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

Abstract

Previous research reported that meaningful entertainment experiences are associated with elevation, mixed affect, physical indicators, and moral motivations. The importance of values, particularly altruistic values and self-transcendence, was thought to play a central role. Although the importance of values has been found to vary across cultures, little research so far has examined cultural variations in the response towards meaningful entertainment. The present study, therefore, investigated how cultural variations in self-construals and the importance of values (self-enhancement, conservation, and self-transcendence) in movies are related to meaningful entertainment experiences. An online experiment in Germany and the United Arab Emirates (N ¼ 245) confirmed that meaningful entertainment elicited elevation. Elevation was associated with conservation and self-transcendence values and, via this path, increased moral motivations. An interdependent self-construal was related to elevation and to moral motivations. The results are discussed in light of current conceptualizations of inward-and outward-oriented gratifications of meaningful entertainment and the impact of values.

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

“…Third, solace is a subscale that encompasses issues of relieving sorrows, being forgiving and more confident toward the future. This dimension would usually be subsumed under the term inspirational or self-transcendent experiences (triggering elevation, awe, solace, inspiration, providing optimism, and connectedness; Janicke and Ramasubramanian, 2017; Oliver et al, 2018; Rieger et al, 2018). Corniness subsumed responses that would speak for emotional distance or even disliking the meme due to perceived boredom, kitsch, or being too pathetic.…”

“…“I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the meme and its message”). These new items especially focused on eudaimonic intentions, tackling issues of inward- and outward-oriented motivations (Oliver et al, 2018; Rieger et al, 2018). Since previous research did not test the dimensionality of the items, RQ3 also required a test of the dimensionality.…”

“…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).…”

“…Such combinations may cause surprise responses and increase the chance of eudaimonic memes to receive relatively great attention and elaboration by users, which would then pave the way for more intense and diverse affective responses, including a heightened sense of meaningfulness, inspiration, motivational intentions, and greater situational well-being (Rieger and Klimmt, 2019). Thus, as inspiration has been identified as an important motivational outcome of exposure to (some) eudaimonic entertainment (Oliver et al,2012(Oliver et al, , 2018Rieger et al, 2018), and as inspiration is another important engine for daily well-being, this study also served to explore the motivational outcomes of user contact with eudaimonic memes.…”

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

“…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). Additionally, exposure to sad entertainment content seems to trigger life reflection and lets media users "count their blessings" (p.747), resulting in increased life happiness (Knobloch-Westerwick, Gong, Hagner, & Kerbeykian, 2013).…”