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Mood management theory posits that the consumption of messages, particularly entertaining messages, is capable of altering prevailing mood states, and that the selection of specific messages for consumption often serves the regulation of mood states (Zillmann, 1988a).
The idea of selecting media content in the interest of enhancing one's states has been proposed by Zillmann and Bryant (1985) and Zillmann (1988a). Initially, the assumptions were referred to as theory of affect-dependent stimulus arrangement, but subsequently gained more prominence under the label of mood management (Knobloch, 2006).
Mood management research can be traced back to Leon Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory. Festinger notes that the human organism tries to establish internal congruity among cognitions such as attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge about oneself and the environment. When a person holds two cognitions that are incompatible, dissonance is produced. But such dissonance can be reduced through selective exposure, that is, individuals will seek out information that will reduce the dissonance and avoid information that will increase the already existing dissonance.
Leon Festinger was an American social psychologist, perhaps best known for cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. His theories and research are credited with renouncing the previously dominant behaviorist view of social psychology by demonstrating the inadequacy of stimulus-response conditioning accounts of human behavior. Festinger is also credited with advancing the use of laboratory experimentation in social psychology, although he simultaneously stressed the importance of studying real-life situations, a principle he perhaps most famously practiced when personally infiltrating a doomsday cult. He is also known in social network theory for the proximity effect.
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort experienced by a person who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. This discomfort is triggered by a situation in which a person’s belief clashes with new evidence perceived by the person. When confronted with facts that contradict beliefs, ideals, and values, people will try to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.
Festinger's theory was primarily laid out in cognitive terms, addressing exposure choices to persuasive messages. Zillmann and his colleagues thus proposed the mood management theory that attempts to cope with the broadest possible range of message choices such as news, documents, comedies, dramas, tragedies, music performances, and sports. It deals with all conceivable moods rather than a single, specific affective state, such as dissonance (Zillman, 1988b).
Based on the hedonistic premise that individuals are motivated for pleasure and against pain, mood management theory states that, to the extent possible, individuals tend to arrange their environment so that good mood (commonly pleasure) is maximized or maintained, and bad mood (commonly pain) is diminished or alleviated. Environmental arrangement can take many forms, including psychically moving away from or avoiding situations that creates negative effect (such as avoiding a stressful traffic jam), or moving toward or selecting situations that result in gratification (such as strolling in a beautiful garden). Moreover, since entertainment provides its audience with the opportunity to symbolically arrange the environment, mood management theory states that people's entertainment choices should similarly serve the management of moods (Oliver, 2003).
The specific hypotheses of mood management theory have been summarized as follows by Zillmann (2000):
The indicated hedonistic objective is best served by selective exposure to material that (a) is excitationally opposite to prevailing states associated with noxiously experienced hypo- or hyperarousal, (b) has positive hedonic value above that of prevailing states, and (c) in hedonically negative states, has little or no semantic affinity with the prevailing states.
Although mood management suggests that individuals' behaviors often conform to the hedonistic assumption, this theory also makes clear that individuals are not necessarily aware of their motivation. Rather, people are thought to initially arrange their environments in a random fashion, and arrangements that are incidentally made during good moods and that extend or enhance the hedonically positive state leave a memory trace that increases the likelihood for making similar stimulus arrangements under similar circumstances (Zillmann, 1988a, 1988b). In other words, the formation of these preferences is controlled by a mechanism called operant conditioning, which refers to the use of consequences to modify the occurrence and form of behavior.
Operant conditioning is a learning process through which the strength of a behavior is modified by reinforcement or punishment. It is also a procedure that is used to bring about such learning.
Although its principles relate to the broader realm of mood optimization, mood management theory has largely been applied to entertainment choices. Focusing on viewers' selection of television entertainment, for example, an experimental study by Bryant and Zillmann (1984) reveals that individuals can overcome boredom or stress through selective exposure to exciting or relaxing television programming respectively. In the context of music exposure, Knobloch and Zillmann (2002) demonstrate that individuals could improve negative moods by electing to listen to highly energetic-joyful music. Also, Wakshlag et al. (1983) reported that participants with increased fear levels preferred films with low victimization scores and with high justice scores. This demonstrates that individuals aim to minimize stimuli which are associated with the source of a negative mood.
The theoretical proposition of mood management theory has been faced with challenges, especially when studying (1) the role that negative moods and burdening feelings play within the entertainment experience; (2) the diversity of individual users, social and cultural situations, and media products on offer, and (3) the new, so-called interactive media and how entertainment can best be conceptualized within them (Vorderer, 2003).
Uses and gratifications theory (UGT) is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. UGT is an audience-centered approach to understanding mass communication. Diverging from other media effect theories that question "what does media do to people?", UGT focuses on "what do people do with media?" It postulates that media is a highly available product and the audiences are the consumers of the same product
Attitudes are associated beliefs and behaviors towards some object. They are not stable, and because of the communication and behavior of other people, are subject to change by social influences, as well as by the individual's motivation to maintain cognitive consistency when cognitive dissonance occurs—when two attitudes or attitude and behavior conflict. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of affective and cognitive components. It has been suggested that the inter-structural composition of an associative network can be altered by the activation of a single node. Thus, by activating an affective or emotional node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and cognitive components tend to be intertwined.
Mean world syndrome is a term coined by George Gerbner to describe a phenomenon whereby violence-related content of mass media makes viewers believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is. Mean world syndrome is one of the main conclusions of cultivation theory. Gerbner, a pioneer researcher on the effects of television on society, argued that people who watch television tended to think of the world as an intimidating and unforgiving place. A direct correlation between the amount of television one watches and the amount of fear one harbors about the world has been proven, although the direction of causality remains debatable in that persons fearful of the world may be more likely to retreat from it and in turn spend more time with indoor, solitary activities such as television watching.
Media psychology is the branch of psychology that focuses on the interaction of human behavior and media and technology. Media psychology is not restricted to mass media or media content; it includes all forms of mediated communication and media technology-related behaviors, such as the use, design, impact and sharing behaviors. This branch is a relatively new field of study because of advancement in technology. It uses various methods of critical analysis and investigation to develop a working model of a user's perception on media experience. These methods are used for society as a whole and on an individual basis. Media psychologists are able to perform activities that include consulting, design, and production in various media like television, video games, films, and news broadcasting. Media psychologists are not considered to be those who are featured in media, rather than those who research, work or contribute to the field.
Disconfirmed expectancy is a psychological term for what is commonly known as a failed prophecy. According to the American social psychologist Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, disconfirmed expectancies create a state of psychological discomfort because the outcome contradicts expectancy. Upon recognizing the falsification of an expected event an individual will experience the competing cognitions, "I believe [X]," and, "I observed [Y]." The individual must either discard the now disconfirmed belief or justify why it has not actually been disconfirmed. As such, disconfirmed expectancy and the factors surrounding the individual's consequent actions have been studied in various settings.
Selective exposure is a theory within the practice of psychology, often used in media and communication research, that historically refers to individuals' tendency to favor information which reinforces their pre-existing views while avoiding contradictory information. Selective exposure has also been known and defined as "congeniality bias" or "confirmation bias" in various texts throughout the years.
James E. Grunig is a public relations theorist, Professor Emeritus for the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland.
James Renwick Taylor, sometimes known as Jim Taylor, is a Canadian academic and Professor Emeritus at the Department of Communication of the Université de Montréal, which he founded with Annie Méar and André H. Caron Ed.D in the early 1970s.
Reinforcement theory is a limited effects media model applicable within the realm of communication. The theory generally states that people seek out and remember information that provides cognitive support for their pre-existing attitudes and beliefs. The main assumption that guides this theory is that people do not like to be wrong and often feel uncomfortable when their beliefs are challenged.
Exemplification theory is a theory that states that an event is the exemplification of a property in an entity. This identity is often modeled as an "ordered triple" of an entity, property type, and time).
Misattribution is one of many theories of humor that describes an audience's inability to identify exactly why they find a joke to be funny. The formal theory is attributed to Zillmann & Bryant (1980) in their article, "Misattribution Theory of Tendentious Humor", published in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. They derived the critical concepts of the theory from Sigmund Freud's Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, originally published in 1905. Freud declared people incapable of knowing exactly what it is they find amusing due to the complex nature of their conscious and subconscious minds. Jokes are crafted by comedians who have experience with causing laughter but who may themselves be blind to the actual cause of humor.
Excitation-transfer theory purports that residual excitation from one stimulus will amplify the excitatory response to another stimulus, though the hedonic valences of the stimuli may differ. The excitation-transfer process is not limited to a single emotion. For example, when watching a movie, a viewer may be angered by seeing the hero wronged by the villain, but this initial excitation may intensify the viewer's pleasure in witnessing the villain's punishment later. Thus, although the excitation from the original stimulus of seeing the hero wronged was cognitively accessed as anger, the excitation after the second stimulus of seeing the villain punished is cognitively assessed as pleasure, though part of the excitation from the second stimulus is residual from the first.
However, the excitation-transfer process requires the presence of three conditions. One: the second stimulus occurs before the complete decay of residual excitation from the first stimulus. Two: there is the misattribution of excitation, that is, after exposure to the second stimulus, the individual experiencing the excitation attributes full excitation to the second stimulus. Three: the individual has not reached an excitatory threshold before exposure to the second stimulus.
The hedonic music consumption model was created by music researchers Kathleen Lacher and Richard Mizeski in 1994. Their goal was to use this model to examine the responses that listening to rock music creates, and to find if these responses influenced the listener's intention to later purchase the music. The article begins with a discussion of why the issue of music consumption is important. Music is then explored as an aesthetic product, prior to a discussion of what hedonic consumption is, as well as its origins, and concludes with an in-depth look at the model itself.
Affective disposition theory (ADT), in its simplest form, states that media and entertainment users make moral judgments about characters in a narrative which in turn affects their enjoyment of the narrative. This theory was first posited by Zillmann and Cantor (1972), and many offshoots have followed in various areas of entertainment. Entertainment users make constant judgments of a character's actions, and these judgments enable the user to determine which character they believe is the "good guy" or the "villain". However, in an article written in 2004, Raney examined the fundamental ADT assumption that viewers of drama always form their dispositions toward characters through moral judgment of motives and conduct. Raney argued that viewers/consumers of entertainment media could form positive dispositions toward characters before any moral scrutinizing occurs. He proposed that viewers sometimes develop story schemas that provide them "with the cognitive pegs upon which to hang their initial interpretations and expectations of characters". The basic idea of the affective disposition theory is used as a way to explain how emotions become part of the entertainment experience.
Joanne Cantor (2004) suggested that “humans are naturally inclined to empathize with the emotions of protagonists….” This may help explain potential long-term reactions that may accompany exposure to frightening content. Feeling close to the protagonist may enhance the depth of fear and helplessness a viewer might experience.
Jennings Bryant is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at The University of Alabama (UA). Prior to his retirement in 2010, he was Communication and Information Sciences Distinguished Research Professor, holder of the Reagan Endowed Chair of Broadcasting, and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research at UA. Jennings Bryant has been married to Sara Poteat Bryant for 42 years. They are the parents of three children. The Bryants live on a family farm in the Mountain Valley Rural Agricultural Historical District in Glenwood, NC.
Introduced by William Benoit, image restoration theory outlines strategies that can be used to restore one's image in an event where reputation has been damaged. Image restoration theory can be applied as an approach for understanding personal or organizational crisis situations. This theory can be applied to both individual and organizational crisis situations. Image repair theory is a component of crisis communication, which is a sub-specialty of public relations. Its purpose is to protect an individual, company, or organization facing a public challenge to its reputation.
Peter Vorderer, Prof. Dr. phil. is a German professor of media and Communication studies at the University of Mannheim focusing on the area of media psychology, entertainment research, and the social change related to the use of new media. He made major contributions to the field of mass communication, primarily in the area of media effects research. From May 2014 until May 2015, he was president of the International Communication Association (ICA).
