When does disgrace matter? Injunctive norms explain the avoidance of entertainment starring a socially accused actor

ABSTRACT

This study explored how social pressures surrounding film viewing might reduce audiences’ intentions to watch highly-rated entertainment content. Using an experimental design that varied critics’ ratings of the film (positive/negative) and norm-based social sanctions (explicit/implicit/no sanction) for watching a film, participants indicated their intention to watch and anticipated enjoyment of the film. The results show that film quality was a stronger predictor of behavioral intention and anticipated enjoyment than norm-based sanctions, but norms reduced participants’ anticipated enjoyment of low-rated films. The results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Injunctive norms
• social norms
• media avoidance
• media selection
• socially accused figures

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors have no known conflict of interest to disclose. Supplementary materials available via Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://bit.ly/2pkrE1j

Notes

1. Actor condition was combined for analysis.

2. These covariates were not included in the analyses because they limited the degrees of freedom in the model and all were measured after experimental inductions, meaning they could be influenced by our manipulations. Descriptive statistics of these measures are reported in OSF.

3. A graph of the interaction (Supplemental Figure) is posted under “Additional Analyses Folder” on OSF.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sunyoung Park

Sunyoung Park (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Assistant Professor at California State University Long Beach. Her research largely focuses on the mechanisms of effects of social norms in the context of health communication.

Kevin Kryston

Kevin Kryston (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University. His research focuses on entertainment media psychology, particularly how content features and social cues are processed in a media context and their interactive impact on enjoyment, selection, and other effects on audiences.

Allison Eden

Allison Eden (Ph.D. Michigan State University) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication. Her work centers on understanding media enjoyment, particularly the role enjoyment plays in attention to and selection of media content, and more broadly the effects of entertainment on user behavior and wellbeing.