Has a movie or TV show ever left you feeling happy or uplifted about your own life? Entertainment media provides a wealth of emotionally evocative content, but relatively little attention has been paid to the subject of media creating positive emotions, and specifically, hope. In a recent study entitled "The Pursuit of Hopefulness: Operationalizing Hope in Entertainment Media Narrative," published in Routledge Journal's Media Psychology, author Abby Prestin researches the effects of hope and underdog characters in entertainment media.
Feelings of hope are associated with benefits for psychological and physical wellbeing, and efforts to increase or sustain hopeful feelings are increasingly incorporated into wellness interventions. Positive emotions have also emerged as important predictors of social, physical, psychological, and even financial wellbeing. Hope can be a coping resource during hardship, or can be an achievement-oriented emotion that predicts academic performance in a classroom. Recent research points to media as uplifting and elevating affective viewing responses, and could be a powerful means of generating hope.
"I felt that there was a bias in the existing literature, with the bulk of the research focusing on negative effects of entertainment media," says Prestin. "When you look out into the world, it's not difficult to find real life stories of people surviving situations where the odds aren't in their favor. Do these stories actually have an effect on the audience, and if so, what?"
Prestin set out with two goals for this study. First to identify a media narrative that evokes hope in viewers by testing the effectiveness of media portrayals of underdog characters, struggling to achieve their goals despite unfavorable odds. Second, she wanted to explore the extent to which such elicitation of hope motivates important personal goals, after viewing. "Is it something we feel briefly, like most emotions, and move on," Prestin asks, "or, is it something that changes us or that we carry with us?"
Participants were assigned to one of three media groups - underdog narrative, comedy, and nature scenes - or a no-media control group. Those in the media groups were assigned to view one 5-minute video clip per day for five consecutive days. Following this period, those in the underdog narrative group felt more hopeful and reported greater motivation to pursue their own goals than those in other conditions. And, partially consistent with Prestin' second hypothesis, the emotional experience of hope was durable, with hopefulness remaining at elevated levels up to three days after the final media exposure.
Prestin's research shows a number of potentially important results. First, exposure to different types of positive entertainment media, in all three cases, led to three different positive emotional responses. Second, the results of this study suggest that underdog narratives not only provide viewers with models of hard work and determination, but that inducing hope may increase the likelihood that viewers will pursue their own goals. "It has always seemed to me that there's an undeniable potency to inspirational stories that we haven't quite harnessed yet," says Prestin. "These results, to me, indicate that there are certain emotional, cognitive, and motivational pathways that inspirational underdog stories appear to activate. Although I wouldn't say I have harnessed the power of these stories yet, this study is a step in that direction."
Explore further: Watching television can be a factor in accent change
More information: The Pursuit of Hopefulness: Operationalizing Hope in Entertainment Media, Media Psychology. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15213269.2013.773494
Medical Xpress on facebook
Related Stories
Consumers love underdogs
Jul 20, 2010
Consumers strongly relate to brands that they perceive as underdogs, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Multitasking may hurt your performance, but it makes you feel better
Apr 30, 2012
People aren't very good at media multitasking - like reading a book while watching TV - but do it anyway because it makes them feel good, a new study suggests.
News narratives can heighten compassion, increase willingness to act
May 31, 2012
How the news media tell a story can make those who consume the story more compassionate and willing to act and help others.
Watching television can be a factor in accent change
Sep 10, 2013
(Medical Xpress)—New research has provided the first evidence to prove that active and engaged television viewing does help to accelerate language change.
Young men who feel body shame less hopeful about relationships, study finds
May 15, 2013
(Medical Xpress)—It's no longer just Barbie dolls that evoke a sense of unattainable beauty. Now, it seems G.I. Joe's biceps and six-pack abs are doing the same. Increasingly, objectification and heightened masculinity ...
Recommended for you
Hunger pains: Binge-eating disorder linked to lifelong impairments in 12-country study
10 minutes ago
Binge-eating disorder, designated only months ago by the American Psychiatric Association as a diagnosis in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is associated with substantial lifelong impairments comparable ...
The future of mental health services
40 minutes ago
A report, published today by the Mental Health Foundation sets out some key messages as to what mental health services need to do in order to ensure that they are ready to address the mental health needs ...
Addiction: Can you ever really completely leave it behind?
2 hours ago
It is often said that once people develop an addiction, they can never completely eliminate their attraction to the abused substance. New findings provide further support for this notion by suggesting that even long-term ...
Why do you want to eat the baby?
4 hours ago
What woman has not wanted to gobble up a baby placed in her arms, even if the baby is not hers? This reaction, which everyone has noticed or felt, could have biological underpinnings related to maternal functions. For the ...
Chronic aggressive behavior in boys: Epigenetic sources?
4 hours ago
Chronic aggressive behaviour exhibited by some boys from disadvantaged families may be due to epigenetic changes during pregnancy and early childhood. This is highlighted by two studies conducted by a team led by Richard ...
Disaster relief donations track number of people killed, not number of survivors
4 hours ago
People pay more attention to the number of people killed in a natural disaster than to the number of survivors when deciding how much money to donate to disaster relief efforts, according to new research published in Psychological Sc ...
User comments
© Medical Xpress 2011-2013, Phys.org network
Has a movie or TV show ever left you feeling happy or uplifted about your own life? Entertainment media provides a wealth of emotionally evocative content, but relatively little attention has been paid to the subject of media creating positive emotions, and specifically, hope. In a recent study entitled "The Pursuit of Hopefulness: Operationalizing Hope in Entertainment Media Narrative," published in Routledge Journal's Media Psychology, author Abby Prestin researches the effects of hope and underdog characters in entertainment media.
Feelings of hope are associated with benefits for psychological and physical wellbeing, and efforts to increase or sustain hopeful feelings are increasingly incorporated into wellness interventions. Positive emotions have also emerged as important predictors of social, physical, psychological, and even financial wellbeing. Hope can be a coping resource during hardship, or can be an achievement-oriented emotion that predicts academic performance in a classroom. Recent research points to media as uplifting and elevating affective viewing responses, and could be a powerful means of generating hope.
"I felt that there was a bias in the existing literature, with the bulk of the research focusing on negative effects of entertainment media," says Prestin. "When you look out into the world, it's not difficult to find real life stories of people surviving situations where the odds aren't in their favor. Do these stories actually have an effect on the audience, and if so, what?"
Prestin set out with two goals for this study. First to identify a media narrative that evokes hope in viewers by testing the effectiveness of media portrayals of underdog characters, struggling to achieve their goals despite unfavorable odds. Second, she wanted to explore the extent to which such elicitation of hope motivates important personal goals, after viewing. "Is it something we feel briefly, like most emotions, and move on," Prestin asks, "or, is it something that changes us or that we carry with us?"
Participants were assigned to one of three media groups - underdog narrative, comedy, and nature scenes - or a no-media control group. Those in the media groups were assigned to view one 5-minute video clip per day for five consecutive days. Following this period, those in the underdog narrative group felt more hopeful and reported greater motivation to pursue their own goals than those in other conditions. And, partially consistent with Prestin' second hypothesis, the emotional experience of hope was durable, with hopefulness remaining at elevated levels up to three days after the final media exposure.
Prestin's research shows a number of potentially important results. First, exposure to different types of positive entertainment media, in all three cases, led to three different positive emotional responses. Second, the results of this study suggest that underdog narratives not only provide viewers with models of hard work and determination, but that inducing hope may increase the likelihood that viewers will pursue their own goals. "It has always seemed to me that there's an undeniable potency to inspirational stories that we haven't quite harnessed yet," says Prestin. "These results, to me, indicate that there are certain emotional, cognitive, and motivational pathways that inspirational underdog stories appear to activate. Although I wouldn't say I have harnessed the power of these stories yet, this study is a step in that direction."
Explore further: Watching television can be a factor in accent change
More information: The Pursuit of Hopefulness: Operationalizing Hope in Entertainment Media, Media Psychology. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15213269.2013.773494
Medical Xpress on facebook
Related Stories
Consumers love underdogs
Jul 20, 2010
Consumers strongly relate to brands that they perceive as underdogs, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Multitasking may hurt your performance, but it makes you feel better
Apr 30, 2012
People aren't very good at media multitasking - like reading a book while watching TV - but do it anyway because it makes them feel good, a new study suggests.
News narratives can heighten compassion, increase willingness to act
May 31, 2012
How the news media tell a story can make those who consume the story more compassionate and willing to act and help others.
Watching television can be a factor in accent change
Sep 10, 2013
(Medical Xpress)—New research has provided the first evidence to prove that active and engaged television viewing does help to accelerate language change.
Young men who feel body shame less hopeful about relationships, study finds
May 15, 2013
(Medical Xpress)—It's no longer just Barbie dolls that evoke a sense of unattainable beauty. Now, it seems G.I. Joe's biceps and six-pack abs are doing the same. Increasingly, objectification and heightened masculinity ...
Recommended for you
Hunger pains: Binge-eating disorder linked to lifelong impairments in 12-country study
10 minutes ago
Binge-eating disorder, designated only months ago by the American Psychiatric Association as a diagnosis in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is associated with substantial lifelong impairments comparable ...
The future of mental health services
40 minutes ago
A report, published today by the Mental Health Foundation sets out some key messages as to what mental health services need to do in order to ensure that they are ready to address the mental health needs ...
Addiction: Can you ever really completely leave it behind?
2 hours ago
It is often said that once people develop an addiction, they can never completely eliminate their attraction to the abused substance. New findings provide further support for this notion by suggesting that even long-term ...
Why do you want to eat the baby?
4 hours ago
What woman has not wanted to gobble up a baby placed in her arms, even if the baby is not hers? This reaction, which everyone has noticed or felt, could have biological underpinnings related to maternal functions. For the ...
Chronic aggressive behavior in boys: Epigenetic sources?
4 hours ago
Chronic aggressive behaviour exhibited by some boys from disadvantaged families may be due to epigenetic changes during pregnancy and early childhood. This is highlighted by two studies conducted by a team led by Richard ...
Disaster relief donations track number of people killed, not number of survivors
4 hours ago
People pay more attention to the number of people killed in a natural disaster than to the number of survivors when deciding how much money to donate to disaster relief efforts, according to new research published in Psychological Sc ...
User comments
© Medical Xpress 2011-2013, Phys.org network
0 comments:
Post a Comment