Feeling transcendent? Measuring psychophysiological responses to self-transcendent media content

ABSTRACT

Self-transcendent media experiences are thought to involve cognitive engagement and mixed affect, leading to psychological well-being. The current study investigated whether these characteristics were reflected in viewers’ psychophysiological responses and sharing intentions. Multilevel model analyses revealed that viewers (n = 57) allocated more cognitive resources to encoding (heart rate), experienced greater physiological arousal (skin conductance level), and less positive but greater negative affect (facial electromyography), and were more motivated to share content (prosociality) when exposed to self-transcendent videos relative to humorous videos. Moreover, specific self-transcendent portrayals (appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, and hope) elicited greater cognitive effort and mixed affect relative to the average response of these videos. In line with emotional flow, cognitive resources increased after the transformational scene in each self-transcendent video, which was accompanied by a negative-to-positive emotional trajectory shift wherein negative emotion remained statistically the same but positive emotion increased. The current study provides initial evidence for theoretical development into the ways that self-transcendent content and narrative structure influence cognitive and affective responses and prosocial intentions.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the following colleagues who assisted with data collection and extraction: Joshua Hendrickse, Jonmichael Seibert, Rachel Secharan, and Madison Wilde. Also, this project was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (Grant # 58826). The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. An a priori power analysis was conducted to determine the necessary sample size considering the design and physiological dependent variables. The analysis yielded N = 56 with f = .15 (Potter & Bolls, 2012), power = .8, and five measurements.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation [55826].