Tuning out tenderness: the influence of gender and friends on U.S. adolescents’ emotional self-socialization via film selection and avoidance

Abstract

Teen boys often face peer pressures to avoid “feminine” emotions, such as tenderness. Media selections may reflect such pressures and constitute emotional self-socialization into traditional gender roles. An online experiment with 402 13- and 14-year-olds, based on Knobloch-Westerwick’s SESAM model, tested hypotheses about gendered selections/avoidance of hostile and tender content. Randomized to imagine watching a film alone or with friends, teens rated their interest in different film emotions and their likelihood of viewing eight films (pre-tested hostile or tender), then selected and viewed four trailers. Boys (vs. girls and nonbinary youths) gave higher ratings to hostile films and lower ratings to tender films. Baseline tender affect (lower in boys vs. girls and nonbinary youths) negatively predicted number of hostile trailers viewed which in turn negatively predicted post-test tenderness, consistent with emotional self-socialization. Imagined viewing condition did not moderate gender differences except in post hoc interactions with gender mix of friends.