Abstract: This paper examines the prospective associations among positive verbal and physical expressions in YouTube-specific content, children's parasocial relationships, the quality of their offline peer relationships, and parents' perceptions of YouTube's role in child development. We conducted a three-wave longitudinal survey combined with a content analysis of 97 parents with children aged four to 6. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we found that positive verbal and physical expressions in YouTube-specific content at Year 1 were significantly associated with children's parasocial relationships at Year 2. Parasocial relationships at Year 2 were negatively associated with the quality of children’s offline peer relationships at Year 3 but positively associated with parents’ perceptions of YouTube in the same year. By linking expressive features in YouTube-specific content to children's parasocial relationships and subsequent peer relationship quality and parental perceptions, the findings provide insight into how media environments may shape early social development.
: Rooted in mood management theory (MMT), this study considers whether the heightened perceived demands of virtual reality video games (VRVGs) would differentially repair moods for bored versus stressed individuals. A 2 (bored or stressed) & times; 2 (monitor or VR) factorial design with within-subjects measures of mood found no differences of gaming modality on mood repair. VRVGs were not perceived as any more demanding than monitor-based gaming, and both were moderately demanding. Stressed participants had higher mood repair than bored participants, in part because the stress induction was stronger. Overall, our findings both (a) challenge assumptions about VRVGs as inherently more demanding while (b) supporting a basic tenet of MMT-based mood repair - moderately demanding experiences disrupt noxious mood states.
Abstract: This study aims to examine whether and how perceived identity of a support provider and message quality would affect perceived agency of the provider and support outcomes. A total of 196 college students in China participated in a laboratory experiment. Each participant was instructed to discuss a personal problem with either a chatbot or a human who would provide higher or lower person-centered support as preprogrammed. The results showed that perceived identity of a support provider and person-centeredness of support messages jointly affected participants’ perceptions of the provider agency, which in turn positively influenced participants’ emotional distress reduction, reappraisal, and perceived validation. The findings provide theoretical and pragmatic implications for the application of human–computer interaction in supportive communication.
Abstract: As artificial intelligence expert systems (AIES) are increasingly used in domains such as medicine, psychotherapy, law, finance, and education, it remains important to understand what shapes their perceived trustworthiness relative to human experts. A central limitation of prior research is that findings are often difficult to generalize across domains because domain and stakes are rarely varied together within the same design. We address this issue in a preregistered online vignette experiment in which UK participants ( N = 898) evaluated advice from an AIES and a human expert under low- and high-stakes conditions in one of five domains. Across all domains and both stake levels, human experts were perceived as more trustworthy than AIES, whereas AIES were perceived as riskier. For trustworthiness, between-domain effects were significant but small on average, mainly affecting the size of the human–AIES difference, which was largest in medicine and psychotherapy and smallest in education. For perceived risk, stakes played a larger role than domain, with high-stakes situations increasing perceived risk across domains. Importantly, trustworthiness and perceived risk did not change in parallel across conditions: Domain differences were comparatively small for trustworthiness, whereas stakes played a larger role in perceived risk. Overall, the findings suggest that cross-domain differences are smaller than often assumed once stakes are controlled, and that stakes matter more than domain for understanding perceived risk when people evaluate AIES advice.
: There is a vast field of research investigating which motivations drive media usage within specific contexts - for example gaming, social media use, or binge-watching. However, surprisingly little is known about how different motivations influence the selection among multiple media formats (e.g., TV shows vs. music). Which media do people typically select if they want to relax, and which if they want to satisfy their curiosity? We conducted a within-subjects experiment (n = 252) with US undergraduates to explore what media people turn to in response to three distinct motivations: 1) the motivation to experience pleasure (hedonic entertainment), 2) the motivation to experience meaning (eudaimonic entertainment), and 3) the motivation to experience variety (psychologically rich entertainment). We investigate how often people use media for hedonic, eudaimonic, and psychological richness motives, as well as how affective states influence these motives.
: While gender and race are known to influence self-presentation in digital environments, how critical socio-political identities such as political ideology, military experience, and national identity shape in-game behaviors remains underexplored. Building upon Social Identity Theory (SIT), this study examines how these identities predict national identification through the selection of country-based vehicle. By integrating unobtrusive behavioral log data from World of Tanks, self-reported survey data, and global in-game statistics, we found that North American and Russian players disproportionately select US and Soviet tanks, respectively. At the player level, American respondents (N = 2,113) with military experience or conservative ideology show significantly higher selection rates for US vehicles and lower usage of Chinese tanks. Crucially, this study quantifies the psychological friction between expressive identity and instrumental competition motivation. We found that players align with their national identity even when such choices are detrimental to winning a game. Our study identifies a psychological subsidy effect, where identity-congruent selection mitigates the importance of performance, revealing a clear hierarchy of motivations in immersive environments. By demonstrating how offline ideological schemas dictate digital decision-making through nonhumanoid avatars, this research expands the conceptual boundaries of SIT. Implications for game companies are discussed.
: This study examines priming effects of emotion-based group stigmatization in journalistic reporting. Using computational text analysis, we test whether subtle associations of ethnicized groups with the emotions fear and admiration shape readers' emotions, cognitions, and behavioral intentions. We conducted a multistimulus online experiment in which 2,139 German participants were randomly exposed to one of 638 real news articles referring to one of two migrant groups. Emotion-based stigmatization was quantified through latent semantic scaling, capturing the proximity of emotion-signaling words to group labels. Results show that articles associating a group more strongly with admiration (relative to fear) improved explicit evaluations of the group and marginally increased admiration felt toward the group. No effects emerged for implicit evaluations, generalized sentiment, fear, or intergroup behavioral intentions. Findings suggest that even nuanced associations in everyday reporting can activate emotional or cognitive stigmatization, while also underscoring the limits of single-exposure effects. Methodologically, the study highlights how the combination of computational content analysis with multistimulus experimental designs can advance media effects research.
: Expressions of antisemitic hate abound on social media today, reinvigorating ancient stereotypes around Jewish people and their history. The current user-centered study examined the shapes and the extent of antisemitic stereotypes from the point of view of emerging adults and their daily social media consumption. Emerging adults (N = 47) between 18 and 30 years of age were asked to keep guided media diaries of their social media activity over a period of 21 days (February to May 2022), zooming in on Jewish people, Jewish life, the Middle East conflict, and other topics associated with Jewry. A sample of N = 1,024 threads from a variety of social media channels was collected, encompassing textual and visual material. Qualitative content analysis was used to determine the presence of antisemitism, how explicit/implicit it was, and the types of argumentation used to support antisemitic claims. Frequency analysis and Chi-Square tests yielded beyond-chance patterns in the data. Findings reveal a high prevalence of explicit Israel-related antisemitic discourse encountered by emerging adults on social media, as well as highly ambiguous and implicit content that eludes easy detection by emerging adult users. Findings also point to the highly interactive nature in which antisemitism is co-constructed online.
: The recent triumph of video-on-demand platforms has reshaped global media access, enabling audiences to easily engage with content from diverse cultures. Inspired by this development, we aimed to identify the psychological and contextual factors that drive viewers' interest in culturally distant media offerings. In a within-subjects experiment, 167 adult participants with a Western background rated their interest in fictitious films that represented either high or low cultural distance. Complementing this implicit selection task, participants reported their explicit interest in culturally distant media, as well as several potential predictors. Results showed that openness to experience, peer influence, cultural intelligence, and learning motivation significantly predicted viewers' preference for media from distant cultures. These findings highlight the role of individual differences in shaping media engagement in an increasingly cross-cultural media landscape.
: In recent decades, social media has become an integral part of adolescents' daily life, reshaping peer interactions. To overcome the limitations of the quantitative approach of adolescents' social media use when investigating relationships with psychological outcomes, motivational factors have become increasingly popular. The first aim was to review the psychometric properties of existent tools used to measure adolescents' social media use motives. The second objective was to elaborate a classification of the main motives among adolescents. Following PRISMA guidelines, 14 articles were reviewed based on the search of 5 databases. Psychometric properties were examined based on the COSMIN guidelines. The reviewed articles showed a heterogeneous process, with only two of them considered as a satisfying procedure of development and validation. Based on the Use and Gratification Theory, a classification of the five main motives for adolescents' social media use was developed. Overall, this study encourages the pursuit of studies on social media use among adolescence, while carefully choosing a tool with satisfying psychometric properties.
: The soap opera effect is an unsettling feeling that some individuals experience while watching films at a high framerate. It has received little scholarly attention, and most explanations of it are speculative or anecdotal. Drawing on the mere exposure effect, this preregistered laboratory experiment provides new evidence of framerate sensitivity and cinemagoing as explanatory factors of the soap opera effect. Undergraduate students (N = 270) reported their cinemagoing and completed a novel task to measure their framerate sensitivity. They also completed a task indicating their framerate preferences. Those with a higher framerate sensitivity and more regular cinemagoing preferred the standard framerate in one scene and the high framerate in another scene. These divergent findings may be due to differences in camera movement and luminance between the scenes.
: This study examines how personality is associated with the willingness to engage with opposing political views across two distinct contexts: interpersonal discussions and the media. Drawing on survey data from 1,340 Swiss-German participants, this study reveals that engagement with diverse political views is not solely shaped by stable personality traits but also by the characteristics of the informational context. Openness, for instance, shows a positive relationship with seeking controversial information in the media but not the interpersonal sphere, while extraversion is linked to a preference for controversial political discussions. Nevertheless, our results also point to a particular personality type, plasticity (i.e., shared variance of openness and extraversion), that seems to be more actively engaged in cross-cutting exposure across communication settings. In contrast, individuals high in stability (i.e., shared variance of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and agreeableness) tend to be somewhat less engaged.
: Human-computer interaction has advanced significantly with the emergence of OpenAI's ChatGPT. However, it's unclear whether users perceive these chatbots to have positive human qualities. Using a 2 x 2 experimental design, university students evaluated the perceived warmth and benevolence of a chatbot, whereby we altered the description of the chatbot across experimental groups. Specifically, we altered its description according to Asch's (1946) concept of warmth, where we varied it to have traits suggesting high or low kindness, and we also varied the language used in the chatbot description (technical vs. anthropomorphic). We hypothesized that describing the chatbot using anthropomorphic (humanlike language) vs. technical language would increase its perceived warmth and benevolence and that descriptions highlighting kindness would enhance the chatbot's perceived warmth. Results revealed that kindness-related descriptions of the chatbot significantly affected its perceived warmth and benevolence, whereas differences in anthropomorphic or technical language did not. The role of personality traits in shaping AI perceptions is discussed.
: Social media are increasingly becoming platforms for moral discussions. Users communicating on a moral level can encourage us to engage with information regarding a moral debate by activating processes that shape our moral judgments. To investigate these processes, this paper studies the effect of attitude congruence and morally-framed arguments on the selection, reading time, and liking of social media content related to moral debates and whether the level of perceived moral relevance of the topic influences the effects' strength. Further the role of identification with other users when choosing what content to interact with is examined. In a 2 x 2 x 2 mixed design experiment, participants were given an information selection task in which they were shown different posts within a mockup Facebook feed. Here, comment valence (positive vs. negative), type of argumentation within the comment (moral argument vs. no moral argument) and the opinion climate within one's ingroup (ingroup supports attitude-consistent vs. attitude-inconsistent views) were manipulated. Results supported the confirmation bias regarding the selection and liking of content in social media. The hypothesized effects of moral arguments, relevance and group identification did not influence information selection or reading duration. Exploratory analyses revealed that content accompanied by comments with moral arguments has a higher likelihood of being liked, especially when the issue is seen as morally significant.
: The present investigation aimed to explore the mechanisms through which engaging with narrative entertainment (e.g., written or video) might fulfill the relatedness need satisfaction in audience members. Using both correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) methodology, we examined the degree to which relatedness needs might be satisfied in viewers via a direct route (i.e., through meaningful parasocial relationships with narrative characters) and via a vicarious route (i.e., through identification with a character who has satisfying relationships). Results indicated that each route can facilitate relatedness need satisfaction in narrative audiences. The present studies highlight how audiences experience characters both as shared selves and as distinct others and illustrate how narrative engagement can serve as a source for experiences and fulfillment outside of our day-to-day lives.
: Although research suggests that popular media can shape adults' perceptions of scientists, studies with younger audiences remain scarce. In this preregistered online experiment, children aged 8-12 (N = 256) viewed an animated television program that featured women who varied in their character role (i.e., superheroes vs. supervillains) and character description (i.e., labeled vs. not labeled as scientists). Children reported high levels of epistemic trust in scientists overall. However, viewing a villainous woman who was labeled (vs. not labeled) as a scientist led to slight reductions in epistemic trust. Furthermore, habitual exposure to superhero television negatively predicted one dimension of epistemic trust (i.e., perceived benevolence). We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings and offer practical suggestions for content design.
: The present study explores how moral and threat language in news media influences public opinion within the context of the US-China relationship. Drawing on Moral Foundations Theory and Intergroup Threat Theory, I employed a computational approach combining the dictionary method with Large Language Models to identify moral and threat language in coverage of China by six major US news outlets from 2005 to 2022. I then analyzed the relationship between distinct types of moral and threat language and longitudinal polling data on Americans' attitudes toward China. The results reveal a unified pattern: both liberal- and conservative-leaning outlets employed more binding than individualizing moral language, and emphasized realistic threats over symbolic threats when covering China. However, it is symbolic threat language that more strongly correlates with negative attitudes toward China. Furthermore, realistic threat language only predicted negative attitudes when accompanied by sufficient levels of moral language, with this relationship intensifying as moral language increased. The findings offer insights into the moral and threat dimensions of foreign news and public opinion towards foreign countries, highlighting a critical and complex interplay between these elements in a global context.
