Is it Seeing or Believing? Exposure, Perceived Realism, and Emerging Adults' Perceptions of Their Own and Others' Attitudes About Relationships

Abstract

The differential impact hypothesis predicts that media exposure is more likely to influence social-level than personal-level judgments unless individuals identify with media content. An important factor in determining identification is perceived realism. Research in other areas has found, however, that individuals engage in motivated differential perceptions (MDPs) of self and others and that the extent and nature of these MDPs are determined by both motivational and cognitive factors. This study found that emerging adults (N D 282) in both within-subjects and between-subjects conditions engaged in MDPs-rating peers as more likely to endorse recreational attitudes and less likely to endorse relational attitudes than themselves. Exposure was significantly related to social-level perceptions of peers, but not to personal attitudes. Perceived realism reduced MDPs and was significantly related to personal-level attitudes, but not to social-level perceptions. There were important gender differences in the nature of these relationships. For females, increased exposure was related to higher perceptions of peers' agreement with recreational attitudes, but for males exposure was associated with higher perceptions of other's agreement with relational attitudes. A range of entertainment media formats (television, magazines, radio, and Internet sites) were examined.

Sexually Explicit Internet Material and Adolescents’ Sexual Performance Orientation: The Mediating Roles of Enjoyment and Perceived Utility

“…According to the literature on the effects of SEIM in particular and sexual media content in general, two response states may be particularly relevant to explain how SEIM affects adolescents' sexual performance orientation: the affective response state of enjoyment of SEIM and the cognitive response state of perceived utility of SEIM (Chock, 2011;Peter & Valkenburg, 2009a, 2010bZurbriggen & Morgan, 2006). In line with prior literature (Peter & Valkenburg, 2009a), the affective response state enjoyment of SEIM can be defined as the extent to which viewers experience positive emotions while watching SEIM.…”

“…The perceived utility of SEIM is thus similar to the concept of perceived functional value in the 3AM (Wright, 2011), which includes the plausibility that viewers attribute to sexual messages of SEIM. Several studies have shown that viewers of sexual media content who experienced the content as more realistic had a higher likelihood of adopting the messages promoted in the sexual media content (Chock, 2011;Peter & Valkenburg, 2006). This process also seems to develop over time as several studies showed that the perceived utility of SEIM predicts sexual outcomes six months later among adolescents (Peter & Valkenburg, 2010b;Vandenbosch & Peter, 2016).…”

“…In this context, the pertinent literature on SEIM points to the possible mediating roles of enjoyment of SEIM and perceived utility of SEIM (Chock, 2011;Peter & Valkenburg, 2009a, 2010b to explain the relationship between exposure to SEIM and adolescents' sexual performance orientation. Moreover, the information processing and message design literature (Green, 2006;Slater & Rouner, 2002) hints at the idea that enjoyment of SEIM may affect the perceived utility of SEIM.…”

“Enjoy Your Sexuality, but Do it in Secret”

“…The difference between the current study’s more conservative characterization of friends’ sexual communications and previous research’s (e.g., Coley, Lombardi, Lynch, Mahalik, & Sims, 2013; Kenney, Thadani, Ghaidarov, & LaBrie, 2013) characterization of more permissive peer sexual norms may be due to pluralistic ignorance. That is, young people may consistently overestimate the extent to which they believe their peers have permissive sexual attitudes and take sexual risks (Chock, 2011; Holman & Sillars, 2012; Lewis, Lee, Patrick, & Fossos, 2007). This reality-perception gap likely closes with the consideration of closer friends.…”

It Only Happens Once: Adolescents’ Interpretations of Mediated Messages About Sexual Initiation

“…Gender differences have been found in media exposure, attention to media content, and effects (e.g., Chock, 2011;Peter & Valkenburg, 2011). For example, males have been found to attend primarily to male-oriented scripts (e.g., about seeking multiple sexual partners) and females to female-oriented narratives (e.g., about seeking emotional commitment).…”