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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Elderly viewers' responses to televised portrayals of old age
— empathy and mood management versus social comparison | | Author(s) | Marie-Louise Mares, Joanne Cantor |
| Journal title | Communication Research, vol 19, no 4, August 1992 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications, London, August 1992 |
| Pages | pp 459-478 |
| Source | Sage Publications Ltd., 6 Bonhill Street, London EC2A 4PU. |
| Keywords | Television [media] ; Attitudes to the old of general public ; Emotions ; Loneliness ; Isolation ; Attitude ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The study compared the explanatory power of two theoretical accounts of possible effects of positive and negative television portrayals, one based on empathy and mood management, the other based on social comparison. Lonely and non-lonely people (as determined in a pre-test) were given a series of descriptions of television offerings, and indicated the degree to which they desired to see each programme. In a separate session, they were randomly assigned to view a negative portrayal (of an unhappy, isolated old man) or a positive portrayal (of a happy, socially integrated old man). The results indicated that lonely subjects showed greater interest in viewing negative than positive portrayals, whereas non-lonely subjects exhibited the opposite preference. In addition, lonely subjects felt better after viewing the negative portrayal than after the positive portrayal, whereas non-lonely subjects felt better after the positive than the negative portrayal. The findings indicate that older viewers may benefit from varied portrayals of old age more than from uniformly positive or negative depictions. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980728221 A |
| Classmark | UKL: TOB: DL: DV: TP: DP: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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