Ron Tamborini
Biographic Data
| ID | 3770567 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ron Tamborini |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ron |
| FAMILY NAME | Tamborini |
| SIGNATURE | TAMBORINI R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 109 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Impact of Comparative Moral Superiority on Protagonist Appeal
Four studies examine the appeal of protagonists who are sometimes immoral in real-world (Studies 1 & 2) and fictional (Studies 3 & 4) settings. In both, character appeal is influenced by the combination of moral/immoral behaviors a protagonist performs and their moral/immoral behavior relative to another person’s (i.e., their moral superiority/inferiority). Additionally, Study 2 examines the effect of character behavior (moral/immoral vs. highly …
Applying Social Norms to the Narrative Enjoyment and Appreciation Rationale
The narrative enjoyment and appreciation rationale (NEAR) was applied to describe how conflict between the moral features and source-affinity indicated in a message affects appraisals. A 2 × 2 experiment varied the morality (upholds/violates fairness) and source-affinity (ingroup/outgroup) of news indicating normative support for bogus political legislation. Results showed the absence of conflict between message morality and normative-source affi…
A Scoping Review of Prosocial and Antisocial Media Content and Effects in Narrative Entertainment Research Across Five Decades
Despite the popularity of investigations into prosocial and antisocial media content and effects in entertainment research, the essence and boundary conditions of these terms are not well-demarcated. In a preregistered scoping review, we explored how prosocial and antisocial have been defined in narrative entertainment literature according to a comprehensive scheme of moral values outlined by the model of intuitive-morality and exemplars (MIME). …
Early Adolescents Can Extract Distinct Moral Lessons from Narrative Media Content
Extant research suggests that young audiences often misinterpret narratives’ moral messages, potentially limiting the ability of narratives to serve as effective purveyors of moral lessons. Yet questions remain regarding whether young audiences’ inability to extract moral messages from narratives is due to limitations in their moral comprehension, the types of values emphasized by the stimuli in previous studies, or variance from study to study i…
Does ostracism/rejection impact self-disclosures? Examining the appeal of perceived social affordances after social threat
Two studies examine how experiencing a social need threat (ostracism and rejection) impacts subsequent preferences for self-disclosure to various digital audiences. Findings consider how contextual/situational factors like need threats may impact the appeal of two established perceived social affordances of media: personalization and privacy/visibility. Participants took part in a (bogus) social media activity to elicit feelings of inclusion/ostr…
The social factors and functions of media use
A heuristic model aims to organize and synthesize the substantial body of work examining the social influences that shape media selection, experiences, and effects. The Social Influences and Media Use (SIMU) model describes three broad social forces (users’ internal social needs, their social environment, and the social affordances of media) and their recursive association with media use. This article (a) brings together diverse subdisciplines in…
Stories Collectively Engage Listeners’ Brains: Enhanced Intersubject Correlations during Reception of Personal Narratives
Audiences’ engagement with mediated messages lies at the center of media effects research. However, the neurocognitive components underlying audience engagement remain unclear. A neuroimaging study was conducted to determine whether personal narratives engage the brains of audience members more than non-narrative messages and to investigate the brain regions that facilitate this effect. Intersubject correlations of brain activity during message e…
The Representation of Altruism and Egoism in Children’s Books
Although the social implications of children’s media have been a central public concern for millennia, there has been no systematic attempt to quantify the representation of other- versus self-serving values in children’s literature. A coding scheme based on the model of intuitive motivations and exemplars was applied to examine the representation of altruistic and egoistic motivations in popular children’s books. Echoing previous findings on the…
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…
Do Morals Featured in Media Content Correspond with Moral Intuitions in Media Users: A Test of the Mime in Two Cultures
The model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME) predicts that moral representations in media content can activate related moral intuitions in audiences, and that audience members in turn are influenced by their moral instincts to select content featuring corresponding moral values. This proposition was tested and confirmed in a two-phase study. Content analyses measured the frequency of moral domain representations in top-rated popular TV se…
Applying Moral Foundations Theory to Identify Terrorist Group Motivations
Previous research distinguishing terrorist groups has employed categorical schemes that are (1) ideologically broad and ambiguous (e.g., right‐wing versus left‐wing) or (2) focused on single‐issues (e.g., guns, abortion). Broad schemes often fail to clearly distinguish groups’ motivations, and single‐issue schemes provide no coherent theoretical structure for understanding terrorist behavior. To address these limitations, we applied the conceptua…
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)…
Extracting Latent Moral Information from Text Narratives: Relevance, Challenges, and Solutions
Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) and the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME) contend that moral judgments are built on a universal set of basic moral intuitions. A large body of research has supported many of MFT’s and the MIME’s central hypotheses. Yet, an important prerequisite of this research—the ability to extract latent moral content represented in media stimuli with a reliable procedure—has not been systematically studied. In th…
Things we know about media and morality
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, …
The effect of moral intuitions on decisions in video game play: The impact of chronic and temporary intuition accessibility
The model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME) highlights the central influence of innate moral instincts (or intuitions) in media use. Recent experimental research on the MIME found that moral intuitions that are chronically accessible in video gamers are likely to influence players to uphold related moral principles in the game. This study replicated and extended this research to examine the influence of both chronic and temporary accessi…
Testing a Dual-Process Model of Media Enjoyment and Appreciation: Media Enjoyment and Appreciation
This article presents a dual-process model of media entertainment representing 2 psychological appraisal processes, and examines how these processes evoke appreciation or enjoyment as a function of the presence/absence of cognitive conflict. The first process (which characterizes experiences of appreciation) is deliberative and slow, and results from cognitive conflict. The second process (which characterizes experiences of enjoyment) is automati…
Repeated Exposure to Narrative Entertainment and the Salience of Moral Intuitions: Repeated Exposure to Narrative
R. Tamborini (2011, 2012) recently proposed the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME), which combines theoretical developments in moral psychology with media theory to predict the influence of media exposure on morality. To test predictions from this model, a quasi-experimental study conducted over 8 weeks exposed selected participants to an online soap opera. Participants' moral intuitions were measured pre-exposure and postexposure. …
The Morality of May 2, 2011: A Content Analysis of U.S. Headlines Regarding the Death of Osama bin Laden
Following the death of Osama bin Laden in the late hours of May 1, 2011, many print newspapers throughout the United States and the world ran front-page coverage of his death the following day. Although public support for bin Laden's death was largely consistent, newspaper headlines across the country varied in their presentation of the story, from “Got the Bastard!” to a more stoic “bin Laden dead.” Content analysis derived from the model of int…
Perceptions of Moral Violations and Personality Traits Among Heroes and Villains
This study investigates disposition-formation processes in entertainment by predicting perceptions of media heroes and villains by their behavior in specific moral domains. Participants rated self-selected heroes and villains from television and film along the moral domains of care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity (Haidt & Joseph, 2007 Haidt, J. & Joseph, C. (2007). The moral mind: How 5 sets of innate moral intuitions guide the developm…
The Thrill Is Gone, but You Might Not Know: Habituation and Generalization of Biophysiological and Self-reported Arousal Responses to Video Games
Past research on consequences of video game play have conflated two distinct psychological mechanisms, habituation and generalization, into a unified process dubbed “desensitization.” The current paper reports the results of two studies, a repeated exposure study and a single exposure study, which examine habituation and generalization of biophysiological and self-reported arousal responses to violent video games. The findings indicate that repea…
Predicting Media Appeal From Instinctive Moral Values
Zillmann's moral sanction theory defines morality subcultures for entertainment as groups of media viewers who evaluate character actions with shared value systems. However, the theory provides no a priori means to identify these shared value systems. The model of intuitive morality and exemplars incorporates a theoretical framework for identifying and testing the factors from which these shared value systems emerge. This study applies the model'…
In the Mood to Game”: Selective exposure and mood management processes in computer game play
Previous research shows that the influence of a computer game’s task demand on the mood-repair capacity of game play follows a quadratic trend: mood repair increases as task demand goes from low to moderate levels, after which further increases in demand reduce repair. Applying selective exposure logic to this finding, we reasoned that familiarity with games known to vary in task demand should influence game choice among users experiencing negati…
The Influence of Morality Subcultures on the Acceptance and Appeal of Violence
Two studies examined how disposition theory-based morality subcultures predict the acceptance and appeal of violence. Study 1 used groups formed by median splits of individual difference variables (religiosity, aggression, and sex) thought to be trait correlates of morality subcultures in three 2 × 2 × 2 designs varying trait, perpetrator disposition (positive, negative), and motive (justified, unjustified) to predict the acceptance of violence i…
Characterizing Mood Management as Need Satisfaction: The Effects of Intrinsic Needs on Selective Exposure and Mood Repair
This study attempted to (a) extend traditional mood management theory research by investigating the influence of the intrinsic needs for competence and autonomy on selective exposure to video games and (b) test the influence of satisfying these needs on resultant mood repair. An experiment varied satisfaction of competence and autonomy needs using false feedback. Subjects then selected media that varied in level of user demand. Measures of need s…
Task demand and mood repair: The intervention potential of computer games
It is argued that computer game play has great potential to intervene in noxious mood states because it is a more demanding task than consuming other forms of media. From mood management theory, this increased intervention potential should make computer games particularly adept mood repair agents. To test this assertion, a study was conducted that varied levels of task demand (our operationalization of intervention potential) in a computer game t…
Preference for Graphic Horror Featuring Male Versus Female Victimization: Personality and Past Film Viewing Experiences
Journal Article Preference for Graphic Horror Featuring Male versus Female Victimization: Personality and Past Film Viewing Experiences Get access Ron Tamborini, Ron Tamborini 1Ron Tamborini (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1982) and James Stiff (Ph.D., Michigan State University, 1985) are assistant professors of communication at Michigan State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar James Stiff, James Stiff…
The Morality of May 2, 2011: A Content Analysis of U.S. Headlines Regarding the Death of Osama bin Laden
Following the death of Osama bin Laden in the late hours of May 1, 2011, many print newspapers throughout the United States and the world ran front-page coverage of his death the following day. Although public support for bin Laden's death was largely consistent, newspaper headlines across the country varied in their presentation of the story, from “Got the Bastard!” to a more stoic “bin Laden dead.” Content analysis derived from the model of int…
In the Mood to Game”: Selective exposure and mood management processes in computer game play
Previous research shows that the influence of a computer game’s task demand on the mood-repair capacity of game play follows a quadratic trend: mood repair increases as task demand goes from low to moderate levels, after which further increases in demand reduce repair. Applying selective exposure logic to this finding, we reasoned that familiarity with games known to vary in task demand should influence game choice among users experiencing negati…
Mapping the road to fun: Natural video game controllers, presence, and game enjoyment
This investigation examines how video game interactivity can affect presence and game enjoyment. Interactivity in the form of natural mapping has been advocated as a possible contributor to presence experiences, yet few studies to date have investigated this potential. The present work formulates a preliminary typology of natural mapping and addresses how several types of mapping impact the experience of a video game, with the expectation that mo…
Extracting Latent Moral Information from Text Narratives: Relevance, Challenges, and Solutions
Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) and the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME) contend that moral judgments are built on a universal set of basic moral intuitions. A large body of research has supported many of MFT’s and the MIME’s central hypotheses. Yet, an important prerequisite of this research—the ability to extract latent moral content represented in media stimuli with a reliable procedure—has not been systematically studied. In th…
Theorizing Flow and Media Enjoyment as Cognitive Synchronization of Attentional and Reward Networks
This article reconceptualizes the psychological concept of “flow” as it pertains to media entertainment. Our goal is to advance flow theory in ways that highlight the necessity of reliable and valid operationalization. We posit flow as a discrete, energetically optimized, and gratifying experience resulting from a cognitive synchronization of specific attentional and reward networks under condition of balance between challenge and skill. We ident…
Applying Moral Foundations Theory to Identify Terrorist Group Motivations
Previous research distinguishing terrorist groups has employed categorical schemes that are (1) ideologically broad and ambiguous (e.g., right‐wing versus left‐wing) or (2) focused on single‐issues (e.g., guns, abortion). Broad schemes often fail to clearly distinguish groups’ motivations, and single‐issue schemes provide no coherent theoretical structure for understanding terrorist behavior. To address these limitations, we applied the conceptua…
What Do We Really Know About First-Person-Shooter Games? An Event-Related, High-Resolution Content Analysis
Multiple studies have been addressing effects of playing violent video games. However, most such studies neglect users' individual experiences. In fact, each player's gameplaying choices creates his or her own specific game content. Within this study we analyzed the individually generated content of a typical first-person-shooter game with high temporal resolution and associated them with physiological response measures (heart rate, skin conducta…
The effect of moral intuitions on decisions in video game play: The impact of chronic and temporary intuition accessibility
The model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME) highlights the central influence of innate moral instincts (or intuitions) in media use. Recent experimental research on the MIME found that moral intuitions that are chronically accessible in video gamers are likely to influence players to uphold related moral principles in the game. This study replicated and extended this research to examine the influence of both chronic and temporary accessi…
Perceptions of Moral Violations and Personality Traits Among Heroes and Villains
This study investigates disposition-formation processes in entertainment by predicting perceptions of media heroes and villains by their behavior in specific moral domains. Participants rated self-selected heroes and villains from television and film along the moral domains of care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity (Haidt & Joseph, 2007 Haidt, J. & Joseph, C. (2007). The moral mind: How 5 sets of innate moral intuitions guide the developm…
Predicting Media Appeal From Instinctive Moral Values
Zillmann's moral sanction theory defines morality subcultures for entertainment as groups of media viewers who evaluate character actions with shared value systems. However, the theory provides no a priori means to identify these shared value systems. The model of intuitive morality and exemplars incorporates a theoretical framework for identifying and testing the factors from which these shared value systems emerge. This study applies the model'…
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, …
Fear and Victimization: Exposure to Television and Perceptions of Crime and Fear
(1984). Fear and Victimization: Exposure to Television and Perceptions of Crime and Fear. Annals of the International Communication Association: Vol. 8, Communication Yearbook 8, pp. 492-513
The Thrill Is Gone, but You Might Not Know: Habituation and Generalization of Biophysiological and Self-reported Arousal Responses to Video Games
Past research on consequences of video game play have conflated two distinct psychological mechanisms, habituation and generalization, into a unified process dubbed “desensitization.” The current paper reports the results of two studies, a repeated exposure study and a single exposure study, which examine habituation and generalization of biophysiological and self-reported arousal responses to violent video games. The findings indicate that repea…
The Moderators and Mediators of Door-in-the-Face Requests: Is it a Negotiation or a Helping Experience
The Door-in-the-Face (DITF) compliance-gaining tactic occurs when a large request, expected to be rejected, is followed by a more reasonable request that is granted. The mechanisms underlying the DITF strategy remain unclear. Researchers have posed different explanations for the effectiveness of DITF, including the reciprocal concessions and the social responsibility models. These theoretical rationales for DITF were tested in a 3 (request type: …
Does ostracism/rejection impact self-disclosures? Examining the appeal of perceived social affordances after social threat
Two studies examine how experiencing a social need threat (ostracism and rejection) impacts subsequent preferences for self-disclosure to various digital audiences. Findings consider how contextual/situational factors like need threats may impact the appeal of two established perceived social affordances of media: personalization and privacy/visibility. Participants took part in a (bogus) social media activity to elicit feelings of inclusion/ostr…
Things we know about media and morality
Fear and Victimization: Exposure to Television and Perceptions of Crime and Fear
(1984). Fear and Victimization: Exposure to Television and Perceptions of Crime and Fear. Annals of the International Communication Association: Vol. 8, Communication Yearbook 8, pp. 492-513
Preference for Graphic Horror Featuring Male Versus Female Victimization: Personality and Past Film Viewing Experiences
Journal Article Preference for Graphic Horror Featuring Male versus Female Victimization: Personality and Past Film Viewing Experiences Get access Ron Tamborini, Ron Tamborini 1Ron Tamborini (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1982) and James Stiff (Ph.D., Michigan State University, 1985) are assistant professors of communication at Michigan State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar James Stiff, James Stiff…
Popular Video Games: Quantifying the Presentation of Violence and Its Context
The aim of this study was to content analyze 60 of the most popular video games for violence from three gaming systems: Nintendo 64, Sega Dream- Cast, and Sony Playstation. Games were played for l0 minutes and videotaped for later content analysis. Adapting the coding scheme from the National Television Violence Study (Wilson et al., 7 997, 1998; Smith et al., 1998, the amount as well as the context of violence in games rated for general (e.g., "…
Third-Person Effect and Internet Pornography: The Influence of Collectivism and Internet Self-Efficacy
Within the context of Internet pornography, a survey of both U.S. and South Korean college students (N = 232) examined the influence of individualism-collectivism and media self-efficacy on the third-person effect. Two findings emerged: First, this study demonstrates the third-person effect of the Internet for the first time within Western culture. Participants perceived that Internet pornography's negative effect was greater on others than thems…
The Moderators and Mediators of Door-in-the-Face Requests: Is it a Negotiation or a Helping Experience
The Door-in-the-Face (DITF) compliance-gaining tactic occurs when a large request, expected to be rejected, is followed by a more reasonable request that is granted. The mechanisms underlying the DITF strategy remain unclear. Researchers have posed different explanations for the effectiveness of DITF, including the reciprocal concessions and the social responsibility models. These theoretical rationales for DITF were tested in a 3 (request type: …
Sports Spectators' Suspense: Affect and Uncertainty in Sports Entertainment
El Suspenso de los Espectadores de Deportes: El Afecto y la Inseguridad en el Entretenimiento de los Deportes Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick1, Prabu David1, Matt Eastin2,Ronald Tamborini3, & Dara Greenwood4ResumenPara explicar la atracción a los deportes en los medios, la teoría de suspenso es extendida para predecir el suspenso durante la exposición a los deportes. Los espectadores de juego de fútbol de una universidad (n = 113) en un contexto de ri…
What Do We Really Know About First-Person-Shooter Games? An Event-Related, High-Resolution Content Analysis
Multiple studies have been addressing effects of playing violent video games. However, most such studies neglect users' individual experiences. In fact, each player's gameplaying choices creates his or her own specific game content. Within this study we analyzed the individually generated content of a typical first-person-shooter game with high temporal resolution and associated them with physiological response measures (heart rate, skin conducta…
Theorizing Flow and Media Enjoyment as Cognitive Synchronization of Attentional and Reward Networks
This article reconceptualizes the psychological concept of “flow” as it pertains to media entertainment. Our goal is to advance flow theory in ways that highlight the necessity of reliable and valid operationalization. We posit flow as a discrete, energetically optimized, and gratifying experience resulting from a cognitive synchronization of specific attentional and reward networks under condition of balance between challenge and skill. We ident…
Defining Media Enjoyment as the Satisfaction of Intrinsic Needs
This article presents a model of enjoyment rooted in self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985) that includes the satisfaction of three needs related to psychological well-being: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In an experiment designed to validate this conceptualization of enjoyment, we manipulate video game characteristics related to the satisfaction of these needs and examine their relative effects on enjoyment. The validated model e…
Mapping the road to fun: Natural video game controllers, presence, and game enjoyment
This investigation examines how video game interactivity can affect presence and game enjoyment. Interactivity in the form of natural mapping has been advocated as a possible contributor to presence experiences, yet few studies to date have investigated this potential. The present work formulates a preliminary typology of natural mapping and addresses how several types of mapping impact the experience of a video game, with the expectation that mo…
Scriptedness and Televised Sports: Violent Consumption and Viewer Enjoyment
Extending Raney and Depalma’s research, this study examined effects of sport production on sport consumption. An experimental design crossed scripted (vs. unscripted) sport with violence (vs. nonviolence) to investigate the effects of both variables on violent outcomes and enjoyment. After viewing one of four clips, participants responded to three incomplete story stems, and responses were coded to measure hostile expectancy bias as a form of vio…
Moral Intuition and Media Entertainment
This paper applies the social intuitionist perspective of moral foundations theory (MFT) to the study of media entertainment. It begins by introducing the MFT’s conception of morality as an intuitive evaluative response governed by the association of moral codes organized in five mental modules. These include harm/care (concerned with suffering and empathy); fairness (related to reciprocity and justice); loyalty (dealing with common good and puni…
Media Enjoyment as Need Satisfaction: The Contribution of Hedonic and Nonhedonic Needs
Most early research on entertainment defines media enjoyment in functional terms as the satisfaction of hedonic needs. Two studies demonstrate the value of including nonhedonic and hedonic need satisfaction in defining enjoyment. Both studies find support for a need-satisfaction model showing that hedonic (arousal and affect) and nonhedonic (competence and autonomy) need satisfaction account for unique variance in enjoyment experienced during vid…
The Influence of Morality Subcultures on the Acceptance and Appeal of Violence
Two studies examined how disposition theory-based morality subcultures predict the acceptance and appeal of violence. Study 1 used groups formed by median splits of individual difference variables (religiosity, aggression, and sex) thought to be trait correlates of morality subcultures in three 2 × 2 × 2 designs varying trait, perpetrator disposition (positive, negative), and motive (justified, unjustified) to predict the acceptance of violence i…
Characterizing Mood Management as Need Satisfaction: The Effects of Intrinsic Needs on Selective Exposure and Mood Repair
This study attempted to (a) extend traditional mood management theory research by investigating the influence of the intrinsic needs for competence and autonomy on selective exposure to video games and (b) test the influence of satisfying these needs on resultant mood repair. An experiment varied satisfaction of competence and autonomy needs using false feedback. Subjects then selected media that varied in level of user demand. Measures of need s…
Media and the Moral Mind
Questions regarding the relation between media and morality have been a lasting concern. Can media exposure shape or alter moral values? Does morality influence how audience members select, interpret and respond to media content? Attempts to answer such questions are hindered by the complex nature of morality and its dynamic relation with media. This volume brings together leading scholars in an effort to examine reciprocal processes that connect…
Task demand and mood repair: The intervention potential of computer games
It is argued that computer game play has great potential to intervene in noxious mood states because it is a more demanding task than consuming other forms of media. From mood management theory, this increased intervention potential should make computer games particularly adept mood repair agents. To test this assertion, a study was conducted that varied levels of task demand (our operationalization of intervention potential) in a computer game t…
Predicting Media Appeal From Instinctive Moral Values
Zillmann's moral sanction theory defines morality subcultures for entertainment as groups of media viewers who evaluate character actions with shared value systems. However, the theory provides no a priori means to identify these shared value systems. The model of intuitive morality and exemplars incorporates a theoretical framework for identifying and testing the factors from which these shared value systems emerge. This study applies the model'…
In the Mood to Game”: Selective exposure and mood management processes in computer game play
Previous research shows that the influence of a computer game’s task demand on the mood-repair capacity of game play follows a quadratic trend: mood repair increases as task demand goes from low to moderate levels, after which further increases in demand reduce repair. Applying selective exposure logic to this finding, we reasoned that familiarity with games known to vary in task demand should influence game choice among users experiencing negati…
Testing a Dual-Process Model of Media Enjoyment and Appreciation: Media Enjoyment and Appreciation
This article presents a dual-process model of media entertainment representing 2 psychological appraisal processes, and examines how these processes evoke appreciation or enjoyment as a function of the presence/absence of cognitive conflict. The first process (which characterizes experiences of appreciation) is deliberative and slow, and results from cognitive conflict. The second process (which characterizes experiences of enjoyment) is automati…
Repeated Exposure to Narrative Entertainment and the Salience of Moral Intuitions: Repeated Exposure to Narrative
R. Tamborini (2011, 2012) recently proposed the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME), which combines theoretical developments in moral psychology with media theory to predict the influence of media exposure on morality. To test predictions from this model, a quasi-experimental study conducted over 8 weeks exposed selected participants to an online soap opera. Participants' moral intuitions were measured pre-exposure and postexposure. …
The Morality of May 2, 2011: A Content Analysis of U.S. Headlines Regarding the Death of Osama bin Laden
Following the death of Osama bin Laden in the late hours of May 1, 2011, many print newspapers throughout the United States and the world ran front-page coverage of his death the following day. Although public support for bin Laden's death was largely consistent, newspaper headlines across the country varied in their presentation of the story, from “Got the Bastard!” to a more stoic “bin Laden dead.” Content analysis derived from the model of int…
Perceptions of Moral Violations and Personality Traits Among Heroes and Villains
This study investigates disposition-formation processes in entertainment by predicting perceptions of media heroes and villains by their behavior in specific moral domains. Participants rated self-selected heroes and villains from television and film along the moral domains of care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity (Haidt & Joseph, 2007 Haidt, J. & Joseph, C. (2007). The moral mind: How 5 sets of innate moral intuitions guide the developm…
The Thrill Is Gone, but You Might Not Know: Habituation and Generalization of Biophysiological and Self-reported Arousal Responses to Video Games
Past research on consequences of video game play have conflated two distinct psychological mechanisms, habituation and generalization, into a unified process dubbed “desensitization.” The current paper reports the results of two studies, a repeated exposure study and a single exposure study, which examine habituation and generalization of biophysiological and self-reported arousal responses to violent video games. The findings indicate that repea…
The effect of moral intuitions on decisions in video game play: The impact of chronic and temporary intuition accessibility
The model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME) highlights the central influence of innate moral instincts (or intuitions) in media use. Recent experimental research on the MIME found that moral intuitions that are chronically accessible in video gamers are likely to influence players to uphold related moral principles in the game. This study replicated and extended this research to examine the influence of both chronic and temporary accessi…
Psychology (38 works) · Social Psychology (32 works) · Media Influence and Health (27 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (13 works) · Morality (12 works) · Sociology (12 works)