Enjoyment and appreciation as motivators for coping: exploring the therapeutic effects of media messages on perceived threat
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Published version
Date
2016-01-01
DOI
Authors
Kim, Jinhee
Tsay-Vogel, Mina
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Published version
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Citation
Jinhee Kim, Mina Tsay-Vogel. 2016. "Enjoyment and Appreciation as Motivators for Coping: Exploring the Therapeutic Effects of Media Messages on Perceived Threat." INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, Volume 10, pp. 1786 - 1808 (23).
Abstract
This study explores how experience-based media messages featuring victims, survivors, and outperformers provide therapeutic benefits through the enjoyment and appreciation of the messages. Using the economic crisis as a context, our findings indicate that whereas distressed individuals were more likely to appreciate threat-related stories featuring victims and survivors over outperformers, nondistressed individuals were more likely to enjoy such stories featuring outperformers over victims and survivors. Appreciation and enjoyment of these threat-related stories predicted effective coping outcomes: positive reappraisal of the economic situation that also led to increased perceived control over the threat through positive affect. Health implications for enjoyment and appreciation of experience-based stories as motivators for coping outcomes are also discussed.
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Copyright © 2016 (Jinhee Kim & Mina Tsay-Vogel). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License.