Page 305 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

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The theory of stimulus generalization, although helpful, cannot
account for all situations in which viewers respond with fear to media
presentations. The theory also includes the notion of stimulus discrimina-
tion, which implies that as viewers come to recognize the different rein-
forcement contingencies associated with viewing a frightening stimulus
on screen as opposed to being exposed to it in real life, their emotional
reactions should diminish greatly. Because even adolescents and adults,
who understand the mediated nature of frightening images, often experi-
ence intense media-induced fright reactions, it is necessary to invoke
additional factors to explain their responses.

Motivations for Media Exposure. One set of factors that the stimulus
generalization notion does not take into account are motivations for media
exposure. In order to enhance the emotional impact of a drama, viewers
may, for example, adopt the “willing suspension of disbelief” by cogni-
tively minimizing the effect of knowledge that the events are mediated. In
addition, mature viewers may enhance their emotional responses by gen-
erating their own emotion-evoking visual images or by cognitively elabo-
rating on the implications of the portrayed events. Mature viewers who
seek to avoid intense arousal may employ other appraisal processes to
diminish fright reactions to media stimuli by using the “adult discount,”
for example (see Dysinger & Ruckmick, 1933), and concentrating on the
fact that the stimuli are only mediated. Although such appraisal processes
often operate, they are by no means universally effective. Moreover, such
processes are especially limited in young children (Cantor & Wilson, 1984).
In addition to seeking entertainment, viewers may expose themselves
to media for purposes of acquiring information. Because part of the emo-
tional response to such stimuli might arise from viewers’ anticipations of
future consequences to themselves, depictions of real threats should
evoke more fear than dramatic portrayals of events that could never hap-
pen. Moreover, depicted threatening agents that are considered to be
proximate or imminent should evoke more fear than remote threats. Sup-
port for this notion comes from anecdotes regarding the especially intense
reactions to Jaws, a movie about shark attacks, by people who saw the
movie while vacationing at the seashore. Similarly, in an experiment
(Cantor & Hoffner, 1990), children who thought that the threatening agent
depicted in a movie existed in their environment were more frightened by
the movie than were children who did not believe that the threat could be
found in their local area.

Factors Affecting Emotionality Generally. Because physiological
arousal is an important component of fear, it is a critical element in view-
ers’ reactions to frightening media. Experiments testing the role of excita-