media psychology essay

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What Is Media Psychology?

Cynthia Vinney, PhD is an expert in media psychology and a published scholar whose work has been published in peer-reviewed psychology journals.

Rachel Goldman, PhD FTOS, is a licensed psychologist, clinical assistant professor, speaker, wellness expert specializing in eating behaviors, stress management, and health behavior change.

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• Media Psychology Topics
• Research and Practice

The Future of Media Psychology

Media psychology is a newer branch of psychology that examines the ways people are impacted by media and technology.

Our lives are constantly saturated with media and technology and, as a result, studying the impact of media has become an integral part of psychology. However, the field's interdisciplinary nature and the constant changes in how people interact with media make the area of study difficult to define.

Media psychology draws heavily from psychology and communication scholarship, but also incorporates research from other fields, including sociology, media studies, anthropology, and fan studies. The field is scattered across many disciplines with many scholars who do not consider psychology their primary area of interest of research to be media's influence on individuals, rather a subtopic within a larger subject of expertise.

Perhaps the definition that best captures the depth and breadth of the field is offered by Karen Dill in The Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology : "Media psychology is the scientific study of human behavior, thoughts, and feelings experienced in the context of media use and creation."

In other words, media psychology is the effort to understand the constantly evolving connection between humans and media from a psychological perspective.

History of Media Psychology

The roots of media psychology can be traced back over a century to early studies on the perception of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional canvas.

These ideas were applied in social psychologist Hugo Munsterberg's 1916 book, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study , which was the first work to empirically explore how an audience responded to film. By the time television became widespread in the 1950s, psychologists had started to investigate how media affects children.

However, media psychology wasn't recognized as an official field in the discipline of psychology until 1986 when Division 46: Media Psychology was established by the American Psychological Association (APA). Initially, the division focused on psychologists who appeared in media as expert sources, an objective that is still listed as part of its mission. But Division 46, which has since changed its name to the Society for Media Psychology and Technology, has now shifted its focus to research on the effects and influence of media.

In 2003 the first, and so far, only APA-accredited media psychology Ph.D. program in the United States was launched at Fielding Graduate University. David Giles published the first survey of the field with his text Media Psychology .

Since then, the field has continued to expand, with the emergence of several scholarly journals specifically dedicated to media psychology, the publication of additional books covering the area of study, and an increase in universities, including Stanford, Cornell, and Penn State, which dedicate an area of study and research to media psychology-related topics.

Topics in Media Psychology

There are myriad topics media psychology seeks to explore. These include, but are not limited to:

• Media influence, such as whether exposure to media depictions of violence increases aggression , how depictions of gender roles in media influence children's understanding of their own gender identity, and how media messages can be constructed to persuade someone to donate to charity or behave in other prosocial ways .
• Online learning , such as the way in-person lessons must be adjusted so they can most effectively be communicated to students online across different age groups, and the most effective ways to set up online learning platforms to sustain student attention and uphold information absorption.
• Impact of social media , such as how platforms can be adjusted to create a more comprehensive picture of the world rather than silos of like-minded individuals social media currently encourages, how relationships are impacted when they're conducted mostly or solely over social media , and how to decrease cyberbullying and other negative online behaviors.
• Audience involvement , such as why we laugh and cry at movies , TV shows, and podcasts, how stories influence our sense of self-esteem , and how and why popular culture fans come together to form supportive communities.

Media Psychology in Research and Practice

While many branches of psychology have more defined career paths , media psychology does not because it is a new area of study still in the process of determining its scope and purview. The most obvious goal for someone who wants to investigate the psychological impact of media is to become a research psychologist in academia.

Given the rapid growth of technology influencing how we get to know, communicate with, and understand one another, scholars who can perform media psychology research are increasingly necessary.

However, scholarly research is not the only path for people with an interest in media psychology. The ever-expanding world of media technologies leaves many opportunities to apply media psychology in a wide variety of industry settings, from entertainment to education to politics.

For example, people who design user experiences for everything from commercial websites to virtual reality require an understanding of how to create a user interface that is intuitive and engaging for people.

Similarly, it's increasingly important to teach children lessons in media and cyberliteracy starting from a young age. Media psychologists are especially well qualified to design and implement programs addressing this.

While early media psychology research almost exclusively focused on the negative impacts of media, media and technology aren't all good or all bad. It's how we use them that matters. And, because media is only becoming increasingly ubiquitous, we must learn to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives.

Media psychologists have an essential role to play in these developments and, while they shouldn't shy away from shedding light on the negative impacts of media as it continues to evolve, they should also increase their focus on the way media can be used to increase well-being and prosocial outcomes.

Dill, KE. Introduction . In: Dill KE, ed.  The Oxford Handbook Of Media Psychology . 1st ed. Oxford University Press; 2012.

Brown Rutledge P. Arguing for Media Psychology as a Distinct Field . In: Dill KE, ed.  The Oxford Handbook Of Media Psychology . 1st ed. Oxford University Press; 2012.

Tuma RM. Media Psychology and Its History . In: Dill KE, ed.  The Oxford Handbook Of Media Psychology . 1st ed. Oxford University Press; 2012.

Fischoff S. Media Psychology: A Personal Essay in Definition and Purview .  J Media Psychol . 2005;10(1):1-21.

Stever GS. Media and Media Psychology. In: Stever GS, Giles DC, Cohen JD, Myers ME.  Understanding Media Psychology . 1st ed. New York: Routledge; 2021:1-13.

By Cynthia Vinney, PhD Cynthia Vinney, PhD is an expert in media psychology and a published scholar whose work has been published in peer-reviewed psychology journals.

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What is media psychology.

Media psychology focuses on the psychology behind media and technology use and impact. Read more about the evolving definition of media psychology

Defining and Describing Media Psychology  by Bernard Luskin, PhD

Media Psychology: A Personal Essay in Definition and Purview  (PDF, 72KB) by Stuart Fischoff, PhD

What is Media Psychology? And Why You Should Care  (PDF, 80KB) by Pamela Rutledge, PhD, MBA

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What Does a Media Psychologist Do?

Media psychologists can be communicators, researchers, mental health providers, consultants, educators or developers. Media psychology is applicable to a wide variety of industries and occupations that involve the use or development of mediated communications and information technologies.

Media psychology includes research and applications dealing with all forms of media technologies: traditional and mass media, such as radio, television, film, video, newsprint, magazines, music, and art as well as new and emerging technologies and applications, such as social media, mobile media, interface design, educational technologies, interactive media technologies, and augmented, virtual and blended environments.

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Media Psychology is an emerging field with the excitement and burden of defining the path.

How do we define media psychology?  While it is, at its root, the application of psychological science to human interaction with media and technology, that doesn’t tell us much. It’s a broad field that has no clearly-defined career paths, and no easy answers in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. Yet it adds value anywhere human behavior intersects media technologies. In a simplistic way, here’s why:

• Media technologies are everywhere
• People of all ages use media technologies a lot
• Young people use them most
• Older people worry about younger people
• Technology is not going away
• We all worry if this is good or bad and what we can do about it.
• Psychology is the study of people of all ages

Psychology is the Key

Psychology is key to understanding the implications of technology.   Consequently, it seems like it should be pretty straightforward to define media psychology. For some reason, though, it’s not. I have had discussions with colleagues for hours (or at least it seems like it) about what constitutes media, mediated communication, and technology and what we mean by psychology in the context of media—and we’re not even philosophers. In this and the following two posts, I will discuss my definition of media psychology and why I think media psychology is so important.

Both media and psychology have made major contributions to western culture throughout the 20th century. Can you imagine The New Yorker without Freudian references or Jason Bourne without operant conditioning? The term “media,” however, used to be confinable to a bucket labeled “mass media.” Our awareness of media, however, has reached the collective consciousness, as if we all woke up yesterday, awakened by our programmable alarm with the iPod attachment, and over our coffee made automatically by our coffeemaker, checked our blackberry for emails and headline news and then looked up shocked to see that our kids are doing much the same. This awareness is leaving people clamoring for a new level of understanding. There is an infiltration of media applications and information technologies into nearly every aspect of our lives. What does it all MEAN? Just like Mighty Mouse (or maybe Underdog), media psychology emerged in a time of need.

The goal of media psychologists is to try to answer those questions by combining an understanding of human behavior, cognition, and emotions with an equal understanding of media technologies. Unlike some types of media studies, media psychology is not just concerned with content. Media psychology looks at the whole system. There is no beginning and no end. It is a continual loop including the technology developer, content producer, content perceptions, and user response. Just as Bandera describes social cognitive theory as the reciprocal action between environment, behavior, and cognition, so does media psychology evaluate the interactive process of the system. There is no chicken, no egg to this system. They all coexist and coevolve with each other.

There is no consensus among academicians and practitioners as to the scope of media psychology. This is because the field must be representative of not only the work currently being done but also the work that needs to be done. This is a field that changes every time iTunes releases a new mobile app or a new social media platform appears.

The interests of the person doing the defining often drive definitions of a field. However, the fact that both ‘media’ and ‘psychology’ are themselves broad and prone to misconception contributes to the definitional confusion. In spite of our awareness of media everywhere, when someone mentions media the metaphor we fall back on is often mass media. It’s a field where you must continually define your terms. Does ‘media’ mean television or does ‘media’ include computer interfaces that facilitate information management and distribution?

The same heuristics impact the popular perception of the field of psychology. There is a wide world of psychology beyond the narrow view of clinical applications that evoke images of Freud and talk therapy. So it wasn’t surprising in the early days of the field, when media psychology was perceived as a psychologist appearing in the media, such as the radio shrink for many years Dr. Toni Grant or the infamous Dr. Phil. This view of media psychology also has links to the origins of the first division (46) for Media Psychology of the American Psychological Association (APA). Due to the prevalence of mass media relative to other media technologies, it was home to several psychologists with media platforms or who regularly appeared in the media as experts. The initial emphasis in Division 46 was on training psychologists to effectively appear in the media, how to deliver psychological information over the media, the ethical limitations of doing therapy using media, and as a watchdog for the accurate portrayal of psychologists in the media far outweighed the emphasis on research looking at media use and development.

Those early perceptions have evolved as technology use has become more ubiquitous. From social media and mobile apps to big data, there is an increasing awareness of the importance of understanding how media impacts society and how society, in turn, impact media and technology use and development. Reflecting this shift, the APA Division 46 has taken a new name and is now the  Society for Media Psychology & Technology .

There is a significant cross-disciplinary aspect of media psychology. Not all people working in media psychology are psychologists. In fact, much of the early work came from marketing and advertising and the bulk of the research in media psychology has been published in academic and applied disciplines beyond psychology, such as sociology, communications, anthropology, media studies, education, computer, and information sciences, as well as business management and marketing. What has often been challenging is the lack of intellectual cross-pollination. Media psychology seeks to address that by bringing together all these approaches and vocabularies with the recognition that communication, cognition, and emotions are fundamental to human experience and therefore have, by definition, foundations in psychological thought.

Why We Need Media Psychology

We need media psychology because media technologies are proliferating at the speed of light with new toys and gadgets on the market every day. These technologies are introducing capabilities that are redefining the way we work, play, and communicate. As I see it, a media psychologist can add value in five ways:

• Helping people adjust to the rapid pace of technological progress
• Holding authors and journalists accountable to professional standards when new research reports make headlines by actually reading the ports
• Explain the difference between correlation and causality
• Remind everyone that the experience of media technologies varies by person, culture, context, and what you are trying to achieve
• Helping people understand that the sky is not falling

The rapid introduction of technology is unsettling and has triggered a spectrum of reactions, from enthusiasm to distrust. We all come to grips in our own ways with change. As technology changes our lives, we are forced to change how we view the world. Human beings are not really very good at that.

Media psychology is the response to this dilemma. It is a relatively new field and hard to define. [See “Media Psychology: Why You Should Care (Part 1).”] Media psychology seeks to understand the interaction among individuals, groups, society, and technology and make sense out of it so we can make decisions and go about our lives in the most positive and productive way possible.

Media psychology only recently become an “official” academic discipline. Yet, the last 50 years have produced valuable and interesting work in media psychology-related research and study, much of it from outside of psychology. Our collective anxiety over the impact of media on individuals and society, such as the portrayals of violence, consumer manipulation, or information overload has fueled a good bit of the research. In contrast, relatively speaking, very little research exists on the positive uses of technologies. My grandmother used to say “you find what you’re looking for.”

Fear of change is a normal human reaction. As far back as Ancient Greece, Socrates feared that writing relied on external things and neglecting the mind and that it lacked flexibility, the written word being literally “cast in stone.” Kenyon College’s President, S. Georgia Nugent (2005) draws an apt analogy from a narrative pattern: “Kill the bearer of the message” saying that the earliest references to the ‘technology’ that enabled writing in the Western tradition are of profound distrust. Where Socrates worried about fixity, we worry about the fluidity of electronic media and the fuzzy boundaries between author and reader, consistent with St. Augustine’s reflections that language links our interior with our exterior creating permeable boundaries between self and body. Nugent notes that those who do not understand new technology often want to control the “facile exchange between the inside and the outside made possible by this particular information technology.” She says:

“Confronted with a new technology for communication, we find, in both Homer and Plato, the fear that it will introduce dangerous secrecy, an undesirable development of privacy. Today, we worry that IT will usher in an untoward openness of communication, a lack of the privacy we have come to value.” (Nugent, 2005, para. 23)

From a biological perspective, we know that human brains are hardwired to notice change because a change in the environment increases the probability of danger. On the Savannah, it was important to notice things that moved: tigers moved and were dangerous and trees were immobile and harmless. Nothing was more important to survival, yet nothing has such potential to cause problems today. Our resistance to change is a function of how we project our cost/benefit analysis, yet old habits die hard.

Equilibrium doesn’t really exist, except in our fifth-grade science textbooks. But we like to think it does because it makes us so much more comfortable. We like everything to stay put, like the trees. The human reaction to change–resistance–is normal. Humans also have the added gift of selective memory to help maintain cognitive comfort. We pine for the “good old days” and use memories of prior times as a baseline model for how things should work and how the world should be.

Media psychology bridges this gap by helping us better understand some of the implications of technological change. Researchers hypothesize, operationalize, and quantify the impact of media. Research in media psychology, however, is difficult; complicated by the fact that it’s hard to realistically measure things that are so integrated in the fabric of everyday life. It’s extraordinarily tricky to separate out confounding variables in our complex world. Today, we are media consumers, producers and distributors and our choices have direct impact on what others produce for us to see.

Most of the research that we would consider to be media psychology focuses on mass media and for good reason. Mass media was a game-changer, bringing information, images, and culture to a broader segment of society and the world. Researchers looked to understand what was perceived as a unidirectional flow of influence from media conglomerates, advertisers, and government bodies on the public. This media effects tradition has produced various theories—such as, the silver bullet (targeted impact), media framing (we don’t tell people what to think, we tell them what to think about), and uses and gratifications (people use media to gratify needs)–and they have evolved from viewing media consumers as a homogeneous and passive audience to one driven by individual differences and motivations.

In spite of arguments for reciprocity between individuals and our cultural environment (e.g. Baudrillard, Freud, McLuhan, and Vygotsky), few psychological or media theories actually focus on media as part of a dynamic interactive system including media content providers to media consumers, co-evolving in a social environment. Bandura’s model of social cognitive theory does this, but his earlier work on social learning is much more common as the theoretical framework for media effects research.

Recent work in neurobiology and evolutionary psychology has begun to shed light on the impact of social interaction on the formation of internal structures. We are beginning to identify variations in human brain plasticity in response to the environment and variations in cognitive processing over the lifespan to achieve psychological consonance. Birth to early adulthood is a period of high plasticity in terms of brain maturation and is subject to shaping by the environment. Once past early adulthood, change in the human brain derives from cognitive intervention–which is, as we all know, a lot more difficult. Thus, from adulthood onward, humans find it “easier” to alter the environment to suit their cognitive structures than the other way around. Human alterations include physical structures, laws, codes of behavior, language and the arts. Every generation will make their mark on the environment to support their mental models and with the vast changes in technologies and media today, this goes a long way toward describing the discrepancy in the attitudes toward media use between generations. This is a biological description of Marc Prensky’s (2001) excellent metaphor of the young as “digital natives” versus older generations of “digital immigrants.”

Because the media survives only by arresting and holding the attendance of the audience, they deliver technology and content that viewers want. We must recognize the evolving media environment. Part of the job of media psychologists will be to take up the challenge of training the next generation to engage positively and productively with media; part will be easing the fears of the digital immigrants about the new media world.

We also need to place the study of psychological processes within the context of mediated communications and recognize the dynamic role of these processes in interpersonal relations, social interaction and social structures. We need to acknowledge the reciprocal relationship between individuals and media, in other words, to own our own responsibility for what circulates in the system.

As if that weren’t enough of a moving target, we need to keep this all in context. Individual experience is, well, individual, and depends on a number of factors. Goals are equally individual and not always “rational” by someone else’s standard. For example, there have been recent articles about media technologies altering brain activity, particularly as it impacts attention. But before we feel compelled to draw conclusions about something being good or bad, we need to ask questions beyond “is it different.” We need to ask what thinking skills people need to succeed in the world today and tomorrow, not in times past. Whether or not you pine for the good old days, time has the inconvenient habit of going forward—technology isn’t going away.

What is a Media Psychologist?

There are several misconceptions about what it means to be a media psychologist. Since it is probably easier to say what a media psychologist is not than to define what it is, let me start there.

Media psychology is NOT:

• A clinical degree
• Media studies
• Appearing on TV, having a radio show, or being in a movie
• Running the AV department for your organization
• Watching TV for a living
• Hanging out with movie stars

The key to media psychology is this: you have to learn psychology AND technology. If you want to “practice” media psychology, you need to know how media technologies work–how they are developed, produced, and consumed. And you have to know psychology so you can actually apply it to issues of usability, effectiveness, and impact. It may not seem very encouraging to hear, especially from someone who is passionate about media psychology, but if you are searching for a profession with a clear career path, predictable income estimations, and logical next steps, this is not a field for you.

As I discussed in earlier posts, (Media Psychology: Why You Should Care Part 1 and Part 2–and yes, Part 3 is the last one in case you were worried), I view media psychology as the intersection of human experience and media. In other words, media psychology is the applied study of what happens when people interact with media as producers, distributors, and consumers through the lens of psychology.

I realize that definition is like waving your arms around the room and is no help at all. It makes media psychology very, very broad. Not surprisingly, the applications are also broad and equally ill-defined. The good news is that makes the potential is limitless because media psychology adds values to any place that an understanding of human behavior can be applied to media technologies.

I get lots of questions from recent college graduates about how to pursue a career in media psychology. I am always appreciative of their enthusiasm, honored to represent the field, and pleased to share my views and words of encouragement.

Media psychology is very exciting and has tremendous potential. This is the beginning of the field so the early entrants have the excitement and burden of defining the path. This is part of what I love about media psychology. There are no easy answers. It is not an “ivory tower” field. It requires a good knowledge base and draws across multiple disciplines because media technologies are not isolated or compartmentalized. It also requires the ability to think critically and have a certain amount of cognitive flexibility since the technologies (and thus the field) change constantly.

Media psychology is also considerably more complex than focusing on media as a reflection of culture because it encompasses the integration of media technologies into life in a myriad of ways. People are now interacting with media in multiple ways across multiple platforms as producers, consumers, and distributors of information of all kinds: visual images, sound, video, text, and color both synchronously and asynchronously.

My advice to recent psych grads is to get some media technology experience so that they can apply psychology to that knowledge base. If you don’t understand the technology, it doesn’t matter how well you know psychology. This could mean anything from virtual environments like gaming, business and marketing communications, or community development in social media, to translating educational materials for technology. This can be done by working in the field in an area of interest, or finding a program in a university that has courses in both psychology and media communications and production (and not just mass media.) Areas in psychology that I think are particularly important to media psychology are cognitive psychology (how we process information, make mental models, attention, perception), developmental psychology (different stages of emotional, cognitive, and physical development across the lifespan), cultural psychology (an appreciation of how different people and cultures have different standards and goals and how that is part of the cognitive process), and positive psychology (what makes people function better both behaviorally and emotionally).

As I mentioned above, being a media psychologist is not being a psychologist in the media or promoting psychology in the media.

Media psychology is not a clinical degree. A degree in media psychology will not qualify you for the psychological treatment of patients in a mental health capacity. Not only will you not have the preparations, but there are serious ethical and legal consequences if you offer mental health treatment without adequate training and licensing.

If someone is interested in working with people in a mental health treatment capacity, then the logical next step is a clinical psychology program–even if he or she wants to use media technologies within that practice. First, become a clinician and then learn how to translate that to technology.  Nothing is worse than bad psychology in volume.  As most people know, working with clients as a mental health professional requires specific training, supervised practice, an internship, and has licensing requirements. In the US, these requirements vary depending on the type of work/title/training (e.g. a counselor, therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist). Each title has very specific requirements defined by the governing body where you want to practice and the type of practice it entails. (The rules differ from place to place; even state to state, in the US, so it’s important to check for the specifics in the place you want to work.)

Being a research psychologist is somewhat different in terms of official requirements. An important component of studying psychology is learning how to do research and understand research results. (Yes, the dreaded statistics and research methodology courses.) Licensing requirements do not apply to research, however most lead researchers have graduate degrees at the doctoral level. There are also are ethical requirements when you are dealing with human subjects and therefore research done at institutions is reviewed by an Internal Review Board to make sure subjects’ rights and well-being are not violated by the research design.

To me, media psychology is about understanding the interaction of people and media technologies in the context of the current culture. Media technologies function as a system, with a continual feedback loop between users and the producers, and thus mutually influential. As much as we’d like to blame “the media” for a bunch of stuff, it is not separable from society. Human experience does not happen independently of the current social, political, and technological environment.

Media technologies are ubiquitous, with potential roles in everything from education, healthcare, science, business, advocacy, and public policy to entertainment. I have been involved in interesting research assessing website design for pre-schoolers, games that promoted altruistic behavior, developing educational initiatives that use emerging technologies like virtual worlds and augmented reality to create immersive learning environments, how technology literacy influences identity development, and how our mental models influence our interpretation of information. I also get to see media psychology in action by teaching online.

Recognizing the interactive and dynamic relationship between humans and media is key to a more accurate and useful understanding of the human-media experience that is at the root of effective assessment, development, and production of media that can make a positive contribution to life and society. Psychology provides a robust set of tools that allow us to consider the implications of individual differences, group behaviors, identity formation, developmental pathways, cognitive styles, visual processing, persuasion, attention, social cognition, sense of place, self-efficacy, and a whole bunch of other really cool stuff.

The tools of media psychology can only help us, though, if we are also willing, as individuals, to take responsibility for our part in the system. It is the only way we can develop better technologies and use them well.

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Pamela Rutledge Email: [email protected]

Major Theories and Constructs in Media Psychology

• First Online: 30 April 2024

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Media psychology sits within the broader discipline of psychology. While media psychology topics often overlap with other media-related disciplines, its theoretical foundation in psychological science sets it apart. Media psychology draws on psychology’s rich history of theories and research practices tailored to study human behavior, cognition, and emotions and applies them to mediated experience. Theories used in media psychology reflect explanations for the relationship between media experiences and cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. While no list is complete, this chapter describes some of media psychology’s most commonly used theories and related constructs.

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Rutledge, P. (2024). Major Theories and Constructs in Media Psychology. In: Rich, G.J., Kumar, V.K., Farley, F.H. (eds) Handbook of Media Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56537-3_2

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Fundamental Theories in Media Psychology

Psychology changes behavior when applied to pictures, graphics, and sound..

Posted April 19, 2021 | Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano

• Fundamental theories in psychology form the essential foundation of media psychology as a specialty.
• Media effects have transcended geographic boundaries and are increasingly expanding worldwide and into space.
• There are new career opportunities for scholar-practitioners in commerce, entertainment, public affairs, marketing, PR, and education.
• Colleges and universities have a window of opportunity for launching new programs and courses in media psychology.

Media Psychology is an important and growing specialty in psychology. Fundamental theories in general psychology are essential in forming the necessary foundation for the professional practice of media psychology.

Theories in psychology, adapted and applied to pictures, graphics, and sound through technology influence perception and thereby affect behavior. Each theory is complex, requires in-depth study, and is an important area for continuous research. Some argue that artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), cobotics, social media , telemedicine , public policy, public relations, advertising , marketing, and influences in media communications comprise a cultural game changing effect in our culture as they converge through media psychology and technology.

Depth in understanding of fundamental theories in general psychology, applied to media achieves the most effective outcomes. My view is that too many media psychology research, practitioner, and teaching faculty narrowly focus on one specialty or another because of personal interest. Unique specialties are obviously important. However, emphasis on foundational theories in psychology, applied to media through technology, is essential for full understanding, in the same way that these same theories need to be studied and applied in clinical psychology.

Comprehensive understanding of the following 12 theories is essential when applying psychology in media and technology in shaping cultural rituals, pastimes, and social behaviors.

Effective application of media psychology requires comprehensive understanding of:

Attention. “Pay attention” has valuable meaning requiring focus and concentration . The study of attention is extensive and vital.

Addiction . The uncontrollable negative or positive urge to do something that is difficult to manage or stop can be an outcome of media influence on behavior.

Emotion . Understanding state of mind and feelings deriving from one’s circumstances, mood or relationship is necessary to understand or manage anger , fear , loneliness , and jealously.

Empathy. Understanding and sharing the feelings of others.

Persuasion . The ability to influence individuals by argument, entreaty, or example is a key feature of media communication.

Psychovisualization. The ability to create mental images helps focus one’s mind on an objective.

Presence. Projecting immediacy and a sense of being present is required for “focus of attention.”

Violence. Understanding behaviors involving excessive force is requisite in media psychology.

Repetition. Repeating something, i.e., the recurrence of action or events, reinforces behaviors and enhances memory .

Memory. The ability to recall directly is a precondition in managing behavior.

Color. Visual perception of such categories as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and more, influences behavior.

Sound . Positively produced sound, as opposed to noise, affects how one see’s color, remembers, and feels in and about situations, and influences behavior.

Application of media psychology has become pervasive in influencing human behavior. Today’s worldwide technology saturation is part of what may be called a black swan effect in manipulating human behavior. The black swan effect describes dramatic events that go far beyond present conditions and that have increasing and extraordinary consequences or benefits.

Media psychology manipulation through technology adds an accelerating engine influencing motivated reasoning , shaping events and issues affecting the future. It has been said that the most significant time that a fish notices the water is when it is gone . The present media communications flood is so globally pervasive that the black swan effect analogy applies.

As we consider the growing nature of the mediaverse, we realize how powerful media communications has become. Space travel, the Space Force, recent developments in space law, super technology and more confirm the reality of visions that were previously only thought of as science fiction. These phenomena are real, and we are only at the water’s edge in media psychology. Media psychology today is a recognized academic, research, and practice specialty in psychology. American Psychological Association, Media Psychology Division 46, and the APA Society for Media Psychology and Technology , focus on research and practice in Media Psychology. The need for qualified researchers and scholar/practitioners is increasingly important.

In 431 BCE, Thucydides, Greek author of The History of the Peloponnesian War , is reputed to have said, “A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking being done by cowards and its fighting done by fools. (Warner, 1968)

Research and practice in the understanding of media effects is fundamental in 21st century media literacy. There is growing professional opportunity for scholar-practitioners trained in media psychology programs that build solid, knowledge-based foundations in understanding the many mediacentric patterns of belief and behavior. The window of opportunity for colleges and universities to successfully launch new programs in media psychology is open.

Special thanks: Dr. Toni Luskin for editorial and publishing assistance and Drs. Nathan Long, President, Devin Byrd, Dean, Academic Affairs, Saybrook University, and Mathew Nehmer, President, Colleges of Law, for insights and encouragement.

Luskin Learning Psychology Series No.. 57

Please send comments and suggestions to: [email protected]

Thucydides, & Rix Warner, R. (1968). History of the Peloponnesian War. Baltimore, Md: Penguin Books.

Bernard Luskin, Ed.D., LMFT , is the CEO of LuskinInternational.com and has been the CEO of eight colleges and universities.

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Media Psychology

Some believe that the constant replaying of the World Trade Center collapse on television after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 caused stress and anxiety for viewers across the country. Many people blamed the media’s graphic images for propagating widespread fear and depression beyond that attributed to news of the incident itself.

Never before had a national disaster of this magnitude occurred on American soil, and technology’s immediacy made the event a second-by-second spectator event. For those in media psychology, this tragic event generated research studies that continue to raise as many questions as answers.

Professionals working in the field of Media Psychology use psychological theories, concepts and methods to study the impact of the mass media on individuals, groups and cultures.

In a recent article “Media Psychology: A Personal Essay in Definition and Purview,” the author, Stuart Fischoff, says that irrespective of the subject matter being communicated, media psychology wants to know how a particular medium affects or influences how people think and relate, how it affects values or beliefs, and how it shapes leisure and work time. Can one mode of communication affect behavior differently than another mode?

The Purpose of Media Psychology

“Only by understanding how and why mass media influence our lives can we better cope with them and only by coping with them can we change them so that they serve us rather than control us,” states Fischoff, emeritus professor of media psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, and senior editor of the Journal of Media Psychology.

Fischoff says that it’s important to study how the media influence behavior especially since our culture is “media-centric.” He points to a culture obsessed with celebrity, and news that centers more on entertainment and entertainers than newsworthy issues. He also notes that recent research shows that people between the ages of 14 and 35 now spend more time surfing the Internet than they do in front of the television.

The rapid – almost daily- changes in technology and the resulting effects on culture makes this field of psychology one of the most dynamic and exciting areas today. And recent trends in social networking software such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have increased the importance for businesses and organizations to understand how the media impacts behavior.

The case of 9/11 gave researchers an opportunity to study and recommend changes so that news organizations can inform the public during and after disasters without inflicting more damage.

In a 2009 study titled “Emotional Stress and Coping in Response to Television News Coverage of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks,” researchers report that while the study did not definitively determine whether media viewing actually caused stress-related disorders, it did find a link between increased television viewing and stress after the first few days of news coverage.

However the study also states that after the first week of coverage, viewership dropped significantly, and that those who curtailed their media viewing reported less stress than those who continued to watch.

“The fact that people in this study reported deliberately moderating their viewing of stressful coverage by limiting what they watched or distracting themselves supports the idea that media viewing is an active process that does not occur in a vacuum, but rather is a choice made by individuals,” the study states.

The study raised important questions. Why did some people continue to watch the events while others did not? And did coping patterns or past traumatic experiences affect viewing patterns? What recommendations can media psychology professionals offer to media organizations to produce better content, and how can these professionals help viewers self-monitor their viewing behaviors?

These and other questions will have to be answered by those interested in pursuing a career in media psychology. Research and teaching positions will require a PhD , while a master’s degree in media psychology provides entry to positions with media outlets such as news organizations, film studios, and independent filmmakers.

If you are interested in understanding how the mass media influence behaviors and attitudes, and you would like to make a contribution to cultural health and well being, you should consider a career in media psychology.

Find out how you can become involved, request information from schools offering Psychology degree programs . Also, learn more about the psychology career licensing processes and what the requirements for licensure are: Psychology Career Licensure .

Related Links Browse Links Browse Links Media Psychologist Career Profiles Childhood Developmental Psychology Existential Psychology Gender Identity Obesity Psychological Assessments Health Psychology Community Psychology Peer Pressure Entrepreneurship and Innovation

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Other formatting instructions, as well as instructions on preparing tables, figures, references, metrics, and abstracts, appear in the Manual. Additional guidance on APA Style is available on the  APA Style website .

Brief reports

Authors may choose to submit their work in the form of a Brief Report. Brief Reports can be an ideal format for: research studies of high methodological rigor that can be reported very effectively in a brief format; research showcasing high interest findings succinctly; sound investigations of a preliminary nature on high-interest topics; well-conducted replication studies, regardless of outcome; brief theoretical pieces or literature reviews that advance the field.

Authors choosing this option should indicate in their cover letter that they wish their submission to be considered as a Brief Report and that they agree not to submit a longer report of the same research to another journal. Brief Reports should be 15 pages double spaced inclusive of references, figures and tables, but exclusive of title page. As with regular submissions, authors are encouraged to place additional details in a Supplemental Materials section.

Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS)

Authors are required to follow the APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for quantitative , qualitative , and mixed methods research . Updated in 2018, the standards offer ways to improve transparency in reporting to ensure that readers have the information necessary to evaluate the quality of the research and to facilitate collaboration and replication. The new JARS:

• Recommend the division of hypotheses, analyses and conclusions into primary, secondary and exploratory groupings to allow for a full understanding of quantitative analyses presented in a manuscript and to enhance reproducibility;
• Offer modules for authors reporting on N-of-1 designs, replications, clinical trials, longitudinal studies and observational studies, as well as the analytic methods of structural equation modeling and Bayesian analysis;
• Include guidelines on reporting on registration (including making protocols public); participant characteristics, including demographic characteristics; inclusion and exclusion criteria; psychometric characteristics of outcome measures and other variables; and planned data diagnostics and analytic strategy.

Openness and transparency

Authors should state all sources of financial support for the conduct of the research (e.g., This research was supported by Award XX from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute of Child Health and Human Development) in the author note. If the funding source was involved in any other aspects of the research (e.g., study design, analysis, interpretation, writing), then clearly state the role. If the funding source had no other involvement other than financial support, then simply state that the funding source had no other role other than financial support.

Authors should also provide a conflict of interest statement in the author note disclosing any real or potentially perceived conflict(s) of interest, including financial, personal, or other relationships with other organizations or companies that may inappropriately impact or influence the research and interpretation of the findings. If there are no conflicts of interest, this should be clearly stated.

Authors should provide a data availability statement indicating whether the data, methods used in the analysis, code, and materials used to conduct the research will be made available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure. In both the author note and at the end of the method section, either specify where that material will be available or note the ethical or legal reasons for not doing so.

Preregistration of studies and analysis plans can be useful for distinguishing confirmatory and exploratory analyses. We encourage investigators to preregister their studies and analysis plans prior to conducting the research (e.g., Open Science Framework, ClinicalTrials.gov). If any aspect of the study is preregistered, include the registry link in the Author Note.

Authors who have posted their manuscripts to preprint archives , such as PsyArXiv, prior to submission should include a link to the preprint in the author note.

Research disclosures

The Method section of each empirical report must contain a detailed description of the study participants, including age, sex and race/ethnicity and other demographics pertinent to the subject of study.

In the Discussion section of the manuscript, authors should discuss the diversity of their study samples.

The Method section also must include a statement describing how informed consent was obtained from the participants (or their parents/guardians), including for secondary use of data if applicable, and indicate that the study was conducted in compliance with an appropriate Internal Review Board.

Replications

In addition to full-length research papers reporting novel findings, the journal publishes replications, giving equal consideration to replications with null results. Preregistration of replication studies is strongly recommended, but not required (see examples of preregistrations on the Open Science Framework, ClinicalTrials.gov, AsPredicted, and the WHO Registry Network, among others).

Display equations

We strongly encourage you to use MathType (third-party software) or Equation Editor 3.0 (built into pre-2007 versions of Word) to construct your equations, rather than the equation support that is built into Word 2007 and Word 2010. Equations composed with the built-in Word 2007/Word 2010 equation support are converted to low-resolution graphics when they enter the production process and must be rekeyed by the typesetter, which may introduce errors.

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

• Go to the Text section of the Insert tab and select Object.
• Select MathType or Equation Editor 3.0 in the drop-down menu.

If you have an equation that has already been produced using Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and you have access to the full version of MathType 6.5 or later, you can convert this equation to MathType by clicking on MathType Insert Equation. Copy the equation from Microsoft Word and paste it into the MathType box. Verify that your equation is correct, click File, and then click Update. Your equation has now been inserted into your Word file as a MathType Equation.

Use Equation Editor 3.0 or MathType only for equations or for formulas that cannot be produced as Word text using the Times or Symbol font.

Computer code

Because altering computer code in any way (e.g., indents, line spacing, line breaks, page breaks) during the typesetting process could alter its meaning, we treat computer code differently from the rest of your article in our production process. To that end, we request separate files for computer code.

In Online Supplemental Material

We request that runnable source code be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit Supplementing Your Article With Online Material .

In the Text of the Article

If you would like to include code in the text of your published manuscript, please submit a separate file with your code exactly as you want it to appear, using Courier New font with a type size of 8 points. We will make an image of each segment of code in your article that exceeds 40 characters in length. (Shorter snippets of code that appear in text will be typeset in Courier New and run in with the rest of the text.) If an appendix contains a mix of code and explanatory text, please submit a file that contains the entire appendix, with the code keyed in 8-point Courier New.

Use Word's Insert Table function when you create tables. Using spaces or tabs in your table will create problems when the table is typeset and may result in errors.

Public policy relevance statements

Authors submitting manuscripts to Psychology of Popular Media are required to provide 2–3 brief sentences regarding the public significance statements of the study or meta-analysis described in their paper. This description should be included within the manuscript on the abstract/keywords page. It should be written in language that is easily understood by both professionals and members of the lay public.

When an accepted paper is published, these sentences will be boxed beneath the abstract for easy accessibility. All such descriptions will also be published as part of the Table of Contents, as well as on the journal's web page. This new policy is in keeping with efforts to increase dissemination and usage by larger and diverse audiences.

Examples of these 2–3 sentences include the following:

• "A brief cognitive–behavioral intervention for caregivers of children undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplant reduced caregiver distress during the transplant hospitalization. Long-term effects on caregiver distress were found for more anxious caregivers as well as caregivers of children who developed graft-versus-host disease after the transplant."
• "Inhibitory processes, particularly related to temporal attention, may play a critical role in response to exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The main finding that individuals with PTSD who made more clinical improvement showed faster improvement in inhibition over the course of exposure therapy supports the utility of novel therapeutic interventions that specifically target attentional inhibition and better patient-treatment matching."
• "When children participated in the enriched preschool program Head Start REDI, they were more likely to follow optimal developmental trajectories of social– emotional functioning through third grade. Ensuring that all children living in poverty have access to high-quality preschool may be one of the more effective means of reducing disparities in school readiness and increasing the likelihood of lifelong success."

To be maximally useful, these statements of public significance should not simply be sentences lifted directly from the manuscript.

They are meant to be informative and useful to any reader. They should provide a bottom-line, take-home message that is accurate and easily understood. In addition, they should be able to be translated into media-appropriate statements for use in press releases and on social media.

Prior to final acceptance and publication, all public significance statements will be carefully reviewed to make sure they meet these standards. Authors will be expected to revise statements as necessary.

Please refer to Guidance for Translational Abstracts and Public Significance Statements to help you write this text.

Academic writing and English language editing services

Authors who feel that their manuscript may benefit from additional academic writing or language editing support prior to submission are encouraged to seek out such services at their host institutions, engage with colleagues and subject matter experts, and/or consider several vendors that offer discounts to APA authors .

Please note that APA does not endorse or take responsibility for the service providers listed. It is strictly a referral service.

Use of such service is not mandatory for publication in an APA journal. Use of one or more of these services does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication in any APA journal.

Submitting supplemental materials

APA can place supplemental materials online, available via the published article in the APA PsycArticles ® database. Please see Supplementing Your Article With Online Material for more details.

Abstract and keywords

All manuscripts must include an abstract containing a maximum of 250 words typed on a separate page. After the abstract, please supply up to five keywords or brief phrases.

List references in alphabetical order. Each listed reference should be cited in text, and each text citation should be listed in the References section.

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal Article

McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review , 126 (1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126

Authored book

Brown, L. S. (2018). Feminist therapy (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000092-000

Chapter in an edited book

Balsam, K. F., Martell, C. R., Jones. K. P., & Safren, S. A. (2019). Affirmative cognitive behavior therapy with sexual and gender minority people. In G. Y. Iwamasa & P. A. Hays (Eds.), Culturally responsive cognitive behavior therapy: Practice and supervision (2nd ed., pp. 287–314). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000119-012

All data, program code and other methods must be appropriately cited in the text and listed in the reference section. 

• Data Set Citation: Alegria, M., Jackson, J. S., Kessler, R. C., & Takeuchi, D. (2016). Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), 2001–2003 [Data set]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20240.v8

Preferred formats for graphics files are TIFF and JPG, and preferred format for vector-based files is EPS. Graphics downloaded or saved from web pages are not acceptable for publication. Multipanel figures (i.e., figures with parts labeled a, b, c, d, etc.) should be assembled into one file. When possible, please place symbol legends below the figure instead of to the side.

• All color line art and halftones: 300 DPI
• Black and white line tone and gray halftone images: 600 DPI

Line weights

• Color (RGB, CMYK) images: 2 pixels
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• Stroke weight: 0.5 points

APA offers authors the option to publish their figures online in color without the costs associated with print publication of color figures.

The same caption will appear on both the online (color) and print (black and white) versions. To ensure that the figure can be understood in both formats, authors should add alternative wording (e.g., “the red (dark gray) bars represent”) as needed.

For authors who prefer their figures to be published in color both in print and online, original color figures can be printed in color at the editor's and publisher's discretion provided the author agrees to pay:

• $900 for one figure
• An additional $600 for the second figure
• An additional $450 for each subsequent figure

Permissions

Authors of accepted papers must obtain and provide to the editor on final acceptance all necessary permissions to reproduce in print and electronic form any copyrighted work, including test materials (or portions thereof), photographs, and other graphic images (including those used as stimuli in experiments).

On advice of counsel, APA may decline to publish any image whose copyright status is unknown.

• Download Permissions Alert Form (PDF, 13KB)

Open science badges

Starting in August 2017, articles are eligible for open science badges recognizing publicly available data, materials, and/or preregistration plans and analyses. These badges are awarded on a self-disclosure basis.

At submission, authors must confirm that criteria have been fulfilled in a signed badge disclosure form (PDF, 33KB) that must be submitted as supplemental material. If all criteria are met as confirmed by the editor, the form will then be published with the article as supplemental material.

Authors should also note their eligibility for the badge(s) in the cover letter.

For all badges, items must be made available on an open-access repository with a persistent identifier in a format that is time-stamped, immutable, and permanent. For the preregistered badge, this is an institutional registration system.

Data and materials must be made available under an open license allowing others to copy, share, and use the data, with attribution and copyright as applicable.

Available badges are:

Note that it may not be possible to preregister a study or to share data and materials. Applying for open science badges is optional.

Publication policies

APA policy prohibits an author from submitting the same manuscript for concurrent consideration by two or more publications.

See also APA Journals ® Internet Posting Guidelines .

APA requires authors to reveal any possible conflict of interest in the conduct and reporting of research (e.g., financial interests in a test or procedure, funding by pharmaceutical companies for drug research).

• Download Full Disclosure of Interests Form (PDF, 41KB)

Ethical Principles

It is a violation of APA Ethical Principles to publish "as original data, data that have been previously published" (Standard 8.13).

In addition, APA Ethical Principles specify that "after research results are published, psychologists do not withhold the data on which their conclusions are based from other competent professionals who seek to verify the substantive claims through reanalysis and who intend to use such data only for that purpose, provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and unless legal rights concerning proprietary data preclude their release" (Standard 8.14).

APA expects authors to adhere to these standards. Specifically, APA expects authors to have their data available throughout the editorial review process and for at least 5 years after the date of publication.

Authors are required to state in writing that they have complied with APA ethical standards in the treatment of their sample, human or animal, or to describe the details of treatment.

• Download Certification of Compliance With APA Ethical Principles Form (PDF, 26KB)

The APA Ethics Office provides the full Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct electronically on its website in HTML, PDF, and Word format. You may also request a copy by emailing or calling the APA Ethics Office (202-336-5930). You may also read "Ethical Principles," December 1992, American Psychologist , Vol. 47, pp. 1597–1611.

Other information

See APA’s Publishing Policies page for more information on publication policies, including information on author contributorship and responsibilities of authors, author name changes after publication, the use of generative artificial intelligence, funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures, duplicate publication, data publication and reuse, and preprints.

Visit the Journals Publishing Resource Center for more resources for writing, reviewing, and editing articles for publishing in APA journals.

Karen Shackleford, PhD Fielding Graduate University, United States

Associate editors

Allison Eden, PhD Michigan State University, United States

Morgan E. Ellithorpe, PhD University of Delaware, United States

Gayle S. Stever, PhD Empire State University of New York, United States

Patrick James Sweeney, MPhil, PhD Fielding Graduate University, United States

Megan A. Vendemia, PhD West Virginia University, United States

Founding editors

Joanne Broder, PhD Saint Joseph's University, United States

James C. Kaufman, PhD University of Connecticut, United States

Consulting editors

Cassandra Alexopoulos, PhD University of Massachusetts Boston, United States

Craig A. Anderson, PhD Iowa State University, United States

Anita Atwell Seate, PhD University of Maryland, United States

Joshua Baldwin, PhD University of Georgia, United States

Omotayo Banjo, PhD University of Cincinnati, United States

Anne Bartsch, PhD University of Leipzig, Germany

Denise D. Bielby, PhD University of California, Santa Barbara, United States

Fran Blumberg, PhD Fordham University, United States

Bradley J. Bond, PhD University of San Diego, United States

Nicholas D. Bowman, PhD West Virginia University, United States

Johannes Breuer, PhD GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany

Brad J. Bushman, PhD The Ohio State University, United States

Sharon Coen, PhD University of Salford, United Kingdom

J. David Cohen, MSc Empire State University, United States

Sarah M. Coyne, PhD Brigham Young University, United States

Sonya Dal Cin, PhD University of Michigan, United States

Grant J. Devilly, BSc(Hons), MClinPsych, PhD Griffith University, Australia

Arienne Ferchaud, PhD Florida State University, United States

Lance C. Garmon, PhD Salisbury University, United States

Douglas A. Gentile, PhD Iowa State University, United States

David Giles, PhD University of Winchester, United Kingdom

Melanie C. Green, PhD University at Buffalo (SUNY), United States

Matthew Grizzard, PhD The Ohio State University, United States

Karla R. Hamlen Mansour, PhD Cleveland State University, United States

James D. Ivory, PhD Virginia Tech, United States

Benjamin K. Johnson, PhD University of Florida, United States

Elly A. Konijn, PhD Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Raymond A. Mar, PhD York University, Canada

Brandon Miller, PhD University of Massachusetts Boston, United States

Keith Oatley, PhD University of Toronto, Canada

Art Raney, PhD Florida State University, United States

Meghan S. Sanders, PhD Louisiana State University, United States

Angeline Sangalang, PhD University of Dayton, United States

Erica Scharrer, PhD University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States

Bharath Sriraman, PhD The University of Montana - Missoula, United States

Laramie D. Taylor, PhD University of California Davis, United States

Riva Tukachinsky, PhD Chapman University, United States

Sonya Utz, PhD Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien Tübingen (Knowledge Media Research Center); University of Tübingen, Germany

David Westerman, PhD North Dakota State University, United States

Abstracting and indexing services providing coverage of Psychology of Popular Media ®

• Web of Science Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI)

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Popular Media, Vol. 11, No. 3, July 2022. The articles shed light on the role of entertainment media in emotional regulation processes, psychological need fulfillment, social connection, diversion, parenting, and even activism.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, Vol. 4, No. 4, October 2015. Includes articles about violent, sports, and fantasy games; daily game playing and learning strategies; and parenting style influences.

Special issue of the APA journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 2015. Includes articles about female stereotypes in TV, movies, video games, and music.

Inclusive reporting standards

• Bias-free language and community-driven language guidelines (required)
• Data sharing and data availability statements (required)
• Impact statements (required)

Definitions and further details on inclusive study designs are available on the Journals EDI homepage .

• Author contribution roles using CRediT (required)

More information on this journal’s reporting standards is listed under the submission guidelines tab .

Other EDI offerings

Orcid reviewer recognition.

Open Research and Contributor ID (ORCID) Reviewer Recognition provides a visible and verifiable way for journals to publicly credit reviewers without compromising the confidentiality of the peer-review process. This journal has implemented the ORCID Reviewer Recognition feature in Editorial Manager, meaning that reviewers can be recognized for their contributions to the peer-review process.

Masked peer review

This journal offers masked peer review (where both the authors’ and reviewers’ identities are not known to the other). Research has shown that masked peer review can help reduce implicit bias against traditionally female names or early-career scientists with smaller publication records (Budden et al., 2008; Darling, 2015).

Announcements

• Virtual Media Psychology Symposium 2020 | Popular Media’s Role in a World on Fire: Panel Discussion with the Editors of the APA Journal Psychology of Popular Media
• New editor appointed

From APA Journals Article Spotlight ®

• Body positivity in music: Can listening to a single song help you feel better about your body?

Editor Spotlight

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Critic’s Notebook

I Saw My Anxiety Reflected in ‘Inside Out 2.’ It Floored Me.

In a way that’s both cathartic and devastating, Pixar’s latest portrays how anxiety can take hold, our critic writes.

• Share full article

By Maya Phillips

At the climax of Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” Riley, a freshly pubescent teen with a gaggle of new personified emotions, becomes so overwhelmed with anxiety that she has a panic attack.

In the theater, I whispered to my friend that I’d forgotten to bring my panic attack medication. I’d said it as a joke — but at the sight of this anxious animated teenager, my whole body’s choreography changed. My muscles tensed. I pressed my right palm down hard to my chest and took a few deep yoga breaths, trying to cut off the familiar beginnings of an attack.

This depiction of how quickly anxiety can take hold was overwhelming. I saw my own experiences reflected in Riley’s. “Inside Out 2” felt personal to me in a way that was equally cathartic and devastating: It’s a movie that so intimately understands how my anxiety disorder upends my everyday life.

“Inside Out 2” picks up two years after the 2015 film “Inside Out,” as Riley is about to start high school. With puberty comes a group of new emotions, led by Anxiety. A manic orange sprite voiced by Maya Hawke, Anxiety bumps out the old emotions and inadvertently wreaks havoc on Riley’s belief system and self-esteem as she tries to manage the stress of a weekend hockey camp.

When an emotion takes over in the “Inside Out” movies, a control board in Riley’s mind changes to that feeling’s color; Anxiety’s takeover, however, is more absolute. She creates a stronghold in Riley’s imagination, where she forces mind workers to illustrate negative hypothetical scenarios for Riley’s future. Soon, Riley’s chief inner belief is of her inadequacy; the emotions hear “I’m not good enough” as a low, rumbling refrain in her mind.

I’m familiar with anxiety’s hold on the imagination; my mind is always writing the script to the next worst day of my life. It’s already embraced all possibilities of failure. And my anxiety’s ruthless demands for perfection often turn my thoughts into an unrelenting roll-call of self-criticisms and insecurities.

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The Legacy of John B. Watson: the Founder of Behaviorism

This essay about John B. Watson explores his pivotal role in founding behaviorism, highlighting his influence on psychology, education, and advertising. Watson challenged introspective methods, emphasizing observable behavior and conditioning. His controversial experiments, including the Little Albert study, and his application of behaviorist principles in various fields, underscore his complex legacy. Despite ethical concerns, Watson’s contributions laid the foundation for modern psychological practices and marketing strategies.

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The Legacy of John B. Watson: The Founder of Behaviorism. (2024, Jun 28). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/the-legacy-of-john-b-watson-the-founder-of-behaviorism/

"The Legacy of John B. Watson: The Founder of Behaviorism." PapersOwl.com , 28 Jun 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/the-legacy-of-john-b-watson-the-founder-of-behaviorism/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Legacy of John B. Watson: The Founder of Behaviorism . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-legacy-of-john-b-watson-the-founder-of-behaviorism/ [Accessed: 30 Jun. 2024]

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"The Legacy of John B. Watson: The Founder of Behaviorism," PapersOwl.com , 28-Jun-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-legacy-of-john-b-watson-the-founder-of-behaviorism/. [Accessed: 30-Jun-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Legacy of John B. Watson: The Founder of Behaviorism . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-legacy-of-john-b-watson-the-founder-of-behaviorism/ [Accessed: 30-Jun-2024]

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‘Confessions of a Good Samaritan’ Review: Penny Lane Delivers a Documentary Essay on Altruism and Its Discontents

An exploration of the science, history and ethics of organ donation in the context of the filmmaker's kidney donation.

By Alissa Simon

Alissa Simon

Film Critic

• ‘Confessions of a Good Samaritan’ Review: Penny Lane Delivers a Documentary Essay on Altruism and Its Discontents 5 days ago
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The statistics are shocking. In the United States, nearly 100,000 people are listed on a national database for kidney transplantation, but perhaps three-quarters of them will die before an appropriate match is found. Yet the choice to make a live, non-directed donation is relatively rare. As Lane hears from others and experiences for herself, many friends and relatives regard the would-be donor as crazy.

Among the interesting interviewees is psychology professor Abigail Marsh, whose personal history prompted her interest in understanding the neural and cognitive basis of empathy, altruism, aggression and psychopathy. When studying brain scans of people diagnosed with psychopathy, Marsh hypothesized that perhaps they represented one end of a continuum, and that the brains of people expressing more empathy than the average joe would also be differently wired. 

Marsh explains that the brain’s amygdala is linked to all of our sensory processing systems and gives a corresponding emotional response to the information processed. Psychopathic brains have amygdalas that on average are up to 20% smaller than normal people. Altruistic people have amygdalas which are around 8% larger than average. The scan she performs on Lane proves that the filmmaker’s amygdala is quite large.

Meanwhile, advocate and author Dr. Sally Satel, a recipient of a donated kidney, makes a compelling argument for government legislated rewards for altruistic organ donation, since it is against the law for a recipient to offer cash or other financial benefits to a donor and for a donor to accept them. Given that non-directed donations comprise only 2% of all the kidney transplants performed and black-market organs comprise 10%, the title of her book neatly sums up the problem: “Altruism Is Not Enough.” Archival footage showing a 1984 Senate inquiry (chaired by a young Al Gore) into an organs-for-money scheme shows that doctors have been thinking about this issue for some time.

Bio-ethicist and psychiatrist Dr. Jacob Appel helps Lane understand the history of progress in kidney transplantation, which came rapidly after the discovery of cyclosporine, an immunosuppressive agent used to treat organ rejection post-transplant. And he describes to her a possible future of organs being grown inside genetically modified pigs.

In contrast to the theoretical issues that Appel puts forward, the ebullient surgeon Dr. Keith Melancon is literally hands-on. He describes his pleasure at seeing a donated organ “pink-up” inside the body of the recipient.

The film makes a virtue of its small budget through incorporating a digital esthetic throughout.

Reviewed online, June 24, 2024. In SXSW, Hot Docs film festivals. Running time: 103 MIN. 

• Production: (Documentary) A Spinning Nancy presentation of a Sandbox Films production, in association with Olive Hill Media, Impact Partners. (World sales: Submarine Entertainment, NY.) Producer: Gabriel Sedgwick. Executive producers: Greg Boustead, Jessica Harrop, Tim Lee, Michael Cho, Mimi Rode.
• Crew: Director, writer: Penny Lane. Camera: Naiti Gámez. Editor: Hannah Buck. Music: Carolina Eyck. 
• With: Penny Lane, Professor Abigail Marsh, Keith Melancon, Sally Satel, Jacob Appel.

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