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Abstract
Many media entertainment products address the fragility of life by portraying the severe illness or death of the protagonist. According to terror management theory, people need to create meaning in their lives when they are reminded of their own mortality, for instance, by engaging in close relationships with others. Meaningful films may provide recipients with an anxiety buffer that helps them to cope with existential fear. The results of an experimental study (N = 130) demonstrated that participants who had been reminded of their mortality appreciated a meaningful movie more and liked the protagonist better when he survived than when he died. Further, participants who viewed the movie in which the protagonist survived did not activate their self-esteem-based anxiety buffer. The results point toward the potential of entertainment to provide internal anxiety buffers and thereby help in coping with self-threatening situations. The findings are discussed in terms of the connections between meaningful media entertainment, coping mechanisms, and viewers’ terror management.
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Notes on contributors
Diana Rieger
Diana Rieger (Ph.D., University of Cologne, 2013) is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at the University of Mannheim. Her research interests include the processes and effects of mobile, interactive and non-interactive entertainment media, in particular when dealing with self-threatening states. She further investigates the effects of extremist propaganda and the effectiveness of counter messages.
Matthias Hofer
Matthias Hofer (Ph.D., University of Zürich, 2013) is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research, Media Psychology & Effects at the University of Zürich. His research interests include media audiences and effects, entertainment and emotion research, media and psychophysiology and research on social capital.