News Framing and Preference-Based Reinforcement: Evidence from a Real Framing Environment During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

COVID-19 is a news issue that can be covered from many different angles. When reporting, journalists have to select, accentuate, or exclude particular aspects, which, in turn, may evoke a specific, and possibly constricted, perspective in viewers, a phenomenon termed the news-framing effect. Guided by the reinforcing spiral framework, we conducted a multi-study project that investigated the news-framing effect's underlying mechanism by studying the dynamic of self-reinforcing effects. Grounded in a real-life framing environment observed during the pandemic and systematically assessed via a content analysis (study 1) and survey (study 2), we offer supporting evidence for a preference-based reinforcement model by utilizing a combination of the selective exposure (i.e., self-selected exposure) and causal effects (i.e., forced exposure) paradigms within one randomized controlled study (study 3). Self-selection of news content by viewers was a necessary precondition for frame-consistent (reinforcement) effects. Forced exposure did not elicit causal effects in a frame-consistent direction.

Effects of Food Depictions in Entertainment Media on Children's Unhealthy Food Preferences: Content Analysis Linked With Panel Data.

Background: Entertainment media content is often mentioned as one of the roots of children's unhealthy food consumption. This might be due to the high quantity of unhealthy foods presented in children's media environments. However, less is known about the role of the centrality of food placement, that is, whether foods are interacted with, consumed, verbally mentioned, or appear unobtrusively. We also lack longitudinal research measuring both children's unhealthy and healthy food consumption behaviors as outcomes. Objective: The aim is to connect content analytical data based on children's actual media diet with panel data in order to explain children's food preferences. Moreover, this study not only focuses on the amount of healthy and unhealthy foods children are exposed to, but also on how these foods are presented (ie, centrally or not). Furthermore, we looked at the question of how parental coviewing can diminish (or enhance) the effects of unhealthy (or healthy) food depictions, and we measured healthy and unhealthy consumption as dependent variables. Methods: We conducted a 2-wave panel study with children and one of their parents (of 2250 parents contacted, 829 responded, for a response rate of 36.84%; 648 valid cases, ie, parent-child pairs, were used for analysis), with 6 months between the 2 panel waves. We linked the 2-wave panel data for the children and their parents to content analytical data for movies (n=113) and TV series (n=134; 3 randomly chosen episodes per TV series were used) that children were exposed to over the course of 6 months. Results: There was no significant relationship between exposure to unhealthy food presentation and unhealthy (b=0.008; P=.07) or healthy (b=-0.003; P=.57) food consumption over time. Also, healthy food presentation was unrelated to unhealthy (b=0.009; P=.18) or healthy (b=0.000; P=.99) food consumption over time. However, there was a significant, positive interaction between unhealthy food presentation and presentation centrality on unhealthy food consumption (b=0.000; P=.03), suggesting that the effects of unhealthy food presentation rise with increasing levels of centrality. There was no interaction between unhealthy food presentation and presentation centrality on the consumption of healthy foods (b=0.000; P=.10). Also, exposure to healthy food presentation interacted with centrality (b=-0.001; P=.003). That is, when a healthy product was presented at maximum centrality, it led to less unhealthy food consumption in children. Coviewing did not interact with exposure to unhealthy foods when explaining unhealthy (b=0.003; P=.08) or healthy (b=-0.001; P=.70) food consumption. Conclusions: We conclude that simply presenting more healthy foods is not sufficient to combat children's unhealthy food preferences. Further regulations may be necessary with respect to representations of unhealthy foods in children's media.

Fear of Missing Out, Reflective Smartphone Disengagement, and Loneliness in Late Adolescents.

Reflective smartphone disengagement (i.e., deliberate actions to self-regulate when and how one should use one's smartphone) has become a necessary skill in our ever-connected lives, contributing to a healthy balance of related benefits and harms. However, disengaging from one's smartphone might compete with impulsive psychosocial motivators such as fear of missing out (FoMO) on others' rewarding experiences or feelings of loneliness. To shed light into these competitive processes, the present paper disentangles the reciprocal, over-time relationships between reflective smartphone disengagement, FoMO, and loneliness using data from a two-wave panel study among emerging adults (16-21 years of age). Measurement-invariant structural equation modeling suggests that FoMO and reflective smartphone disengagement negatively predict each other over time, indicating a possible spiraling process. In addition, reflective smartphone disengagement was also negatively related to feelings of loneliness. Together, these findings underline (a) how young people's impulsive and reflective system compete with each other over control of their smartphone usage, where (b) psychosocial benefits of reflective smartphone disengagement were validated among emerging adults, potentially helping them to strengthen the benefits and limit the harms of permanent interactions with and through technology.

Uncovering Blind Spots in the Intention to Provide Adequate Help to Suicidal Individuals.

Background: An adequate reaction from families, friends, and colleagues who can provide help to suicidal individuals is a preventive factor. Despite the logical assumption that the mere presence of risk factors in individuals needing help may affect others' helping intentions, empirical evidence is lacking in this regard. Method: We tested whether the presence of various risk factors influences the intention to provide help to suicidal individuals. Individuals (N = 890) were exposed to a vignette in which they were asked to imagine meeting a distant acquaintance. Such persons talk about serious problems and suddenly use the word "suicide." In a one-factorial between-subjects design with 21 groups, we manipulated person-related attributes corresponding to risk factors for suicide. Results: Some attributes increased helping intentions: male gender, very young and old age, homosexuality and transsexuality, terminal illness, previous nonsuicidal self-injury, previous suicide attempt, and seeking out lethal means. However, some attributes did not: female gender, major depression, chronic pain, different stressful life events, previously experienced violence, a family history of suicide, and a cry for help. Limitations: We measured self-reported behavioral intentions. Conclusions: Although people seem to adapt their helping intentions in response to some attributes, there seem to be many blind spots.

Food as an eye-catcher. An eye-tracking study on Children's attention to healthy and unhealthy food presentations as well as non-edible objects in audiovisual media.

BACKGROUND: Food presentations within media content are often made responsible for todays' obesity epidemic. This assessment is based on the assumption that food presentations create cue reactivity, which in turn affects the amount of food intake. OBJECTIVE: This study investigates children's implicit reactions (cue reactivity) toward healthy, unhealthy, and non-ediblel objects. METHODS: We conducted an experimental eye-tracking study comparing children's cue reactivity assessed with visual attention toward healthy and unhealthy food presentations, as well as non-edible objects. We controlled for the role of children's hunger, body mass index (BMI), and age. RESULTS: Results indicated no difference between healthy and unhealthy food presentations, yet food generally aroused more visual attention in children compared to non-edible objects. Explicit memory for the embedded foods or objects was mediated through visual attention. However, unhealthy food presentations also directly affected children's explicit memory. CONCLUSIONS: Compared to non-edible objects, food presentations seem to be eye-catchers that immediately grab children's attention and they are also able to maintain this attention. Yet, for unhealthy food presentations, memory seems to be less dependent on visual attention. That is, compared to healthy products or non-edible objects, unhealthy food presentations do not require the same amount of visual attention in order to be remembered.