work tog…
The Impact of Terrorist Attack News on Moral Intuitions
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 news of the 2017 Las Vegas, Nevada music festival shooting. Approximately three weeks before the La…
Successful Aging through Television: Selective and Compensatory Television Use and Well-Being
We applied the selection, optimization and compensation (SOC) model of successful aging to media use. Using a new self-report measure to assess selective and compensatory media use we illustrate the role of these media selection strategies in successful aging. In other words, we link compensatory and selective media use to different indicators of well-being among older nursing home residents and for a group of younger adults, which served as a co…
Youth and Media: Current Perspectives on Media Use and Effects
Be it television, mobile phones or social networking sites – media technologies and applications form a substantial part of young people’s lives. It is significant that media use is one of the most prevalent daily activities during a period of life in which crucial developmental goals are pursued: During adolescence and young adulthood individuals strive to establish critical social relationships, achieve autonomy from their parents and develop a…
Using Attribution Theory To Explain The Affective Dispositions Of Tireless Moral Monitors Toward Narrative Characters
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, distinctiveness, and consistency) affected internal/external attributions (for a character’s harmful behavior)…
How Movies Can Ease the Fear of Death: The Survival or Death of the Protagonists in Meaningful Movies
Many media entertainment products address the fragility of life by portraying the severe illness or death of the protagonist. According to terror management theory, people need to create meaning in their lives when they are reminded of their own mortality, for instance, by engaging in close relationships with others. Meaningful films may provide recipients with an anxiety buffer that helps them to cope with existential fear. The results of an exp…
The Impact of Terrorist Attack News on Moral Intuitions and Outgroup Prejudice
Using logic suggested by the model of intuitive morality and exemplars, 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 or a control news story. Afterward, we measured the salience of five moral intuitions (sensitivity to care, …
Testing Measurement Equivalence of Eudaimonic and Hedonic Entertainment Motivations in a Cross-cultural Comparison
Within Hofstede’s framework of individualistic and collectivistic cultures, this contribution examines measurement equivalence of hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment motivations in two different cultures, namely Germany representing a more individualistic culture (N = 180) and Turkey representing a more collectivistic culture (N = 97). By means of a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, we could secure configural invariance for both hedonic …
Age Differences in Nonhedonic Entertainment Experiences: Age and Entertainment
This article examines age differences in nonhedonic (eudaimonic) entertainment experiences. Results of an experimental study comparing younger adults aged 18 to 28 years (n = 84) with older adults aged 62 to 87 years (n = 65) who watched either a sad or a happy version of a meaningful film show that generally, older viewers reported higher levels of eudaimonic entertainment than younger participants. Furthermore, among older participants, eudaimo…
Perceived bridging and bonding social capital on Twitter: Differentiating between followers and followees
Beyond Pleasure: Exploring the Eudaimonic Entertainment Experience
We examine the notion of eudaimonic entertainment during exposure to a sad but meaningful movie, using a new measure consisting of 5 dimensions derived from research on positive psychology. We, thereby, transfer the conception of eudaimonic well-being to the conception of entertainment. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis show that the 5 dimensions can be further condensed into 2 second-order factors. We applied these new measures in a stud…
Musikbasierte Radioformate
Aufgrund der zunehmenden Konkurrenz durch das Fernsehen und der Entwicklung immer elaborierterer Methoden in der Hörerforschung differenzierten sich die Radioformate Mitte der 50er Jahre in den USA immer weiter aus (MacFarland, 1997). Als wichtiges formatbestimmendes Element zählte dabei immer mehr die Musik79, und mit der steigenden Diversifikation der Musikstile wurden gegen Anfang der 60er Jahre auch die Musikformate der Radiostationen immer v…
Beyond Pleasure: Exploring the Eudaimonic Entertainment Experience
We examine the notion of eudaimonic entertainment during exposure to a sad but meaningful movie, using a new measure consisting of 5 dimensions derived from research on positive psychology. We, thereby, transfer the conception of eudaimonic well-being to the conception of entertainment. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis show that the 5 dimensions can be further condensed into 2 second-order factors. We applied these new measures in a stud…
Online social engagement, depression, and anxiety among older adults
As opportunities for social interactions proliferate online, questions arise as to how engagement in such activities may relate to mental health. Given older adults’ shrinking networks and increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), online interactions could offer alternatives for connections that could ultimately benefit older users’ mental health. This article examines associations between older adults’ online social en…
The Impact of Terrorist Attack News on Moral Intuitions and Outgroup Prejudice
Using logic suggested by the model of intuitive morality and exemplars, 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 or a control news story. Afterward, we measured the salience of five moral intuitions (sensitivity to care, …
How Movies Can Ease the Fear of Death: The Survival or Death of the Protagonists in Meaningful Movies
Many media entertainment products address the fragility of life by portraying the severe illness or death of the protagonist. According to terror management theory, people need to create meaning in their lives when they are reminded of their own mortality, for instance, by engaging in close relationships with others. Meaningful films may provide recipients with an anxiety buffer that helps them to cope with existential fear. The results of an exp…
Musikbasierte Radioformate
Aufgrund der zunehmenden Konkurrenz durch das Fernsehen und der Entwicklung immer elaborierterer Methoden in der Hörerforschung differenzierten sich die Radioformate Mitte der 50er Jahre in den USA immer weiter aus (MacFarland, 1997). Als wichtiges formatbestimmendes Element zählte dabei immer mehr die Musik79, und mit der steigenden Diversifikation der Musikstile wurden gegen Anfang der 60er Jahre auch die Musikformate der Radiostationen immer v…
Beyond Pleasure: Exploring the Eudaimonic Entertainment Experience
We examine the notion of eudaimonic entertainment during exposure to a sad but meaningful movie, using a new measure consisting of 5 dimensions derived from research on positive psychology. We, thereby, transfer the conception of eudaimonic well-being to the conception of entertainment. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis show that the 5 dimensions can be further condensed into 2 second-order factors. We applied these new measures in a stud…
Perceived bridging and bonding social capital on Twitter: Differentiating between followers and followees
Age Differences in Nonhedonic Entertainment Experiences: Age and Entertainment
This article examines age differences in nonhedonic (eudaimonic) entertainment experiences. Results of an experimental study comparing younger adults aged 18 to 28 years (n = 84) with older adults aged 62 to 87 years (n = 65) who watched either a sad or a happy version of a meaningful film show that generally, older viewers reported higher levels of eudaimonic entertainment than younger participants. Furthermore, among older participants, eudaimo…
Testing Measurement Equivalence of Eudaimonic and Hedonic Entertainment Motivations in a Cross-cultural Comparison
Within Hofstede’s framework of individualistic and collectivistic cultures, this contribution examines measurement equivalence of hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment motivations in two different cultures, namely Germany representing a more individualistic culture (N = 180) and Turkey representing a more collectivistic culture (N = 97). By means of a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis, we could secure configural invariance for both hedonic …
How Movies Can Ease the Fear of Death: The Survival or Death of the Protagonists in Meaningful Movies
Many media entertainment products address the fragility of life by portraying the severe illness or death of the protagonist. According to terror management theory, people need to create meaning in their lives when they are reminded of their own mortality, for instance, by engaging in close relationships with others. Meaningful films may provide recipients with an anxiety buffer that helps them to cope with existential fear. The results of an exp…
The Impact of Terrorist Attack News on Moral Intuitions and Outgroup Prejudice
Using logic suggested by the model of intuitive morality and exemplars, 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 or a control news story. Afterward, we measured the salience of five moral intuitions (sensitivity to care, …
Youth and Media: Current Perspectives on Media Use and Effects
Be it television, mobile phones or social networking sites – media technologies and applications form a substantial part of young people’s lives. It is significant that media use is one of the most prevalent daily activities during a period of life in which crucial developmental goals are pursued: During adolescence and young adulthood individuals strive to establish critical social relationships, achieve autonomy from their parents and develop a…
Using Attribution Theory To Explain The Affective Dispositions Of Tireless Moral Monitors Toward Narrative Characters
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, distinctiveness, and consistency) affected internal/external attributions (for a character’s harmful behavior)…
The Paradox of Help Seeking in the Entropy Mastermind Game
Research on Bayesian reasoning suggests that humans make good use of available information. Similarly, research on human information acquisition suggests that Optimal Experimental Design models predict human queries well. This perspective contrasts starkly with educational research on help seeking, which suggests that many students wait excessively long to ask for help, or even decline help when it is offered. We bring these two lines of work tog…
The Impact of Terrorist Attack News on Moral Intuitions
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 news of the 2017 Las Vegas, Nevada music festival shooting. Approximately three weeks before the La…
Successful Aging through Television: Selective and Compensatory Television Use and Well-Being
We applied the selection, optimization and compensation (SOC) model of successful aging to media use. Using a new self-report measure to assess selective and compensatory media use we illustrate the role of these media selection strategies in successful aging. In other words, we link compensatory and selective media use to different indicators of well-being among older nursing home residents and for a group of younger adults, which served as a co…
Online social engagement, depression, and anxiety among older adults
As opportunities for social interactions proliferate online, questions arise as to how engagement in such activities may relate to mental health. Given older adults’ shrinking networks and increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), online interactions could offer alternatives for connections that could ultimately benefit older users’ mental health. This article examines associations between older adults’ online social en…
Daily TV Use and Meaning in Life Among Older Adults: The Moderating Role of Selective and Compensatory TV Use
Older adults (60+) spend a considerable amount of time watching TV. This can have important implications in terms of their daily sense of meaning in their life. Applying the selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) model, we argue that the impact of the daily amount of time spent watching TV on daily perceptions of meaning in life is moderated by whether TV is generally used in a compensatory or selective manner. We present data from an in…
To leave or not to leave? Expectations, factors, and trajectories of academic careers in the light of doctoral programme reforms
This paper investigates the various career path types and impact factors that influence the career trajectory of PhD graduates, with a view to understanding how they pursue their careers inside and/or outside the academic sector after graduation. Based on data from the Austrian graduate tracking system ATRACK (N = 24,610), seven distinct career types were created. The first three of these career types target a consistent stay within the higher ed…
Psychology (12 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Media Influence and Health (7 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Aging and Gerontology Research (4 works) · Entertainment (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Art (3 works)