Personal pop culture: An investigation of fans' eudaimonic responses to favorite television

Popular media fans are becoming increasingly visible. However, psychological researchers have rarely investigated fans’ relationships with and responses to their favorite entertainment. At the same time, a growing body of literature shows that people often react to media with eudaimonic appreciation...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author Vinney, Cynthia Jeanne
Format Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Published ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2016
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Summary:Popular media fans are becoming increasingly visible. However, psychological researchers have rarely investigated fans’ relationships with and responses to their favorite entertainment. At the same time, a growing body of literature shows that people often react to media with eudaimonic appreciation, an experience marked by feelings of deep and profound meaning. The purpose of this study is to explore how an individual’s personal identity as a fan impacts cognitive and affective eudaimonic responses to a favorite popular culture text. Fans of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (N = 790) completed an online survey in which they answered questions about their personal fan identity, watched a montage video of key moments from the series, and then completed items about their reactions to the video as well as the show in general and about their motivation to search for meaning in life. Results indicated that a stronger fan identity was associated with fans’ enhanced cognitive and affective eudaimonic responses to the show in the form of increased reflective thoughts and higher levels of mixed and meaningful affect. In addition, a stronger fan identity led to more self-related thoughts, which in turn led to increased perceptions that the show was meaningful. Finally, fan identity negatively interacted with the motivation to search for meaning in life, such that when fan identity was weak a greater desire to search for meaning in life enhanced fans’ perceptions that the show was meaningful, but when fan identity was strong, fans found the show meaningful regardless of the intensity of their motivation to search for meaning in life. These findings point to the personal connection fans make with their favorite popular media and how one’s identity as a fan can impact individual responses to a text. Such meaningful experiences with popular culture may offer benefits to fans that result in personal growth and enhanced psychological wellbeing.
ISBN:1369413882
9781369413885