Effects Of Portrayals Research Articles

More than entertaining: a typology of family portrayals and inherent persuasive potential

ABSTRACT Family portrayals in entertainment media represent a significant concern for both media and family communication scholars. These fictional families can model both effective and ineffective family behaviors. Research within this realm often focuses on either the content or the effects of portrayals rather than providing a comprehensive picture. The family portrayal typology offers a tool to bridge this content-effects gap by providing explanatory and predictive power regarding family portrayals’ persuasive potentials. Stemming from social cognitive and entertainment theories, this paper identifies six family portrayal types and proposes their varying levels of persuasion based on the latent constructs of a family’s wishful identification arousal, eudaimonic quality, and general family outcomes. Suggestions for future research utilizing the typology are proposed.

The Effects of Portrayals of Gay Men on Homonegativity and the Attribution of Gender-Based Descriptors

The present study examined the effects of a gay male television portrayal on a sample of 107 college-aged participants. Participants were exposed to either a representation of a feminine gay male character, representation of a masculine gay male character, or no gay male character and were subsequently asked questions to determine the stereotypes they associate with gay men and their overall level of homonegativity. Results indicated that political identification was a significant moderator of the relationship between exposure to depictions of a gay character and levels of homonegativity and between exposure and the application of gender-based descriptors to gay men. Findings suggested that the mere presence of a gay male character, whether masculine or feminine, primed homonegative attitudes and opinions about gay male masculinity and femininity.

Mitigating the Negative Effects of Sexually Violent Mass Communications Through Preexposure Briefings

Three types of educational interventions designed to mitigate the effects of portrayals of violence against women were tested. Male college students were shown an educational documentary on the psychological impact of “slasher” films and two rape-education films and assigned to one of three conditions: cognitive consistency, in which they wrote essays about myths of sexual violence, were videotaped reading these essays, and watched a playback of themselves and others advocating their antirape positions; no playback, in which the men wrote essays on the same topics, read them to the camera, and exchanged their essays with others instead of seeing themselves advocate their position; or traditional persuasion, in which subjects watched the educational films, then wrote neutral essays about media use, and watched a playback of these. Two additional control conditions were also included in the design. Later the men watched clips from slasher films and saw a videotaped reenactment of an acquaintance-rape trial and evaluated both. Rape-myth acceptance was marginally lower for those men in the intervention conditions. These men also showed higher levels of depression in response to slasher films and assigned less responsibility to the victim portrayed in the rape trial for her own assault and more responsibility to the defendant compared to subjects in the control conditions.