Plugged In

by Patti M Valkenburg

  Both escapism and mood management theory have their roots in the principle of hedonism. Hedonism is a doctrine in ethics that posits pleasure as the highest form of well-being. According to the hedonic principle, people have an innate drive to rid themselves of bad moods and to maintain or put themselves in good moods.30 The hedonic form of well-being involves having pleasurable experiences (for example, watching a funny movie or eating an enjoyable meal). Although this hedonic perspective seems reasonable, when escapism and mood management theory were tested empirically, researchers found that hedonic motives did not explain entertainment choices to the extent that had been imagined. For example, it turned out that sad people were inclined to select tragic as well as humorous movies, and to enjoy them equally.31 And how could such horror-genre blockbusters as Paranormal Activity or The Exorcist possibly put viewers in a good mood? Similarly, how could tragic films such as The Champ or Atonement elevate one’s mood? Choosing to watch these films is surely not in line with the hedonic principle that entertainment should be pleasurable.

  If audiences do not select media entertainment purely for its thrills and chills or for its hedonic offerings, then why do they enjoy the tears and fears that media offer? The answer, media psychologists now believe, lies in the principle of eudaimonia. Eudaimonia involves the quest to be a better person, to have a meaningful life in accordance with one’s values. Rather than view entertainment media as purely fulfilling hedonic needs, entertainment media can also fulfill eudaimonic needs. Scholars suggest that it is better to conceptualize our entertainment choices along both a hedonic and a eudaimonic dimension.32 Hedonic and eudaimonic forms of well-being are complementary rather than contradictory. Eudaimonic well-being may precede or co-occur with hedonic well-being. After all, people who strive to live meaningful lives are often also better able to enjoy every moment. Both forms of well-being are important to a healthy development.33

  How can eudaimonic motives explain the appeal of frightening or tragic entertainment? Scholars now believe we are probably drawn to such types of entertainment because they give us ample opportunity to reflect on our lives and to improve our sense of eudaimonic well-being.34 Our eudaimonic well-being can, in turn, improve our hedonic sense of well-being (enjoyment or pleasure). We do that, first of all, in the manner described by Lucretius two thousand years ago, through downward social comparison. Seeing the misery of others helps us appreciate how well life is treating us. We have not lost any family members, we are healthy, we are not being cheated on by our beloved or threatened by devils or other monsters. Downward social comparison with a fictional character’s suffering may increase our feelings of happiness, self-esteem, and enjoyment.

  Entertainment media need not rely on downward comparison to cause us to reflect on our current state. Our sense of empathy alone may cause us to feel what victims are feeling and to sympathize with the situation in which they find themselves. This combination of empathy and sympathy can result in an enhanced appreciation of our own relationships, parents, children, and lovers, and in an increased sense of happiness, self-esteem, and enjoyment. Self-reflection during or after frightening or tragic entertainment—whether the result of downward comparison, empathy, or sympathy—is unlikely to increase our sense of hedonic well-being directly, but may do so indirectly, through our eudaimonic well-being.35

  It seems plausible, then, that audiences select media entertainment to fulfill both hedonic and eudaimonic motives. This explains why they may select comedies that make them laugh, tearjerkers that make them cry, horror stories that make them scream, and thrillers that make them cling to the edge of their seats. On the one hand, the joy experienced while watching comedies, or the intense relief experienced during horror films (via excitation transfer), may fulfill hedonic motives (pleasure seeking). On the other hand, the despair that sad or tragic entertainment can elicit may fulfill the need for meaningfulness. And it is quite possible for media entertainment to fulfill hedonic and eudaimonic needs simultaneously.

  What does this mean for children’s use of media? Most of the work, to date, has focused on the hedonic and eudaimonic needs of adults.36 To date, there is no comparative work with younger audiences. Given the developing cognitive and social-emotional skills of children, it seems possible that hedonic needs may be more pronounced at earlier ages, and that during adolescence, as youth increasingly understand their selves and the world around them, eudaimonic needs may take precedence. This is not to suggest that hedonic motives decrease with development, but rather that by adolescence, teens may be expressing need for content that can meet both their hedonic and their eudaimonic needs. Research that evaluates the developmental trajectory of hedonic and eudaimonic needs during childhood and adolescence is an important next step for understanding media and emotion in this field.

  Teaching Emotions

  Thus far, this chapter has taken the stance that media entertainment can evoke powerful emotions from its audiences and that, paradoxically, these emotions, even the negative ones, serve reciprocally as a strong motive for the use of media entertainment. What our discussion has omitted, however, is the recognition that media can teach (young) audiences emotions as well as evoke them. Consider a scene from the American version of Sesame Street featuring Jon Hamm (Don Draper in Mad Men) and the monster Murray:

  J: Murray, how are you?

  M: You know what? I’m good, but I’m a little confused.

  J: Okay, what are you confused about?

  M: Well, emotions, Jon. I heard about all of these new emotions and I don’t know what they are!

  J: Well, maybe I can help you.

  M: You can help me with emotions?! You know about emotions?!

  J: I know a lot about emotions.

  M: Oh my goodness! Okay, that is awesome! . . . Okay, what does it mean to feel guilty?

  J: Guilty. That’s not a very good emotion. You don’t want to have that emotion sometimes. . . . It means that you feel sad because you did something that you shouldn’t have done.37

  The scene goes on with Jon Hamm explaining and dramatically acting out guilt, frustration, and amazement. It is hard to imagine a scene such as this one not influencing how its young viewers understand and express emotions.

  Although research on whether and how youth may learn emotions from media is relatively limited, the existing work suggests that educational media can help children understand their feelings and how to express them. For example, American school-age children who viewed children’s educational programs reported learning how to overcome fears, how to label feelings, and how to use interpersonal skills such as sharing, respect, and loyalty.38 Other researchers found that a media diet consisting primarily of prosocial children’s programming (for example, programming that models nonviolent conflict resolution, empathy, and recognition of emotions) enhanced the social and emotional competence of children ages 3–7.39 And interviews with teens from seventeen countries have shown that media entertainment can support their emotional competence, that is, their ability to express their inner feelings and to recognize and respond constructively to emotions in themselves and others.40

  Emotional Relationships with Media Characters and Personalities

  A considerable body of work on the relationship between media and emotions has focused on the power of parasocial relationships with media characters or personalities. Parasocial relationships are the illusory, one-sided, emotionally tinged relationships that youth and adults develop with such characters or personalities.41 Such relationships mimic the development of traditional interpersonal relationships in at least two ways. First, they are most likely to start if media users share specific attributes with the character or personality, such as age, gender, and certain preferences. Second, they are, just like traditional interpersonal relationships, used to fulfill certain fundamental human needs, such as the need for attachment and the need for companionship.

  Parasocial relationships have been shown to improve children’s learning from media c
haracters. For example, in an experiment by Alexis Lauricella and colleagues, toddlers viewed two characters who separately taught them a seriation task (in this case, nesting cups). One of the characters, Elmo, is iconic in American culture and very popular among this age group. The other, Dodo, was new to the subjects. Children were better able to learn the seriation task from Elmo than from Dodo. But after children were given Dodo toys to play with, their ability to learn from Dodo improved.42 A later study by this research group showed that children’s learning from Dodo was greatest when they showed stronger parasocial relationships with the character.43

  Parasocial relationships are appealing to adolescents in the throes of identity formation and increasing detachment from parents. Parasocial relationships offer teens valuable information for developing gender role identities and emerging sexual and romantic scripts. The one-sidedness of such relationships may provide adolescents with idealized figures with whom they can identify without the risk of rejection. For example, the development of a crush on a boy band like One Direction may give teenage girls the opportunity to develop their sexual identity in a safe environment that they can control. Moreover, parasocial relationships like these may strengthen adolescents’ feelings of being part of a clique or subculture (see chapter 6). For example, when one of the members of One Direction, Zayn Malik, left the band in 2015, millions of teenage girls around the world united through social media to share their sadness and sorrow. The inevitable lack of knowledge about some aspects and traits of the media character or personality may stimulate teens to superimpose idealized attributes onto the character or personality that especially cater to their own developmental needs.44

  Media and Emotions in the Twenty-First Century

  While no one anticipates that television and movies will fade from popularity anytime soon (although how and where content is consumed is changing), the twenty-first century is likely to bring with it new questions when it comes to youth, media, and emotions. Take, for example, video games. The detailed customization of avatars combined with the three-dimensional and virtual-reality possibilities of games can make players feel as though they are truly in the game. Yet at present, it remains unclear how this highly realistic gameplay may influence emotional experiences. If Paul Harris is right that we use the reality status of a media production as a means of dampening our emotional experiences, twenty-first-century games may induce incredibly deep emotional experiences among their users, both young and old. It is no surprise that researchers are now asking more questions about our emotional responses to mediated entities other than television characters. These questions concern emotional responses to avatars in games, responses to the interactive technology we may use in our phones (e.g., Siri), and the increasingly popular use of social robots.

  Indeed, one-sided parasocial relationships with mediated characters are becoming increasingly two-sided, and twenty-first-century researchers will likely ask what such relationships mean for the development of emotional competence among youth and adults. Take, for example, Paro. Paro is a Japanese therapeutic robot that resembles a fluffy baby seal. It includes built-in sensors that allow it to respond to someone’s touch or speech by moving its eyes and head and making baby-seal-like sounds. It also reacts to its name. Paro has been brightening the lives of elderly dementia patients and autistic children for many years.

  A growing body of research suggests that it is not only elderly patients or autistic children who respond to social robots as if they were real. Rather, such responses reflect a universal human tendency to treat computers and robots like people, for example, by being polite and cooperative and by ascribing humor, aggression, gender, and other personal traits to them. Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass described this tendency in the 1990s in their media equation theory.45 They argued that our interactions with computers and new media are fundamentally social, just like our interactions in real life. These responses and interactions are automatic and inevitable, and they take place despite our being aware that computers are nothing more than cables and processors. A striking depiction of this human tendency is found in the movie Her (2014), in which the lonely Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), an intelligent computer operating system personified by a female voice.

  If the media equation theory is valid for computers and new media, it is very likely that we also ascribe human traits to social robots, which are three-dimensional and tangible. And in fact, early research supports this premise. In one study, young adults were given ten minutes to play with Pleo, a small (50 × 20 cm) rubber dinosaur robot (see figure 8.1). Like Paro, Pleo displays happiness when petted and emits sounds that presumably resemble those of a baby dinosaur. He even begins to cry if he is placed in a dark box. After ten minutes of play, half the participants watched a video in which a whimpering Pleo was tortured (beaten, kicked), while the remaining half saw a clip in which Pleo was treated kindly (petted, fed).

  The participants who watched the torture clip displayed more physiological arousal and experienced more negative emotions, and more empathy toward Pleo, than the subjects who viewed the clip in which Pleo received kind treatment.46 In a follow-up to this study, the researchers investigated the extent to which such strong responses to Pleo’s torture could be observed in fMRI scans. They also compared the responses of those who saw Pleo’s torture to the responses of participants viewing a clip of a person being tortured in the same way. The viewers of both clips displayed similar activation patterns in their limbic system, a set of brain structures that support emotions, empathy, and other functions. This follow-up study, one of the first of its kind, suggests that our tendency to react emotionally to fictional characters may indeed be hardwired in our brains.47

  Figure 8.1. If we see someone hurt Pleo the robot dinosaur, our brain responds as if a human were being hurt. (John B. Carnett/Getty Images)

  Conclusion

  Media are designed, in part, to evoke emotions from their audiences. For children and adolescents, these emotional responses can be intense and long lasting. Responses to violent and fright-inducing entertainment, for example, can continue to elicit stress for years afterward. And while cognitive strategies can help offset these problematic consequences, these strategies tend to be ineffective for younger children, who struggle with separating fantasy from reality. Moreover, all types of reassurance strategies are challenged by the inherent appeal of these same media. Through the process of excitation transfer, media entertainment that can frighten or upset its users can also bring about intense feelings of relief—thereby fulfilling hedonic (pleasure-seeking) and eudaimonic needs.

  Should we be concerned? Yes and no. On the one hand, frightening and tragic media entertainment may lead to problematic outcomes for youth, and certainly those who are developmentally unprepared for it. Yet, the same types of media entertainment can provide children with an important stepping-stone for identity development and the development of emotional competence. The key to balancing the negative and positive consequences of emotionally tinged media entertainment likely involves merging developmentally appropriate media content with developmentally appropriate intervention strategies. Helping youth select entertainment that they are able to process, and teaching them to use strategies to offset negative consequences, will better equip them to use entertainment media as an effective channel for identity development and the development of emotional competence.

  9

  ADVERTISING AND COMMERCIALISM

  So the philosophy becomes cradle to grave: Let’s get to them early. Let’s get to them often. Let’s get to them as many places as we can get them. Not just to sell them products and services, but to turn them into lifelong consumers.

  —Enola Aird

  As the epigraph shows, beginning at very young ages, children are considered an important consumer market. But why? In this chapter, we discuss why youth are commercially interesting and why marketing seems to be targeting children at ever-younger ages
. In particular, we show how children represent three markets—a primary market, a market of influencers, and a future market—and discuss the implications of being a threefold market for children’s socialization as consumers. How do brand awareness and brand loyalty develop in early childhood? How does children’s development influence their consumer behavior? Following this, we evaluate whether advertising is effective among these young consumers. To what extent does the commercial environment that surrounds youth influence them? We contextualize these questions by highlighting what the youth market looks like today, noting sophisticated digital developments and discussing efforts to counter the potential negative consequences of advertising.

  Children as Consumers

  Youth have become an increasingly important commercial target group in recent decades. While marketers in the 1990s were interested in learning how to reach children as young as five, today they try to reach even younger audiences. Why has this cradle-to-grave approach become a mantra in marketing circles? Why are youth so commercially interesting? The most likely explanation is that marketers have realized that rather than representing one market, youth simultaneously represent three markets: a primary market, a market of influencers, and a future market.