MOOD EFFECTS AND MEDIA EXPOSURE

Moods are generally considered to be similar to acute emotions but characterized by lower excitatory intensity, longer experiential duration, and greater diffuseness in terms of both causal circumstances and motivational implications. Nico Frijda (1993) considers the motivational nonspecificity of moods to be their primary defining property. Acute emotions, such as fear or anger, tend to be attributed to inducing conditions and are typically associated with specific behavioral objectives. Moods, in contrast, need not be connected to particular causes and are marked by the absence of impulsion toward specific courses of action.

There appears to be little consensus, however, on whether or not the experience of mood requires conscious awareness. William Morris(1989), for example, suggests that moods may be consciously experienced or may manifest themselves without awareness. The stipulation that individuals need be neither conscious of their moods, nor cognizant of potential consequences of these moods, carries with it the assumption that nonconsciously experienced moods are nonetheless capable of influencing cognition and action. Robert Thayer (1989), on the other hand, insists that mood experiences necessitate awareness, and he suggests that this awareness provides vital feedback to individuals about their state of wellness. Thayer highlights the hedonic distinctness of moods, a feature that moods share with acute emotions. Specifically, he distinguishes between moods marked by energetic arousal (i.e., moods linked with sensations of energy, vigor, and peppiness), and tense arousal (i.e., moods associated with feelings of tension, anxiety, and fearfulness). These arousal types are consistent with the hedonic classification of moods into good or pleasant versus bad or unpleasant. Thayer conceives of a depression-elation continuum onto which all moods can be mapped, and he emphasizes that all of these states favor consequences that are in the interest of individuals' wellness.

Morris (1992), in a biopsychological theory of mood functions, similarly stresses consequences for wellness. Specifically, he proposes that good moods express the organism's effective coping with environmental demands, whereas bad moods are manifestations of deficient coping and failure in meeting ecological demands. Individuals in pursuit of wellness thus should be motivated to alter, to the extent possible, depressive states to experiences of elation and to seek courses of action that hold promise of accomplishing this objective.

Mood Management

Dolf Zillmann (1988a, 1988b), in developing a theory of self-administered mood management, accepted the hedonistic premise that individuals, in their continual efforts to improve affective experience, follow an impulse toward pleasure maximization. Specifically, his theory suggests that people tend to arrange their stimulus environment so as to increase the likelihood that (1) bad moods are short-lived and their experiential intensity is reduced, (2) good moods are prolonged and their experiential intensity is enhanced, and (3) bad moods are terminated and superseded by good moods of the highest possible experiential intensity.

The arrangement of stimulus environments may be conscious or nonconscious. It is conscious when people are aware of their moods and engage in deliberate efforts to alter them in accordance with the stipulated management objectives. It is nonconscious when people pursue these objectives without cognizance of moods and intentions to modify them in particular ways. For the presumably prevalent case of nonconscious mood management, Zillmann proposed a mechanism that is primarily based on negative reinforcement (i.e., the removal of negative stimulation). It is thought that people initially sample stimulus conditions in a random fashion. Given that they experience bad moods, the encounter of stimuli that provide relief leaves a trace in memory that makes it likely that the relief-providing stimuli will be sought out during future bad moods. The frequent experience of relief under these circumstances eventually establishes a mood-specific preference for particular stimulus environments. The enhancement of good moods by the encounter of pleasant stimuli functions analogously, except that the preference is mediated by positive reinforcement.

Although mood-management theory applies to the arrangement of stimulus environments generally, the readily manipulable media environment, especially the wealth of choices offered in media entertainment, has been of focal interest in considering the management of moods.

Media Effects on Moods

Mood-management theory entails the assumption that exposure to environmental stimuli, to media displays in particular, is capable of modifying prevailing moods. If this capability did not exist, mood repair through relief and mood enhancement through added pleasure could not happen, and mood-specific preferences for particular displays could not be formed. Fortunately, however, the mood-altering capacity of media portrayals has been amply documented and is not in question (cf. Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Morris, 1989; Thayer, 1989).

By way of illustration, Joseph Forgas and Stephanie Moylan (1987) ascertained the moods of large numbers of theater patrons who had just seen predominantly funny or sad movies. They found postexposure moods to correspond closely with content classifications; that is, comical contents induced good moods, tragic contents induced bad moods. Moods also manifested themselves in a comparatively positive versus negative outlook on various social issues.

Edward Hirt and his collaborators (1992) exposed sports fans to live televised basketball games that involved their favorite teams. Their teams won some of these games and lost others. Moods, and along with them the self-esteem of the fans, were positive after hoped-for wins and negative after feared losses.

News reports were found to induce moods in a similar fashion (Zillmann, Taylor, and Lewis, 1998). Bad news about publicly known people and groups fostered bad moods when the people and groups were liked, whereas it fostered good moods when the people or groups were disliked or despised.

In the elicitation of moods by media content, individual differences along gender and personality lines may be pronounced. Mary Beth Oliver (2000) aggregated evidence suggesting that, among adolescents, males extract more positive moods from violent and horrifying films than do females, whereas females respond more favorably to so-called melodramatic tear-jerkers than do males. Such gender differences derive in part from personality characteristics that transcend gender.

Mood Management through Communication Choices

Mood-management theory has been supported by numerous research demonstrations. In general terms, it has been shown that the stipulated hedonistic objectives are best served by the choice of exposure to material to which the likely reaction (1) is excitationally opposite to prevailing moods that derive from noxiously experienced hypoarousal or hyperarousal, (2) has positive hedonic valence above that of prevailing moods, and (3) during distinctly negative affective experiences, has little or no semantic affinity with the inducers of these moods (cf. Zillmann, 1988b, 2000).

The merits of counterexcitatory exposure choices have been explored experimentally (Bryant and Zillmann, 1984). Respondents were placed into either a state of boredom or stress and then provided with the opportunity to watch television in privacy. Unknown to them, only programs that had been preevaluated as either exciting or calming were available. The viewing choices of the respondents were secretly recorded, primarily in terms of accumulated time dedicated to exciting or calming programs. The findings revealed that bored viewers preferred exciting over calming programs, whereas viewers in acute stress preferred calming over exciting ones. The spontaneous selections of the respondents thus did serve excitatory homeostasis, as expected, in that the return to normal levels of sympathetic excitedness was accelerated for both hypoaroused and hyperaroused people. Their intuitive choices were correct in minimizing aversive experiences, thereby serving wellness.

Similarly conducted selective-exposure research gives evidence that viewers who sample entertaining programs attempt to elude, diminish, or terminate bad moods—such as being disappointed, depressed, frustrated, annoyed, or angry—by consuming comedy or engaging drama with a pleasing and appeasing overall message (e.g., Helregel and Weaver, 1989; Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Meadowcroft and Zillmann, 1987; Zillmann and Bryant, 1986; Zillmann and Wakshlag, 1985). All of these choices are supportive of the proposal that exposure is sought to programs that promise relief from bad moods and the enhancement of mildly pleasant affective states. In more general terms, exposure is sought to programs that appear capable of providing a degree of pleasure above that already manifested in the prevailing mood.

The proposal that the repair of noxious experiential states is best accomplished by seeking exposure to contents with little or no affinity to these moods, as well as by avoiding exposure to contents with such affinity, is directly addressed in an investigation on crime apprehension (Wakshlag, Vial, and Tamborini, 1983). After the respondents' fear of victimization was made salient to them or not, they could choose a drama from a set of crime dramas that differed with regard to the amount of featured violence and the justness of the resolution. It was observed that respondents who were acutely crime-apprehensive showed a stronger tendency than others to avoid drama dwelling on violence. These respondents also showed a stronger interest in drama featuring the triumph of justice in its resolution. It seems that in making such choices it is tacitly understood that diversionary stimulation has a more beneficial effect than mulling over the conditions that fostered the noxious experiential states that are in need of repair, and that exposure to material related to these states could only exacerbate the situation by frequent reminder of the aggravating circumstances.

Nonexperimental research produced further corroboration of mood management through specific and, at times, nonspecific choices of available media offerings. Daniel Anderson and his collaborators (1996), for example, conducted a massive behavior survey of television consumption in the family context. Specifically, these investigators assessed family stress levels and related them to television program choices. High stress levels proved to be associated with increased comedy viewing and decreased news consumption. This accords with mood-management theory in that comedy is considered programming with great absorption potential and high positive hedonic valence—in short, programming with a high capacity for disrupting and alleviating bad moods. News programs, usually laden with reports of threatening events, do not have this capacity and thus are likely to perpetuate bad moods based on troubling experiences. In addition, Anderson and his colleagues observed that stressed women, compared to non-stressed women, watched more game and variety programming as well as more television overall.

This research relates to the work on conflict management, specifically to such management through media choices that affect mood improvements. Rena Repetti (1989) conducted an investigation on the media behavior of air-traffic controllers, a profession known for pronounced daily variation in stress levels. The air-traffic controllers were observed in their homes after normal and highly stressful days at work. Acutely stressed controllers invariably attempted to watch television in order to calm down. When family circumstances allowed such diversionary stimulation, family life proceeded in a comparatively tranquil fashion. When circumstances prevented this relaxation, friction with family members tended to escalate to aggravated conflict, often with destructive results.

Nonexperimental research conducted with the experience sampling method (Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) further substantiates the stress-reducing capability of extended television consumption. In predetermined random intervals during waking hours, large numbers of research participants were contacted by beeper and instructed to record their activities and moods at these times. The findings show that television viewing, across all contents, is primarily a relaxing experience called on when relaxation is in demand. Extended television viewing was invariably preceded by particularly bad moods. When bad moods were more moderate, viewing was less extensive. In this analysis, loneliness emerged as a salient mediator of bad mood. Television viewing thus seems to serve the dual function of providing relaxation and substituting for social interaction. Additional comparisons of elements of mood before and after television viewing corroborate its agitation-diminishing and calming effect, but they fail to give evidence of affect enhancement in terms of increased happiness, cheerfulness, friendliness, and sociability.

All this is to say that a considerable amount of evidence indicates that media offerings are indeed used to manage moods in predictable ways. It also is to say that such mood management is not merely a matter of fostering potentially trivial amusements, amazements, pleasant titillations, and cheap thrills, but that the management of moods can have significant social consequences and even health benefits.

Nonconscious Choices

At times, people are fully aware of seeking mood improvements by selecting particular media environments. At other times, however, they are not cognizant of what it is that guides their selections. This point is compellingly made by research on women's media preferences during the menstrual cycle. It has been shown that women, several days prior to the onset of menstruation as well as during menstruation, are more partial to comedy than at other times throughout the cycle (Meadowcroft and Zillmann, 1987). All indications are that women are unaware of these changes in their entertainment preference. They are similarly unaware of their greater attraction to drama at midcycle. It appears that when hormonal fluctuations place women into a diffuse bad mood, they are intuitively drawn to those entertainments that hold the greatest promise for effective mood repair—that is, for cheering them up, if only for a limited period of time.

A similar relationship between hormonal variation, bad moods, and women's nonconscious preference for light-hearted entertainments has also been observed in connection with pregnancy, with comedy preference being especially pronounced during the so-called postpartum-blues period after delivery (Helregel and Weaver, 1989).

Utilities of Bad-Mood Perpetuation

The evidence concerning mood management through communication choices is not entirely supportive of mood-management theory, however. Nor should this theory be construed as an all-encompassing theory. Findings that are difficult to reconcile with the theory have been reported, and exception-accommodating expansions of the theory have been suggested (Zillmann, 2000). There seem to exist a number of conditions under which people deliberately seek to retain their moods. Retaining good moods does not pose a problem, as the motivation to do so is part of management theory. The perpetuation of bad moods, however, and with it the avoidance of good moods, can be considered to challenge the hedonistic premise of the theory.

Gerrod Parrott (1993) examined the motives for seemingly counterhedonistic behaviors and provided a listing of idiosyncratic pursuits of this kind. He focused on dispositions such as character building and the striving for spiritual betterment. Considering mood management through communication choices, these dispositions certainly can, on occasion, inspire people to forego pleasant stimulation in the interest of retaining their somber moods. However, retaining these moods has its rewards, too, as those who manage to resist the temptation of easy pleasures, entertainment pleasures in particular, can celebrate their accomplishments, thereby gaining access to pleasures they deem superior. Behaviors of this kind, then, are counterhedonistic only if their ultimate end is ignored.

Parrott further enumerated conditions under which bad moods are retained and good moods avoided in a shorter, more mood-specific time frame. Two sets of conditions apply to media choices most directly: (1) people can feel bad about feeling good, when feeling good is situationally inappropriate and (2) people can try to prevent worse moods. Bad moods may thus be tolerated for some time because avoiding them would have punitive consequences. Considered in context, the behavior is again not counterhedonistic. Not knowing the context greatly complicates the prediction of media choices in bad-mood situations, however.

Emotional Utility

The cliché of such a situation is the apparent appeal of love songs whose lyrics bemoan abandonment by a lover to those who suffered a similar abandonment. In agreement with this cliché, it was found that people who had lost their lover declared a preference for sad love music over happy love music (Gibson, Aust, and Zillmann, 2000). In contrast, people who had just experienced romantic success declared the opposite preference. People in acute distress over their loss of love, then, appear to find solace in symbolically commiserating with others. Additionally, hearing about the romantic triumph of others in happy love music seems offensive to them, and avoiding such pleasure music is obviously in the interest of minimizing bad moods.

It can have similar emotional utility to retain a negative mood state if it helps maintain the motivation for mood-resolving actions. People may seek to retain anger, for example, in order to resolve a situation that, if left unresolved, is likely to manifest itself in an extended period of distressing moods. Edgar O'Neal and Levi Taylor (1989) conducted an investigation that demonstrates such emotion maintenance by entertainment choices. Specifically, it was observed that acutely angry men took an exceptionally strong interest in programs that featured hostility and violence, but only if they believed they would have the opportunity to retaliate soon against the person who instigated their anger. In contrast, equally angry men who believed they would never get the opportunity to retaliate showed comparatively little interest in violence-laden drama. They exhibited increased appetite for mood-improving comedy, instead. For those who expected the chance to retaliate, the choice of violent contents apparently prolonged the related adverse experience of anger in the interest of future (retaliatory) behavior believed to be of superior hedonic quality. Temporarily perpetuating a bad mood thus can have emotional utility without challenging the principle of hedonism.

Informational Utility

The limitations of mood management by communication choices are more directly apparent in the selection of nonfictional materials. Exposure to the news and educational material tends to be motivated by curiosity and informational needs whose satisfaction has little, if anything, to do with hedonism. Such messages have informational utility that is essentially independent of gratification in affective terms. Revelations in the news may be elating or depressing. If they are distressing, or if recipients anticipate distress reactions, exposure to the news may nonetheless be accepted, if not actively sought. On occasion, however, even news reports are bypassed in order to prevent bad moods or their exacerbation. This seems especially likely when distressing news revelations are of little consequence for the recipients. The only available investigation on that subject shows that during bad moods, women tend to avoid bad news (Biswas, Riffe, and Zillmann, 1994). Men, however, tend to seek exposure despite the prospect of worsening moods.

Regarding educational material, Marie-Louise Mares and Joanne Cantor (1992) observed that informational utility can readily overpower hedonistic selection motives. These investigators assessed the degree of loneliness experienced by elderly people and then had them evaluate the desirability of viewing various hedonically positive or negative programs. The programs were introduced as documentaries focusing on elderly people. Some were said to feature unhappy, lonely people; others were said to feature happy, successful people. The lonely elderly viewers indicated a preference for seeing programs that featured unhappy people. More contented elderly viewers indicated a preference for seeing programs that featured happy people. The fact that the programs that dealt with the problems that lonely elderly people face were selected by lonely elderly people would seem to suggest that these people hoped to learn from the documentaries how best to cope with the indicated problems. The programs did not have such informational utility for the comparatively contented elderly, who consequently could turn to material with greater propensity for mood enhancement.

Scope and Limitations of Mood Management

Hedonism, the driving force of mood management, defines only one motive in a set of motives that influence the public's selection of media content. Such content may have utilities that are relatively independent of hedonistic considerations. These extrahedonistic motives tend to exert their influence in concert with the hedonistic force. In fact, this confounding in the operation of selection motives can be considered the rule rather than the exception. Domains of dominant influence of competing motives can be specified, however.

Hedonism must be regarded as the dominant choice determinant for entertaining media content, with informational utility being a secondary factor in this domain. The primary object of entertainment choices is, after all, the repair of undesirable moods along with the attainment and enhancement of desirable ones. Mood management may thus be considered as the central model for choices in the realm of media entertainment. Informational utility, in contrast, must be regarded as the dominant choice determinant for informational and educational media content, with hedonism being a secondary factor in these domains. News and education thus define domains of media content in which the application of mood-management considerations may be of limited value.

See also:Arousal Processes and Media Effects; Gender and the Media; News Effects.

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Dolf Zillmann