Mayrhofer Mira, Matthes Jörg
University of Vienna, Austria.
Nordisk Alkohol Nark. 2020 Dec;37(6):557-575. doi: 10.1177/1455072520941981. Epub 2020 Sep 10.
The depiction of alcohol on television is an important explanatory variable for drinking behaviour. Even though alcohol consumption is frequently shown on popular TV shows, research on the impact of TV characters as models of drinking behaviour remains scarce. We theorise that the perceived similarity to a TV character is a key mechanism to explain recipients' expectancies about alcohol consumption.
We conducted two experiments in which we manipulated the drinking behaviour of a TV character and the consequences of drinking. We measured perceived similarity to the character as amediating variable and treated participants' alcohol consumption as a moderator.
In both studies, perceived similarity to models predicted positive expectancies about alcohol consumption, and perceived similarity decreased with the portrayal of an alcoholic character. In Study 1, participants who reported drinking rarely perceived themselves to be more similar to a rare drinker, which suggests that viewers' own alcohol consumption affects similarity judgments. In Study 2, portrayals of consequences of drinking directly affected expectancies about alcohol, moderated by participants' alcohol consumption.
Overall, our findings suggest that perceived similarity is a key variable to understand how alcohol on television affects viewers' expectancies toward alcohol.
电视上对酒精的描绘是饮酒行为的一个重要解释变量。尽管酒精消费在热门电视节目中经常出现，但关于电视角色作为饮酒行为榜样的影响的研究仍然很少。我们推测，对电视角色的感知相似性是解释受众对酒精消费期望的关键机制。
我们进行了两项实验，在实验中我们操纵了电视角色的饮酒行为和饮酒后果。我们将对角色的感知相似性作为一个中介变量进行测量，并将参与者的酒精消费作为一个调节变量。
在两项研究中，对榜样的感知相似性预测了对酒精消费的积极期望，并且随着酗酒角色的刻画，感知相似性降低。在研究1中，很少饮酒的参与者认为自己与很少饮酒者更相似，这表明观众自己的酒精消费会影响相似性判断。在研究2中，饮酒后果的刻画直接影响了对酒精的期望，这受到参与者酒精消费的调节。
总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，感知相似性是理解电视上的酒精如何影响观众对酒精期望的关键变量。
