Effects of Prosocial Media on Social Behavior

By Tobias Greitemeyer. 2011

139 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Helping and aggression are core topics in social psychology. So far, abundant evidence that violent media decreases helping and increases aggression has been collected. However, recent theoretical and empirical work has demonstrated that the media may also increase prosocial outcomes and decrease antisocial outcomes. In fact, exposure to media with prosocial content increases the accessibility of prosocial thoughts, empathy, and helping behavior and decreases aggression and aggression-related cognition and affect. The present article reviews this research and provides an overview of when and why media exposure instigates helping and reduces aggression.

Subfields: Literature and Literary Theory, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/929d4508466bb1b24bb42afd51f790c2f5cb3be2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Literature and Literary Theory

1. Jörg Matthes
2. Dirk O. Mügge
3. Florian Arendt
4. Sarah M. Coyne
5. Tobias Greitemeyer

In Social Psychology

1. Dirk O. Mügge
2. Florian Arendt
3. Jörg Matthes
4. Laura M. Padilla‐Walker
5. Sarah M. Coyne
6. Tobias Greitemeyer
7. Brandon T. McDaniel

Citations in the corpus

• Nature Documentaries, Connectedness to Nature, and Pro-environmental Behavior (2016, background): “Although there is a bulk of evidence regarding media effects on pro-social behavior such as organ donation (Feeley & Moon, 2009), helping (Greitemeyer, 2011), or making a donation to others affected by a natural disaster (Martin, 2013), there is less evidence of media effects on pro-environmental…”
• Emerging in a Digital World (2013, background): “Greitemeyer, T. (2011). Effects of prosocial media on social behavior: When and why does media exposure affect helping and aggression? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 251-255. Groesz, L. M., Levine, M. P., & Murnen, S. K. (2001). The effect of experimental presentation of thin media”
• Video Games Do Affect Social Outcomes (2014, background): “We would like to stress that in terms of the player’s social behavior not all video games have negative effects (Bavelier & Davidson, 2013; Greitemeyer, 2011).”