How Movies Can Ease the Fear of Death: The Survival or Death of the Protagonists in Meaningful Movies

Abstract

Many media entertainment products address the fragility of life by portraying the severe illness or death of the protagonist. According to terror management theory, people need to create meaning in their lives when they are reminded of their own mortality, for instance, by engaging in close relationships with others. Meaningful films may provide recipients with an anxiety buffer that helps them to cope with existential fear. The results of an experimental study (N = 130) demonstrated that participants who had been reminded of their mortality appreciated a meaningful movie more and liked the protagonist better when he survived than when he died. Further, participants who viewed the movie in which the protagonist survived did not activate their self-esteem-based anxiety buffer. The results point toward the potential of entertainment to provide internal anxiety buffers and thereby help in coping with selfthreatening situations. The findings are discussed in terms of the connections between meaningful media entertainment, coping mechanisms, and viewers' terror management.

Media Entertainment as a Self-Regulatory Resource: The Recovery and Resilience in Entertaining Media Use (R²EM) Model

“…For instance, eudaimonic THE R²EM-Model 25 content provides media users with themes and lessons about life and strategies to deal with human struggles and hardship (Greenwood & Long, 2015;Oliver & Hartmann, 2010;Rieger & Klimmt, 2019). Meaningful entertainment was also found to restore self-esteem after selfthreatening situations (Rieger et al, 2015;Rieger & Hofer, 2017). Furthermore, a connection between eudaimonic entertainment experience and perceived meaning and purpose in life is well established in empirical research (Oliver & Bartsch, 2010;Oliver & Raney, 2011) as well as the notion that exposure to meaningful entertainment fosters feelings of elevation and human connection (Janicke & Oliver, 2017) as well as prosocial motivations (Oliver, Hartmann, & Woolley, 2012;Rieger, Frischlich, & Oliver, 2018).…”

The daily dose of digital inspiration 2: Themes and affective user responses to meaningful memes in social media

“…When exposed to eudaimonic (movie) entertainment, viewers most often report mixed affects such as bitter-sweetness, poignancy, or combinations of happiness and sadness (Ersner-Hershfield et al, 2008). In addition, their consumption was associated with the experience of mastery (Janicke et al, 2018; Rieger et al, 2014), a perceived increase in one’s own coping abilities (Rieger and Hofer, 2017; Rieger et al, 2015), a stronger inclination to engage in moral behaviors (Oliver et al, 2012; Rieger et al, 2018), as well as a feeling of elevation (i.e. feeling touched, moved or inspired; Oliver et al, 2012).…”

Meaningful entertainment experiences and self-transcendence: Cultural variations shape elevation, values, and moral intentions

“…The other process is driven by the striving for meaningful experiences or the fulfilment of intrinsic needs and is accordingly labeled as meaningful or eudaimonic entertainment . Both processes can contribute to individual well-being (Janicke et al., 2018; Janicke-Bowles et al., 2018; Rieger and Hofer, 2017; Rieger et al., 2014, 2015).…”