Researching the Malleability Narrative on Professional Ideals: The Role of Internal Attribution in the Relations Between Media and Adolescents’ Well-Being

ABSTRACT

Research has rarely looked into links between adolescents’ media use, internal attribution of professional success, and well-being. The current study among 940 late adolescents (M = 17.21 years old, SD = .94; 60.9% girls) found that exposure to malleable professional ideals in traditional as well as social media was positively related to internal attribution of professional success, which was in turn positively related to professional performance pressure but negatively related to depressive feelings. Also direct positive relations between traditional and social media and performance pressure were found. These are the first empirical results supporting the malleability framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional ideals
• internal attribution
• responsibility
• performance pressure
• depressive feelings

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1. More information about the project can be obtained by sending an e-mail to the first author.

2. An e-mail can be send to the first author for more information about these construct validity analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).

Notes on contributors

Orpha de Lenne

Orpha de Lenne (PhD, KU Leuven) works at the School for Mass Communication Research of KU Leuven. Her main research focuses on the effects of non-idealized models in media content on advertising and body image outcomes.

Steven Eggermont

Steven Eggermont (PhD, KU Leuven) is a full professor in media effects at the School for Mass Communication Research of KU Leuven. His work has been recognized with several international awards and draws from literature in communication science, developmental psychology, and social and health behavior sciences. He has published widely on children’s and adolescents’ media use, the effects of sexual media content, and media effects on health behaviors.

Laura Vandenbosch

Laura Vandenbosch (PhD, KU Leuven) is an assistant professor at the School for Mass Communication Research of KU Leuven (BOF-ZAP research professorship grant). The relationship between media and wellbeing is the core subject of her research, leading to international publications in different fields including developmental psychology, sexology, body image, and communication theory. She is involved in several international research projects aimed to study how media affect well-being by focusing on understudied factors such as the role of cultural background, sexualization, media literacy, and malleability beliefs (for the latter she received an ERC starting grant).