Although parents in television are often depicted in negative patterns, little to no research has empirically examined the effect of viewing these depictions of parent efficacy and stress. The purpose of this study is to use experimental methods to assess the effect of viewing authoritative, authoritarian, and stereotypical depictions of parents in television on parental efficacy and parent stress. A sample of 122 parents of adolescents were randomly assigned to one of three condition groups: authoritarian, authoritative, and stereotypical. Each group watches a different clip from a television show, and then reported on their comparison of themselves against the parents depicted in the television clip. Parents then answered questions assessing parent efficacy and parent stress. Results revealed that there were no differences in levels of parent efficacy and parent stress based on condition, and a SEM analysis did not find that social comparison served as a meaningful mediator for the relationship between television depiction of parents (condition group) and either parent efficacy or parent stress. Parents did, however, engage in social comparison differently based on their condition group. These findings indicate that portrayals of parents in media do not affect parent efficacy or parent stress for parents of adolescents.

Research has shown that sexual content is prevalent in television programming and that this content can have an effect on the viewer's attitudes about sex. This study examined this relationship within the theoretical framework of cultivation and social cognitive theories. This study used a survey to examine these relationships in young students at a large southeastern university. The researchers targeted freshmen, many in their first semester, for this study to get the best measure of attitudes, before they were influenced by college life. In addition to examining the effects of television viewing, the researcher looked at the effects of exposure to other media that may contain sexual content, such as magazines, Internet, DVD's, video games, and music. The study did not find significant relationships between television viewing and students' sexual attitudes and behaviors, but it did find several strong relationships among sexual attitudes and behaviors and students' exposure to other forms of media that may contain sexual content, including music, films, video games, and DVDs.

This study examined the relationship between different media and expectations about romantic relationships and marriage. Participants were asked to complete a survey that measured different romantic constructs and the types of media exposures on a daily and weekly basis. The variables were measured to determine the effect the media play in a person's perceptions on romantic relationships and marriage. The results of the study concluded that although general television viewing does not predict perceptions about romance and marriage, the romantic genre of television programs as well as magazines do have a role in predicting romantic perceptions.

This investigation examines how women perceive that magazines influence the body image of self and others. Seventeen audio-taped in-depth interviews were conducted with college women who read beauty, fashion, and grooming magazines frequently. These interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed and the data developed into topics of importance. The findings indicated that informants perceived other women were influenced more by images of women in the media than they themselves were influenced. However, informants did not advocate behavior changes for others or hold pro-censorship attitudes. Other findings include favorable perceptions of magazines utilizing larger sized fashion models, negative attitudes towards advertising, and a reverse third-person effect when the 'other' is male. These findings are consistent with existing research on the third-person effect.

Cultivation theory, which is the theoretical foundation for many studies examining media effects, asserts that prolonged exposure to problematic attitudes cultivates acceptance of said attitudes (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, Signorielli & Shanahan, 2002). Beyond the cultivation of attitudes through lyrical and visual content, common explanations for the association between substance use references in media and perceived substance use risk include sensation-seeking (Arnett, 1991; Weisskirch & Murphy, 2004; Oberle & Garcia, 2015), peer substance use (Mulder et al., 2010), and the effects of mainstream and non-mainstream music genres (ter Bogt et al., 2012; Mulder et al., 2009). This study utilized an experimental design which examined the effect of substance use references in mainstream (pop) music compared to three proposed non-mainstream genres (reggae, electronic dance music [EDM], and psytrance [psychedelic-trance]) on participants' perceived substance use risk (PSUR). Higher levels of reported recent substance use were moderately and significantly associated with lower levels of PSUR (r (836) = -.36, p < .001). Recent substance use, group, substance use priming, age, race, and sex significantly impacted PSUR (F (5, 799) = 25.04, p < .05), explaining roughly 12% more of the variance (R2 = .135) than models not including recent substance use as a predictor. While exposure to mainstream and nonmainstream genres did not result in significant differences in participants' PSUR, there was a statistically significant difference in substance use priming between groups. Liking particular music genres was also still associated with higher levels of recent substance use, as previous studies have shown (Chen, Miller, Grube & Waiters, 2006; Mulder et al., 2009; ter Bogt et al., 2012; Forsyth, Barnard & McKeganey, 1997).

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Although the effects of violent video games on aggression in users have been researched extensively and the resulting body of research shows that violent video games can increase aggressive behaviors, aggression-related feelings and thoughts, and physiological arousal, no empirical studies to date have examined whether there are similar and parallel effects of verbal aggression (e.g., profanity) in video game content. A 2 X 2 between-subjects factorial experiment (N = 321) tested the effects of profanity used by protagonists (protagonist profanity present versus absent) and antagonists (antagonist profanity present versus absent) on users' hostile expectations, accessibility of aggressive thoughts, aggressive feelings, perceived arousal, use of profanity, enjoyment, presence, and perceived performance while taking into account the potential moderating role of gender and controlling for several individual difference variables. The study's factors were manipulated via the creation of four versions of an original three-dimensional "first-person shooter" video game. Profanity used by both protagonist and antagonist characters was found to have significant effects on players' hostile expectations, an important higher-order aggressive outcome that is the most direct precursor to aggressive behaviors in the process described by the general aggression model. There was limited evidence for effects of profanity in game content on players' accessibility of aggressive thoughts, aggressive feelings, and perceived arousal. Additionally, profanity had little impact on how much players used profanity themselves, how much they enjoyed the game, feelings of presence, and how they rated their performance in the game. These trends were consistent across a range of demographic, personality, and video game experience dimensions that were measured, even though several of these individual difference variables were found to be related to some outcome variables and to each other. Therefore, while this study's findings did not necessarily indicate imitative modeling of profanity, they point to the possibility of more general effects regarding aggressive outcomes. This study's findings emphasize the need for future research investigating the effects of profanity in video games and other media. / Ph. D.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in sport is an emerging area of interest among scholars, sport managers, sponsors, fans, and policy-makers (Breitbarth, Walzel, Anagostopoulos, and van Eekeran, 2015). Despite this increased scholarly attention, a gap in literature exists regarding to the effectiveness of the messages disseminated. This study investigated how sports organizations communicate CSR on Twitter by examining the effectiveness of CSR messages disseminated via Twitter by professional baseball teams. Using priming theory and Lang's (2000) Limited Capacity Model for Mediated Message Processing, this study tested the effects of priming and message sequencing on a persons' ability to recognize and recall these CSR messages. While no statistically significant relationships were found, observed results led to strong arguments about the effects of both priming and message sequencing on the effectiveness of CSR messages disseminated by Major League Baseball (MLB) teams in terms of recognition and recall. Additionally, results suggested that traditional media effects paradigms might not be transferable to social media. / Master of Arts

This study employed an experimental design to test the effects of exposure to televised portrayals of differing types of negative consequences of casual sex on emerging adults' sexual beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. Male and female undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of three viewing conditions. Participants either viewed a program that portrayed negative emotional/social consequences of casual sex (i.e., guilt, regret, embarrassment, disapproval of family and friends), a negative physical consequence of casual sex (i.e., an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy), or a program without any sexual content. Outcomes were assessed immediately after exposure. Five outcome variables were examined: negative outcome expectancies of risky sex, attitudes toward casual sex, attitudes toward condoms, behavioral intentions to avoid casual sex, and behavioral intentions to use condoms. Driven by social cognitive theory, hypotheses address expected differences among the three conditions on these five outcome variables.Hypotheses about the expected effects of portrayals of negative consequences of casual sex were not confirmed. Results indicate that exposure to negative consequences of casual sex on television does not uniformly influence emerging adults' sexual beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. Rather, the relationship between exposure and subsequent effects was found to be moderated by their sexual risk experience. Emerging adults with different amounts of sexual risk experience responded differently to the experimental stimuli. Participants who had extensive sexual risk experience were not influenced by the stimuli. However, effects of exposure to the negative consequence conditions were identified among participants who had little to moderate amounts of sexual risk experience. Both the negative physical and emotional/social consequence conditions led these participants to report safer sex outcomes. Findings imply that portrayals of both negative emotional/social and negative physical consequences of casual sex on television have the potential to positively influence the sexual attitudes and behavioral intentions of young people who do not already have substantial sexual risk experience.