1,010 research outputs found
What Do You look for in a Prospective Date?: Reexamining the Preferences of Men and Women Who Differ in Self-Monitoring Propensities
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Resisting Temptation Revisited: Devaluation versus Enhancement of an Attractive Suitor by Exclusive and Nonexclusive Daters
Individuals committed to exclusive relationships often evaluate
attractive, opposite-sex targets less favorably than do less committed individuals. This devaluative distortion of alternatives
has been interpreted as relationship maintenance by exclusive
daters. Two experiments evaluated an alternative hypothesis:
Less committed individuals may more favorably evaluate attractive, other-sex targets because they are seeking a relationship. In
Experiment 1, exclusive and nonexclusive daters imagined a
scenario in which an attractive stranger showed interest in the
participant (high threat/high opportunity) or in his or her best
friend (low threat/low opportunity). In Experiment 2, exclusive
and nonexclusive daters anticipated interacting with an attractive target who was either available/seeking a relationship (high
threat/high opportunity) or unavailable for a relationship (low
threat/low opportunity). As predicted, nonexclusive daters
evaluated available targets more favorably than unavailable
ones, showing clear evidence of relationship-seeking motives.
However, exclusive daters showed little evidence of devaluing
available targets in the interest of relationship maintenance
The Aging Woman in Popular Film: Underrepresented, Unattractive, Unfriendly, and Unintelligent
The present study examined 100 top-grossing motion pictures spanning from
the 1940s through the 1980s (20 movies from each decade). Eight hundred
and twenty-nine characters were rated on attractiveness, character goodness,
intelligence, friendliness, socioeconomic status, romantic activity, and movie
outcome. It was hypothesized that ageist and sexist stereotypes would interact
such that (a) older female characters would be more underepresented, and
(b) more negatively portrayed, than their male contemporaries. Both hypotheses
were supported. Implications regarding double standards for age, and the
media's propagation of beauty-related standards for females were discussed
Investigating the Social-Adjustive and Value-Expressive Functions of Well-Grounded Attitudes: Implications for Change and for Subsequent Behavior
Recent demonstrations of the plausibility of functional theories of persuasion
have occurred within advertising contexts or have targeted potentially nebulous
or uninvolving attitudes, and may thus have demonstrated the utility of
functional explanations of attitude formation rather than attitude change. In
the present study, attitudes that participants have acted on and consider
important (i.e., the criteria they use to select dating partners) were the targets
of persuasion. High and low self-monitoring individuals, who hold different
dating attitudes that serve different functions, were exposed to functionally
relevant or functionally irrelevant messages that reached either proattitudinal
or counter attitudinal conclusions. As anticipated by functional theory, (a) low
self-monitoring individuals changed their dating attitudes only after hearing a
counter attitudinal message that addressed the value-expressive functions their
dating attitudes served, whereas (b) high self-monitoring individuals changed
their opinions only after hearing a counter attitudinal message that addressed
the social-adjustive functions served by their dating attitudes. Although the
data revealed that important attitudes can be changed via a functionally
relevant appeal, only the low self-monitoring individuals subsequently used their
changed attitudes to guide their behavior in a subsequent couple-matching task.
Implications of these results for functional theories of persuasion and for
variations in attitude/behavior consistency were discussed
Who Smokes in Hollywood? Characteristics of Smokers in Popular Films from 1940 to 1989
We examined how smokers were depicted in 100 popular films spanning 5 decades. Smokers were depicted as more romantically and sexually active than nonsmokers and as marginally more intelligent than nonsmokers. Smokers and nonsmokers did not differ in terms of attractiveness, goodness, socioeconomic status, aggression, friendliness, or outcome at film’s end. Thus, if anything, smokers are depicted a bit more positively than nonsmokers. We compared Hollywood’s depiction of smokers to real-world demographics on smoking and found that Hollywood’s depiction of smoking tends to ignore the negative consequences and correlates (e.g., ill health, low socioeconomic status, aggressive behavior) of smoking
Are the Beautiful Good in Hollywood? An Investigation of the Beauty and Goodness Stereotype on Film
Physically attractive individuals are often viewed more favorably than unattractive people on
dimensions that are weakly related or unrelated to physical looks, such as intelligence, sociability, and morality. Our study investigated the role of U.S. films in this "beauty-and-goodness" stereotype. In Study 1, we established that attractive characters were portrayed more favorably than unattractive characters on multiple dimensions (e.g., intelligence, friendliness) across a random sample from 5 decades of top-grossing films. The link between beauty and positive characteristics was stable across time periods, character sex, and characters' centrality to the plot. Study 2 established that exposure to highly stereotyped films can elicit stronger beauty-and-goodness stereotyping. Participants watching a highly biased film subsequently showed greater favoritism toward an attractive graduate school candidate (compared with ratings of an unattractive candidate) than participants viewing a less biased film
Genre of Music and Lyrical Content: Expectation Effects
This study was designed to examine whether people's expectations differ regarding how music lyrics affect individual behavior as a function of music genre. Because legislative attention and media publicity have been biased against certain types of popular music (i.e., heavy metal and rap), the authors expected that those genres of music would be viewed more negatively than other genres of popular music, for which there has been little or no negative publicity (i.e., pop and country). Participants (N = 160 college students) rated their perceptions of how the lyrical content of a song would affect listeners' behavior. The authors presented prosocial or antisocial lyrical passages to students (N = 160) under the guise of four musical genres (heavy metal, rap, pop, and country). Participants rated the potential impact of the lyrics on listeners' behavior. Findings indicated that lyrics labeled as heavy metal or rap were perceived as less likely to inspire prosocial behavior but not more likely to inspire antisocial behavior than the same lyrics labeled as country or pop
Alcohol in the Movies: Characteristics of Drinkers and Nondrinkers in Films from 1940-1989
We examined depictions of alcohol use in 100 popular films spanning 5 decades. Drinkers were depicted as more attractive, more romantically/sexually active, more aggressive, and having a higher socioeconomic status than nondrinkers. No systematic changes were found across decades that might reflect the growing knowledge base regarding the adverse effects of alcohol use. We compared the depiction of alcohol use in movies to real-world demographics and found that alcohol use in movies is somewhat glamorized
Do Animated Disney Characters Portray and Promote the Beauty-Goodness Stereotype?
Disney movies are frequently cited as a source of the what-is-beautiful-is-good stereotype. Two studies (a) assessed prevalence of the stereotype across animated Disney movies; and (b) examined whether exposure to such films influences children's judgments of peers. In Study 1, human characters in 21 films were rated on attractiveness, goodness, and character outcome. Regression analyses demonstrated that attractiveness of a character was a significant predictor of the character's portrayal. In the second study, 42 children (ages 6–12) were exposed to either a high or low beauty-biased film and then rated target peers. Children rated the attractive target more favorably than the less attractive target. However, film exposure did not increase children's use of the stereotype
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