Just a Joke? Adolescents' Preferences for Humor in Media Entertainment and Real-Life Aggression.

IF 3.4 2区心理学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Media Psychology Pub Date : 2022-06-12 eCollection Date: 2022-01-01 DOI:10.1080/15213269.2022.2080710

Amber van der Wal, J Loes Pouwels, Jessica Taylor Piotrowski, Patti M Valkenburg

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Abstract

Humorous media entertainment frequently punctuates the everyday lives of adolescents. Theorists have suggested that this exposure may impact behavior, particularly real-life aggression. Specifically, exposure to prosocial (coping) humor in media entertainment is posited to decrease aggression, whereas the reverse has been argued for exposure to antisocial (disparaging and slapstick) humor. Despite these suppositions, little empirical evidence about this relationship exists. To fill this gap, this study employed a cohort-sequential design using latent growth curve models to estimate the (co-)development of adolescents' preferences for television shows featuring disparaging, slapstick, and coping humor and aggression from age 10 to 17. Results showed that at the onset of adolescence, especially boys had a higher preference for shows with disparaging and slapstick humor than with coping humor. However, over the course of adolescence, boys' and girls' preferences for shows with coping humor increased, while especially girls' preferences for shows with disparaging and slapstick humor decreased. These preferences were unrelated to adolescents' aggression. Our findings provide an important addition to the ongoing media effects debate. Taken together, they offer room for optimism and point toward an increased focus on the potential positive rather than the negative sides of humor in the lives of young people.

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只是玩笑？青少年对媒体娱乐中幽默的偏好与现实生活中的攻击行为。

青少年的日常生活中经常会出现幽默的媒体娱乐节目。理论家们认为，这种接触可能会影响行为，尤其是现实生活中的攻击行为。具体来说，人们认为接触媒体娱乐中的亲社会（应对）幽默会减少攻击行为，而接触反社会（蔑视和滑稽）幽默则相反。尽管有这些假设，但有关这种关系的经验证据却很少。为了填补这一空白，本研究采用了队列-序列设计，利用潜在的成长曲线模型来估计青少年从 10 岁到 17 岁期间对以蔑视、滑稽和应对幽默为特色的电视节目的偏好与攻击性的（共同）发展。结果表明，在青春期开始时，尤其是男孩对诋毁性和滑稽幽默节目的偏好高于应对幽默节目。然而，随着青春期的到来，男孩和女孩对有应对幽默的节目的偏好增加了，而特别是女孩对有诋毁和滑稽幽默的节目的偏好减少了。这些偏好与青少年的攻击性无关。我们的研究结果为正在进行的媒体效应辩论提供了重要补充。综合来看，这些研究结果令人乐观，并指出我们应更多地关注幽默在青少年生活中潜在的积极而非消极的一面。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Media Psychology Multiple-

CiteScore

8.60

自引率

7.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： Media Psychology is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to publishing theoretically-oriented empirical research that is at the intersection of psychology and media communication. These topics include media uses, processes, and effects. Such research is already well represented in mainstream journals in psychology and communication, but its publication is dispersed across many sources. Therefore, scholars working on common issues and problems in various disciplines often cannot fully utilize the contributions of kindred spirits in cognate disciplines.