The document discusses media psychology and influence, specifically covering the limited effects paradigm, mediation and moderation effects, and individual differences in media effects. It provides an overview of key theories including cultivation theory, agenda-setting theory, priming, exemplification, social cognitive theory, observational learning, and social learning theory. The document examines how understanding mediation and moderation is important for determining the conditions under which media may have effects.

1. MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY
AND INFLUENCE
Week Two – Limited Effects Paradigm

2. PreTalk: Mediation and
Moderation
Media Psychology and Influence
SPICE 2012 (Erfurt)
ND Bowman PhD, Instructor

3. Variables – Direct Effect
Aggressive Thoughts in
Violent Media Content
Children
IV DV
(Cause) (Effect)

4. Variables – Mediation Effect
Aggressive Thoughts in
Violent Media Content Co-location Children
IV MedV DV

5. Variables – Moderation Effect
Interactivity
ModV
Violent Media Content Aggressive Thoughts in
Children
IV DV

6. Day One:
Limited Effects – Vott ist das?
Media Psychology and Influence
SPICE 2012 (Erfurt)
ND Bowman PhD, Instructor

7. Outline
 State of Mass Communication Research –
1962
 Mediation and Moderation
 Whatis it?
 Why we should be doing more of it?

8. Mass Communication, circa
1962
It is possible to study human
 To study communication without
considering mass
communication is to communication, but hardly
possible to study mass
study media; it is communication without
part of our ecology taking account many areas
of communication research
which are not themselves
 Schramm was an “mass” communication.
early pioneer in the
scientific study of
communication
 Took a marker of the
current state of
research affairs

9. Mass Communication, circa
1962
 Earliest research out of Columbia looked the
relationship between mass communication
and personal influence
 FOCUS: Television and
 Information and entertainment
 Commercials and children
 Shift from audience size (why?)

10. Mass Communication, circa
1962
 Audience behaviors
 Beyond exposure, what are they exposing to?
 12% of newspaper overall
 ¼ read 30%
 ¼ read less than 4%
 Comics (56%) > Photos (51%)
 Stories on
 War,
 Defense
 Disaster
 Human interest
 Weather

11. Mass Communication, circa
1962
 Shift to motivations and
usage of media
 Detroit newspaper strike
affects 59% of audience
 News > sports, features,
comics, editorials
 Personality‟s influence on
entertainment/information
 News predicted by
perceived usefulness,
interest (TAM?)
 Perceived high- or low-
brow motivation to use TV
 Education level drives
information-viewing

12. Mass Communication, circa
1962
 Content and “indexing” by contextualizing:
 Headlines
 Captions
Aesthetics?
 Colors
 Theme music

13. Mass Communication, circa
1962
 Channel effects (the
“media” effect?)
 Recall highest from TV,
least from print
information
 Both in the short-term
and the long-term (eight
months)
 Debates polarized
rather than converged
opinions
 Audiences „insert‟
emotion into speech

14. Mass Communication, circa
1962
 Two-Step Flow model

15. Mass Communication, circa
1962
 Two-Step Flow modelWho are these (leading)
people?
• Evenly-distributed across
SES; variance based on
content
• Used more media
• Were more socially-
connected

16. Mass Communication, circa
1962
 Two-Step Flow model

17. Schramm to Klapper
One of Klapper‟s more
famous arguments
was that media
reinforces rather than
challenges (cultural-
moral) status quos!

18. What is Moderation? (B&K)
 Moderators are
variables that change
the direction or
strength of a XY
relationship
 Can be qualitative or
quantitative
 Moderations can
interact with
predictors to
understand an
outcome

19. Moderation – Case 1
The simplest case, suggesting that an increase
in the moderating variable has a multiplicative
effect on the relationship between IV and DV
(here, positive)
[IV X MV = DV]

20. Moderation – Case 2
Here, we see a similar effect, but with a
dichotomous moderator (i.e., gender). This
suggests that the influence of an IV on a DV is
greater for one category than another.
[Male‟s IV  DV > Female‟s IV  DV]

21. Moderation – Case 3
 A continuous ModV and a categorical IV; good
for identifying the conditions for which a
moderator‟s influence is realized
[Males are influenced more by IV than
females]

22. What is Mediation? (B&K)
 Mediators account for an observed influence of
an IV on a DV
 Move us from SR to SOR, as they
consider the “organism” in the process
 Sort of like “greedy moderators” as they take
all of the effect, no more (c)

24. Where does this all fit in to
media?
Mediation Moderation
 Helps us understand  Helps us understand
potentially spurious conditions under
relationships which media would
between content have a larger or
and affect smaller affect
 Implicates the role  Teases out influence
of the „organism‟ in channel effects and
media output usage motivations
 Others?  Others?

25. Importance of Med/Mod Today
 Holbert and Stephenson argue that
understanding mediation is “a necessary but
not sufficient condition” for media influence.
 Specifically, then discuss SEMs and indirect
effects

26. Mediation in Media Effects
Research
 Conditional effects model generally argues
media‟s limited influence on „CAB‟
 We can think of mediators and moderators as
“conditions for a media effect to be
realized”
 These conditions exist at all levels
 Who is affected
 What is being affected
 How is this affect happening?

27. Examples of Mediation
Political Communication Health Communication
 “media  vote  “media  behavior”
result” influenced by: influenced by:
 Likelihood to vote  Views on message
 Views on behavior
 Information levels
 Social norms
about candidate
surrounding behavior
issues
 Self-efficacy to stop
 Voter perceptions
behavior
about candidate
 Trust in message?
quality
 Trust in message?

28. Example: Four Variable
Mediation

29. Cost-Benefit of Facebook

30. Cost-Benefit of Twitter

31. Day Two: Effects on
Individuals
Media Psychology and Influence
SPICE 2012 (Erfurt)
ND Bowman PhD, Instructor

32. Outline
 An overview of individual differences
 Priming and Exemplification
 Social Cognitive Theory

33. Individual Differences in Media
Effects
 Media research has
evolved to be more
subtle in understanding
the S  R influence
“The idea that media have a  Understanding ∆ in
direct or uniform effect on
viewers is a position that is
individuals between
generally understood to be a and within social
simplification of the way that
researchers in the discipline
groups is key to
conceptualize media influences” understanding
~Oliver, 2002
observed variance in
media effects

34. Enjoyment and Emotions
 Individuals differ in…
 What they “need” from the media
 e.g. need for cognition, sensation-seeking
 Their „readiness to respond‟ to media
 e.g. emotional contagion qua empathy, coping, anxiety
 Personality and other traits
 e.g. aggressiveness, neuroticism, extraversion
 Evaluative dispositions
 e.g. of characters, narrative, show aesthetics

35. Exposure, Interpretation and
Memory
 Cognitive dissonance strategies imply by
definition individual differences
 Important, as dissonance drives media
selection
wo könnte es ein Medien-Effekt
hier zu sein?

36. Exposure, Interpretation and
Memory
 Watergate scandal
 Interest in coverage was
 Highest with McGovern
supporters
 Lowest with Nixon
supporters
 Moderate with undecided
voters
 Rush Limbaugh interest
 Follows almost identical
patterns among Red >
Blue interest
 How do we get folks to
„counter-expose‟?
 Goals? Availability?
Refutability?

37. Exposure, Interpretation and
Memory
 Interpretation and Perception
 Klapper (1960) argues that media is produced to
maintain a status quo…
 …so it stands to reason that audiences will use
and interpret media in line with their status quo
 “Archie Bunker effect” (Vidmar & Rokeach,
1974) Family” topped Nielsen
“All In The
charts from 1971 to 1983.

38. Exposure, Interpretation and
Memory
 Selective memory
 If we differ in what we
need from media and
how we process it, we
likely differ in what we
take from it
 Memory recall is
highest for „congruent
information‟ that fits
our a priori world
view

39. Media Priming
 Priming is “the effect
of some preceding
stimulus or event on
how we react…to
some subsequent
stimulus”
 Applied to media, we
study how media
content at T1 might
affect a behavior at
T2

40. Media Priming and Violence
Trait aggressiveness (+)
External violent cues (+)
Frustration (+)
Passage of time (-)
KI__

41. Media Priming and Politics

42. Media Priming in other areas
 Music videos and misogyny
 “Rape Myth” and sexual media
 Stereotyping and social judgments

43. Cognitive Neo-Association
 Concepts
become linked
in memory
 These links can
become
stronger with
 Similarity
 Repetition
 Accessibility of
concept a How is this model
function of adapted for Political
Communication? Health
strength of link Communication?

44. Priming and Mental Models
Mental models
represent a merging of
semantic memory
(knowledge of the
world) and episodic
memory (experience)

45. Priming and Mental Models
 Issues with the „network‟ approach?
 Effects are fleeting, requiring constant rebuilding of
networks (chronic accessibility)
 Recall the Cognitive Miser hypothesis?
 Mental models might serve as readily-available
cognitive scripts that are shaped through
experience and expectation
1. We can either create a new model or tap and old
one
2. Information within a model can be primed, activating
our reliance on the model as a whole for that
information

46. Exemplification
 In essence, using
examples to tell a
story
 Exemplars vs. base-rate
information
Also, let‟s not forget the
role of non-mediated
(i.e. personal)
experience!
*

47. Exemplification
 Assumes that:
1. Events of consequence attract
more of our short- and long-
term attentional resources
2. Comprehension and storage of We also tend to make
concrete events is easier than to major boo-boos by
abstract ones relying on failed
heuristics related to:
3. We make assessments about
• Representativene
events based on our ability to ss (of the event)
retrieve them from memory • Availability (of
examples in our
mind)

48. Six exemplification predictions
1. Concrete examples relevant
influence characteristics aids
perceptions more in accuracy of
than abstract perception
accounts 5. Emotionally-arousing
2. Visual (concrete) exemplars foster
exemplars are most overestimation
effective 6. Increased attention
3. Emotional exemplars paid to an event
are more effective fosters
(when concrete) overestimation
4. Variance in event-

49. Suzie and the Bobo Doll
In Bandura‟s famous “Bobl Doll” studies, children who witness (via television)
an adult model assault a Bobo Doll without punish were more likely to enact
the behavior, even when no „weapons‟ were included in a room.

50. Observational Learning @
SCT/SLT
 Basic logic of the theory
A person learns by observing the actions of
others and the consequences of those actions.
 If Action A is rewarded, then Action A is good
 If Action A is punished, then Action A is bad
 We model those behaviors that are „good‟
 Non-punishment = reward

51. Triadic reciprocal causation

52. Based on Four Distinctly Human
Traits
 Symbolizing Capacity
 The ability to use symbols to transform experiences
into cognitive models for the future (e.g., words)
 Self-Regulatory Capacity
 The ability to evaluate and motivate oneself
 Self-Reflective Capacity
 The ability to verify thoughts to see if they are right
 Vicarious Capacity
 The ability to learn without direct experience

53. Modeling
 The reenactment of observed
behavior
1. Attention
2. Retention
3. Motor reproduction
4. Motivation
 Can be either anti-social or
pro-social

54. Modeling

55. Social Learning Theory (Bandura)
 We learn through response consequences
 Informative
 Welearn which responses are appropriate through
observation
 Motivational
 Anticipation that behavior will be rewarded leads to
modeling
 Reinforcing
 Reinforcement of behaviors subsequently performed
leads to further learning and motivation

56. Social Learning Theory (Bandura)
 Role of Moral
Judgments
 Violating moral
principles is aversive
 We learn by experience
how to weight moral
factors
 Transgressions are
regulated by two major
sanctions
 social sanctions
 internalized self-
sanctions
 We can learn to
override these
judgments!

57. What motivates us to be bad?

58. Day Three: Effects on Society
Media Psychology and Influence
SPICE 2012 (Erfurt)
ND Bowman PhD, Instructor

59. Outline
 Cultivation Theory and Social Reality
 Agenda-Setting Theory
 Third-Person Effects

60. Cultivation Theory
 TV is… But giving primary attention to those
a centralized aspects and terms of traditional media
effects research risks losing sight of
storytelling what is most distinctive and
system… significant about television as the
 …that creates common storyteller
of our age.
broadly shared
images…
 …and presents a
limited world view…
 …that becomes
shared by audience
members

61. Cultivation Theory
Mainstreaming Resonance
 Heavy viewing  At times, heavy
overrides differences television viewers
in perspectives that might experience
ordinarily stem from the very content
other group they view on screen
influences
 people from different
backgrounds develop
same social
perceptions

62. Cultural Indicators Project
 1967, George Gerbner
 Investigated the cultivation effect:
 For people who watch TV, real world = TV world

63. Cultural Indicators Project
 Three steps of the project
 InstitutionalProcess Analysis, where we see how
messages are created
 Message Systems Analysis, where we assess the
content in mass-produced messages
 Cultivation Analysis, where we examine the
influence of these messages on audience
thoughts and feelings
Cultivation Research looks at long-term
effects!

64. Findings from cultivation
research
 TV viewers diverge from reality
 Underestimate number of elder
 Overestimate chances for being assaulted
 General believe in the violent urban areas (and
bucolic rural areas)
 Tend to know less about their environment
 Tend to dream about “the bachelor life”
 Label themselves as political moderates

65. Example: Mean World
65
Syndrome
How violent is the world?
(c) 2010 by N.D. Bowman, YHC

66. Schrum and the heuristic model
 TV viewing enhances construct accessibility
 Repeated priming causes certain aspects to be
salient
 Shared social perceptions serving as
indicators of a cultivation effect are
constructed through heuristic processing

67. Cultivation Hypothesis
Assumptions
1. Messages are relatively uniform
2. Viewing of television is non-selective
3. Television viewing is habitual
**What do you think?**

68. Cultivation Hypothesis
Assumptions
 Is TV still a universal story-teller?
 Increase in cable and radio channels
 New networks focus on narrowcasting and
tailoring
 “1000 True Fans” hypothesis eschews large
audiences

69. Cultivation Hypothesis
Assumptions

70. Agenda-Setting
 The press “may not be successful much of the
time in telling people what to think, but it is
stunningly successful in telling its readers what
to think about” (Cohen, 1963, p. 13)
 Increases salience of an event/idea/concept
*

71. Agenda-Setting
 McCombs and Shaw (1972)
*

72. Agenda-Setting
 What increases salience?
 Placement of a story
 Total time/space devoted
 Duration of coverage
 Framing?
 Who sets the agenda today?
(c) ND Bowman, 2011 *

73. Framing
 Choosing how to package a story to maximize
some intended effect
 Information Effects
 Persuasion Effects
Accompanying a story about
abortion Which image is more
likely to garner support for
Planned Parenthood? Support for
*
anti-abortion legislation?

74. Example: Mad Cow

75. Example: OJ Simpson

76. Example: Sports Coverage
Heisman Trophy ESPN Body Issue
 Analysis of adjectives  Looking at the
used to describe portrayal of nude
finalists shows athletes, females
reporters to use were more likely to
“Brawn” and “Brain” be out of context
frames to describe and to engage in
Black and White self-touching than
athletes‟ success males
 More here  More here