Chapter 7: Mass Communication Influence on Emotional State PDF

People have long noticed that mass communication influences the psychological state of the audience. After watching news or movies, visiting websites or social networks, we can feel happy or sad, feel successful or unsuccessful, feel satisfied or dissatisfied with life. Mass communication gives us n...

People have long noticed that mass communication influences the psychological state of the audience. After watching news or movies, visiting websites or social networks, we can feel happy or sad, feel successful or unsuccessful, feel satisfied or dissatisfied with life. Mass communication gives us new emotional experiences and changes our state of being. However, modern and classical communication media do this in different ways. The messages of classical mass communication - especially television - have a direct impact: they evoke positive or negative emotions in viewers. In addition, they make it possible to build parasocial relationships with famous figures and fictional characters. Modern mass communication has additional possibilities. Through it, people communicate with each other, build social capital, and develop romantic relationships. This communication has an impact on users\' psychological well-being. In this chapter, we will explore these possibilities. 7.1 Influence of mass communication on emotional state Have you ever laughed at a video clip found on the Internet? Have you been frightened by a horror movie? Be outraged by an injustice you read about in the news? Sympathize with a person who described their problem on social media? The messages we encounter in mass communication change our emotional state. When studying such messages, psychologists ask two basic questions: what effect do they have on the audience? How do audiences choose the messages they will read, listen to, or watch? The impact of messages on emotional well-being. Our emotional state can be altered by news and talk shows, documentaries and feature films, amateur videos, and social media posts. However, it is primarily dramatic and frightening television programs (news and feature films) that attract the attention of psychologists. At first glance, such messages evoke negative emotions - sadness and fear, which are unpleasant for the audience. Nevertheless, people watch such works and even enjoy them. Why does this happen and how do people cope with their condition? Dramatic messages include feature films whose characters are sympathetic to the audience but face serious problems, suffer hardship or die. Studies show that such works evoke a dual reaction in viewers. On the one hand, they produce sadness and a depressive state. Such changes are a direct reaction to unpleasant events that happen to the characters. People sympathize with the characters, worry about them and get very upset when they die. On the other hand, such movies cause joy, increase self-esteem and life satisfaction. These changes occur as a result of social comparison. When people read a story or watch a movie, they compare themselves to the characters in the work. Top-down comparison (\"I\'m better off than the hero\") elicits positive emotions and increases self-esteem. Peer comparison (\"I\'m just like the hero, I\'m not alone\") reduces negative emotions and helps people cope with stress. To reduce the negative emotions that arise from watching dramatic movies, audiences employ specific psychological strategies. For example, to cope with the sadness and anger caused by scenes from feature films, adults may switch their attention to something else, suppress the emotions that arise, analyze their emotional state, or reflect on the fact that such things do not happen in life Scary messages include news and feature films that depict the death of large numbers of people (e.g., horror films). Research shows that they evoke negative emotions and health problems in audiences. For example, a recent meta-analysis demonstrated that the more children watch such programs, the more anxiety and fear they experience, the more often they have sleep problems. Audiences under the age of ten are more likely to be victims of this exposure (Reagse & Ne\], 2016). Thus, frightening programs can have a negative impact on children\'s well-being. At the same time, adults benefit from such programs psychologically - they allow them to experience strong emotions that they do not experience in real life. The stronger the emotions, the better the audience feels. For example, a meta-analysis that looked at research with adolescents and college students found that the anxiety and fear people feel when watching horror, thriller, and action movies is positively related to the sense of pleasure they experience. If fear causes unpleasant feelings, the audience uses specific coping strategies. For example, children 7-12 years old use avoidance (changing the channel or turning off the TV), physical intervention (e.g., closing their eyes), seeking social support (e.g., a partner to watch the program with), and cognitive reappraisal (e.g., thinking that everything will end well). The frequency of use of these strategies depends on the biological sex and age of the viewers. Selection of emotionally loaded messages. Modern man has access to a wide variety of mass communication media. Thanks to this, he can choose his messages. Every time we make a decision: to read or not to read the news, to watch or not to watch a new movie. Usually people choose those messages of mass communication that allow them to optimize their emotional state. The choice depends on the type of message, the characteristics of the recipient, the situation and the reaction of others. Message Characteristics. According to emotion management theory, each message can be characterized by four parameters: its ability to increase or decrease arousal (arousal potential); its ability to divert attention from the current emotional state (absorption potential); the correspondence between the content of the message and the current emotion (semantic proximity); and its overall positive or negative tone (emotional valence). Participants in mass communication choose those messages that allow them to enjoy themselves. For example, very low (boredom) and very high (stress) levels of arousal are perceived by the audience as an unpleasant state. Therefore, bored people prefer messages that increase arousal levels and stressed people prefer messages that decrease them. In addition, positive emotions (joy) bring the audience more pleasure than negative emotions (anger, fear, disgust). Therefore, people experiencing negative emotions are less likely to read news about bad events than people experiencing positive emotions. Matching the message and the audience. People are more likely to choose mass communication messages that match their psychological characteristics. For example, viewers with a strong need for sensation (a variety of new impressions and experiences) enjoy horror movies more than viewers with a weak need. This occurs because such people have a greater need for arousal. For them, horror movies are a source of new emotions that they rarely experience in real life. Matching the message to the current situation. According to the theory of emotional state adaptation, positive emotions can be helpful in some cases but harmful in others (e.g., on an exam or at a funeral). People seek an emotional state that matches the characteristics of the situation they are in and the activity they are performing. For example, angry people who have the opportunity to take revenge on an offender prefer transmissions with elements of aggression that allow them to maintain their anger. Reactions of the people around you. People are more likely to choose messages that allow them to experience emotions that correspond to their social roles or are approved by others. In this case, it is not the message per se that causes pleasure, but the reaction of other viewers. For example, boys experience greater pleasure from horror movies when they watch them in the presence of girls who express fear. At the same time, girls feel more pleasure when they watch horror movies in the presence of boys who do not show fear Thus, the messages of classical mass communication influence the emotional state of the audience: they cause positive or negative emotions. However, the recipients approach emotionally loaded messages selectively. People choose those news and movies that allow them to satisfy their current needs and enjoyment. Due to this, mass communication messages can have a positive impact on people\'s psychological state. Parasocial relations in mass communication On TV screens and in social networks we meet \"stars\" - famous and popular people in society: actors, musicians, athletes. Day after day, we watch the lives of fictional characters - the heroes of cartoons and feature films. Over time, we become involved in the watching process and become attached to them. They become part of our lives. A parasocial relationship emerges - a psychological bond with the figures who appear in mass communication messages. Parasocial relationships are different from real face-to-face relationships. In real relationships, all parties are involved. People feel emotions for each other and exchange messages. In a parasocial relationship, only one party, the audience of mass communication, actively participates. The other party - the real \"star\" or the fictional character - only accepts signs of attention. For example, comments that fans leave on their idol\'s social media page often go unanswered. Nevertheless, people often consider parasocial relationships to be real and act in them as they do in face-to-face relationships: they identify with \"stars\" and fictional characters, write letters to them, experience positive or negative emotions, and imagine meeting them. When parasocial relationships are forced to end (e.g., a TV show or series comes to an end), viewers experience stress. Thus, the one-way relationships created by mass communication become an important part of everyday life. The intensity of parasocial relations differs depending on the audience and the media character. First, shy and lonely people are more likely to enter into one-way relationships with TV characters. It is difficult for such audiences to build face-to-face relationships, so they use parasocial communication as a substitute for two-way communication. Second, parasocial relationships are more often formed by people who are deeply immersed in television reality. For example, a meta-analysis of studies has shown that the intensity of one-sided relationships with the characters of television programs is related to the time a person spends watching television, the pleasure of watching, and the perception of the reality of television programs. The more people watch television, the more enjoyment they get and the more real they perceive the events shown, the stronger the parasocial relationships they create. Finally, the intensity of parasocial relationships is related to the perception of the media persona. For example, people are more likely to enter into parasocial relationships with television \"stars\" who seem more attractive and similar to themselves. They are also more likely to form parasocial relationships with social media \"stars\" who talk more about their personal and professional lives. Probably, such \"stars\" seem more familiar and understandable to the audience. Parasocial relationships have a positive impact on the psychological well-being of the participants: reflecting on a favorite media character allows the audience to cope with negative emotions and increase self-esteem. For example, they help people who have been ostracized to cope with the negative psychological consequences of social rejection (see Ch. 9). In addition, they reduce the negative impact of social comparison on one\'s own body evaluation. In other words, parasocial relationships can be seen as a way of coping with stress. 7.3 Two-way relationships in social networks Classical mass communication allows the audience to build only parasocial relationships. Modern mass communication expands the possibilities: we can enter into one-way or two-way relationships with other users. Two-way Internet communication resembles face-to-face communication: participants send private messages and receive responses from their partner. However, there are differences between the two. We will now talk about how they affect the consequences of online communication. The first studies on two-way Internet communication were conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At that time, online communication was predominantly written and short-term, and few people participated in it people. Current research focuses on social networks, where users post a variety of information about themselves, communicate over time, and exchange messages with a large number of people. In this paragraph, we focus on social media communication. Social media users. In today\'s world, there are dozens of social networks used by billions of people around the world. Some users log on every day, others visit them occasionally; some stay on them for hours at a time, while others leave quickly. For years, researchers have been trying to understand which people are more likely to participate in online communication. Initially it was forums and chat rooms, but today social networks have become the object of study. During this time, two main positions have emerged. Proponents of one point of view believe that uncommunicative and insecure users are more likely to engage in online communication. For them, social networks are an opportunity to find close people without fear of rejection. In favor of this position are meta-analyses that have shown that the lower a person\'s self-esteem and the higher the feeling of loneliness, the more often he uses social networks, the more active he is in them. In this case, the authors consider psychological features as a cause, and social network use as a consequence. Supporters of the other point of view believe that sociable and self-confident people take part in Internet communication more often. For them, social networks are an opportunity to meet new users. This is evidenced by a meta-analysis that showed that the higher the self-esteem of users, the more friends they have in social networks. It is also evidenced by separate studies showing that extroverts use social networks more often than introverts, have more friends, and deploy a variety of communicative activities on them. Thus, online communication involves users with different psychological characteristics. Perhaps these characteristics do not determine the frequency of social media use, but rather the willingness to dialog. For example, a recent study found that people who are open to experience, emotionally stable and friendly are more likely to share information with other participants. Intense \"psychological exchange\" generates interest and pleasure. These emotions, in turn, help build strong, cohesive relationships with other users. Implications of social media. Social media communication has an impact on users\' psychological state - self-esteem, emotions and life satisfaction. However, this influence can be both positive and negative. Over the time of studying online communication, two opposing views on this issue have emerged. According to the first point of view, Internet communication can compensate for the lack of face-to-face communication and has a positive impact on a person\'s psychological state (increases self-esteem, evokes positive emotions and increases life satisfaction). For example, people who are ostracized and then get an opportunity to communicate with a stranger via the Internet subsequently demonstrate higher self-esteem than those who do not get such an opportunity. Why does Internet communication have a positive effect on participants\' well-being? Research conducted in recent years has identified several psychological mechanisms: self-disclosure, awareness of others, feeling close to others, feeling included in a group, and social support. Social networking: 1\) helps a person to \"open up\" to a partner - to tell about oneself, share one\'s thoughts and feelings. Self-disclosure, in turn, increases satisfaction with online communication; 2\) allows a person to get information about other people. Insignificant details of everyday life make him feel that he is well acquainted with others. This feeling increases the user\'s satisfaction with his life 3\) gives users the opportunity to communicate with people of different ages, ethnicity and race, living in different countries. This allows people to acquire communication skills and reduce the feeling of loneliness; 4\) allows a person to feel closeness to other users, to feel a psychological connection with them. The feeling of connection with other people, in turn, increases satisfaction with one\'s life; 5\) allows people to feel part of a larger community. Inclusion in the community, in turn, increases users\' satisfaction with their lives 6\) can be a source of social support that improves emotional well-being and life satisfaction. The combination of offline and online support has the most positive impact Thus, researchers offer different explanations for why social media communication can have a positive effect on users. However, some studies suggest that different psychological mechanisms are related to each other. For example, the more a person \"opens up\" in communicating with online peers, the more social support they receive. The more social support a person sees, the more inclusion in the community they feel. According to the second point of view, communication via the Internet prevents people from building full-fledged relationships and has a negative impact on their psychological state - it lowers self-esteem, causes negative emotions, and reduces life satisfaction. Proponents of this position refer to meta-analyses, which found a negative relationship between feelings of loneliness and self-esteem, on the one hand, and the use of social networks, on the other. Nevertheless, social media communication has features that can actually have a negative impact on users. In such a case, stopping online communication can improve a person\'s psychological state. First, active social media activities can cause \"overload\", which is related to the fact that the user receives too much information, communicates with too many people and provides too much social support to others. Overload causes users to become stressed. Constant stress generates depression and emotional burnout, and prompts to stop network communication. Some researchers believe that information overload causes digital addiction, which in turn worsens psychological well-being. Second, social media visitors often compare themselves to each other. They can use different strategies to do this. Many active users talk about the most interesting moments of their lives. Therefore, people who read their posts apply a bottom-up strategy - make comparisons in favor of active participants. Against the background of what these users tell, their own lives are less satisfying to readers. Third, intensive social networking can reduce face-to-face communication with family and friends, but cannot replace it. For example, the written social support that can be received on social media has a less positive impact on the emotional state of a person who has completed a stressful task than face-to-face social support. Similarly, online social support is associated with less positive psychological well-being among players of online multiplayer games than offline social support. In addition, social media communication is associated with lower self-esteem of a person who has previously participated in a conflict than face-to-face communication. Thus, social media use can cause both positive and negative consequences. This ambiguity is reflected in a recent meta-analysis, which showed that time spent on social media was weakly related to depression and feelings of loneliness and not at all related to self-esteem and life satisfaction. This implies that the relationship between social media use and psychological well-being depends on additional conditions. Conditions of the impact of Internet communication. There are factors that increase the positive effect of online communication. First, online communication has a more beneficial effect on people who have difficulty in face-to-face communication. For example, rapid messaging has a greater positive effect on introverts than on extroverts under stress. Social media communication has a more positive impact on people with high levels of social anxiety who are victims of ostracization than on people with low levels of social anxiety. Second, for online socializing to have a positive impact, the user must have a relatively wide social networking circle. The more online friends a person has, the more social support he or she receives. Social support, in turn, increases positive emotions, reduces stress, and increases life satisfaction. However, the relationship between the number of friends and social support is curvilinear: as the number of friends increases, the feeling of social support first increases and then decreases. Third, in order for online communication to have a positive impact, a person must receive a large number of responses to his or her messages. For example, the more likes and positive comments users receive, the higher their self-esteem and more positive emotions. A similar pattern applies to receiving social support: the more often a person receives support from other users, the better his or her psychological state. Fourth, social media allows us to communicate with other people, but communicating on social media takes time and effort. While face-to-face communication is only in one situation at any given time (e.g., we can\'t be with family and work at once), online communication can take place simultaneously on different platforms. According to some studies, the more platforms a person uses, the worse their psychological state. However, social media communication has a different impact on different generations. For example, a recent American study asked respondents about feeling \"on the verge of a nervous breakdown\" and measured social media activity. It turned out that the amount of social media a person uses was positively related to having a nervous breakdown in people over 30, but negatively related in people 18 to 29. 7.5 Romantic relationships on social networks Bonding social capital is built on close, emotionally intense ties to friends, family members, and romantic partners. Social networks have great resources for creating and maintaining romantic relationships. On the one hand, they provide an opportunity to meet people who want to create face-to-face romantic connections. On the other hand, they allow already established couples to share their relationship with others and continue their personal communication online. We will now look at the role of social media in offline romantic relationships. Relationship Demonstration. Through social media, romantic partners can share their relationship offline with others. The more people are involved in the relationship, the more intimacy they feel, and the more satisfied they are with what is going on, the more often they demonstrate their relationship on social networks: they use the status \"in a relationship\"; they post pictures of the partners together; they write on their partner\'s \"wall\"; they are less likely to accept friendship requests from other potential romantic partners. However, people with different personality traits demonstrate their relationships in different ways. For example, there are four attachment styles in romantic relationships that differ in their levels of avoidance and anxiety. People with secure attachment do not fear rejection and do not avoid their partner; people with fearful attachment fear rejection but do not distance themselves from their partner; people with avoidant attachment do not fear rejection but keep their distance from their partner; people with fearful attachment fear rejection and distance themselves from their partner. Studies conducted with social network users have shown that people with anxious attachment tend to make their romantic relationships highly visible to others - they post pictures of their partners together and use \"in a relationship\" status. At the same time, people with avoidant attachment shy away from publicity - they hide their relationships from others. Thus, they act the same way in Internet communication as they would in face-to-face communication. However, there are social norms that regulate the intimacy of communication in social networks. For example, the authors of one study identified three strategies of communication with a partner: passive (visiting the page, viewing photos and posts, checking the relationship status of this person); active (online friendship with his friends and family members); interactive (\"likes\" and comments on his statuses and photos, posting on his \"wall\", private messages, online chat, etc.). After that, they asked the participants of the study - users 1 - how much, from their point of view, such behavior is acceptable for people at different stages of relationships: from no face-to-face communication to close offline relationships. It turned out that the closer the face-to-face relationship, the more normative the active and interactive social networking strategies seemed to the participants. Thus, people believe that the closeness of online communication should correspond to the closeness of face-to-face relationships. Relationship preservation. Social media communication helps people keep romantic relationships offline. The more users demonstrate their relationship through statuses, shared photos and writing on their partner\'s \"wall,\" the more often couples are together after six months. According to some researchers, this is due to the social norm that a person\'s authentic features and self-presentation should match. Following this norm, people who have declared their relationships are more likely to be included in them. Social media actions that allow people to maintain relationships are divided into routine (e.g., encouraging a partner to share their feelings through a social network) and strategic (e.g., confessing love to a partner on a social network). The importance of such actions increases when partners are in a situation of uncertainty. For example, a recent study found that people who are far apart (e.g., living in different cities or countries) are more likely to use these actions than those who live close to each other. Negative experiences. Social media communication can cause jealousy related to imagined or real infidelity of a partner. Negative experiences are triggered by pictures and captions. For example, people feel jealous when they see a message on their partner\'s \"wall\" that is ambiguous. It makes a greater impression if it reflects the emotional reaction of the writer: it is accompanied by a winking \"smiley face,\" written in large letters, or ends with three exclamation points. In addition, users feel jealous when they see their partner not sharing or removing photos of the two of them from the page, as well as when they see a paired photo of the partner with another person of the opposite sex. A photo has more impact if it shows a beautiful person and if it is for private viewing only. People deal with jealousy in different ways. The most common strategy is to closely monitor what happens on your partner\'s social media page. Surveillance begins when the relationship is still in existence, but can continue even after the relationship has ended. For example, users are interested in their ex-partner\'s overall level of social activity, their new romantic acquaintances, and what they say about their relationship to others. Information retrieval is more likely to occur when the ex-partner was the initiator of the breakup. Jealousy and surveillance of a partner\'s page depend on individual user characteristics. Some studies show that women experience more jealousy (or are more likely to report it) after viewing their romantic partner\'s page than men, and people who live far apart experience more jealousy than those who live close together. In addition, people who are less confident in themselves and their partner experience more jealousy and are more likely to watch them. For example, people with anxious attachment are more jealous of their partner and more likely to watch their partner\'s \"page,\" while people with avoidant attachment are less likely to do both. People with low self-esteem are more jealous of their partner than people with high self-esteem. People who feel like they are dependent on their partner are more likely to watch their partner on social media. At the same time, people who feel like their partner is dependent on them are more likely to respond to a threat to the relationship with open confrontation. Relationship breakdown. Social media communication can destroy romantic relationships. Apparently, this process can go in two directions. On the one hand, the large amount of time a person spends communicating on social media and taking time away from face-to-face interactions causes partner dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction increases the likelihood of conflict, and constant conflict destroys relationships. On the other hand, the user\'s actions on social media can cause jealousy of his or her romantic partner, which will lead to the termination of the relationship. Sometimes this process takes paradoxical forms. For example, people who are satisfied with their bodies are more likely to post pictures of themselves in these pictures cause conflicts with their romantic partner, which in turn negatively affect face-to-face romantic relationships. In other words, social media actions change offline communication. Thus, mass communication influences the psychological state of the audience. Watching feature films and communicating in social networks can cause us positive or negative emotions, increase or decrease our satisfaction with life. However, the direction of the impact depends largely on the viewers and participants. For some people mass communication helps to improve their psychological state and expand their social circle, while for others it becomes a source of additional problems.