Culture Shock
Kartik Hosanagar et al.
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Personalization is becoming ubiquitous on the World Wide Web. Such systems use statistical techniques to infer a customer's preferences and recommend content best suited to him (e.g., “Customers who liked this also liked . . .”). A debate has emerged as to whether personalization has drawbacks. By making the Web hyperspecific to our interests, does it fragment Internet users, reducing shared experiences and narrowing media consumption? We study whether personalization is in fact fragmenting the online population. Surprisingly, it does not appear to do so in our study. Personalization appears to be a tool that helps users widen their interests, which in turn creates commonality with others. This increase in commonality occurs for two reasons, which we term volume and product-mix effects. The volume effect is that consumers simply consume more after personalized recommendations, increasing the chance of having more items in common. The product-mix effect is that, conditional on volume, consumers buy a more similar mix of products after recommendations.
----------------------
Jon Wisman & Matthew Davis
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, November 2013, Pages 1075-1105
Abstract:
The Protestant ethic has been depicted as declining in America between 1870 and 1930, due to new consumer durables and less rewarding work. This study finds that the Protestant ethic did not so much decline as become transformed. The work ethic remained in force, while frugality weakened. This transformation is traced to three dynamic social forces: degradation in the quality of work due to industrialization, the decline of community with urbanization, and a dramatic increase in inequality. Consequently, social respect and social standing came increasingly to be sought through consumption, which became a proxy for hard work, entailing a weakening of asceticism.
----------------------
Does TV Viewing Cultivate Meritocratic Beliefs? Implications for Life Satisfaction
Carmen Stavrositu
Mass Communication and Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper was to explore the cultivation effects of television viewing on meritocratic belief systems (particularly, system justification) and ultimately on perceived life satisfaction. First, results of a cross-sectional survey (N = 276) reveal that genre-specific TV viewing cultivates system-justifying beliefs. More specifically, findings suggest that heavy viewing of competition-based reality TV viewing shapes viewers’ economic system-justifying beliefs (i.e., the belief that the economic system is fair and legitimate, rewarding those who put in the effort and hard work). Additionally, economic system justifying beliefs, in turn, were shown to enhance viewers’ perceived life satisfaction. Lastly, sports programming appeared to have a significant influence on general system-justifying beliefs (i.e., the belief that, in general, the American system operates as it should), but no ultimate impact on life satisfaction.
----------------------
The Changing Psychology of Culture From 1800 Through 2000
Patricia Greenfield
Psychological Science, September 2013, Pages 1722-1731
Abstract:
The Google Books Ngram Viewer allows researchers to quantify culture across centuries by searching millions of books. This tool was used to test theory-based predictions about implications of an urbanizing population for the psychology of culture. Adaptation to rural environments prioritizes social obligation and duty, giving to other people, social belonging, religion in everyday life, authority relations, and physical activity. Adaptation to urban environments requires more individualistic and materialistic values; such adaptation prioritizes choice, personal possessions, and child-centered socialization in order to foster the development of psychological mindedness and the unique self. The Google Ngram Viewer generated relative frequencies of words indexing these values from the years 1800 to 2000 in American English books. As urban populations increased and rural populations declined, word frequencies moved in the predicted directions. Books published in the United Kingdom replicated this pattern. The analysis established long-term relationships between ecological change and cultural change, as predicted by the theory of social change and human development (Greenfield, 2009).
----------------------
Commemoration Matters: The Anniversaries of 9/11 and Woodstock
Amy Corning & Howard Schuman
Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer 2013, Pages 433-454
Abstract:
We investigate the effect of the anniversary commemorations of September 11 and Woodstock on the American public’s collective memory or collective knowledge of each event. We are able to examine both the eighth- and the tenth-anniversary commemorations of the September 11 attacks (in 2009 and 2011), as well as the fortieth anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock Festival (in 2009). In an initial step, we used media analysis to identify the timing of commemorative activity surrounding the anniversaries. Our second step was to draw on data from surveys whose fieldwork dates corresponded to the anniversary periods, in order to compare respondents’ memory and knowledge of the events before, during, and after the commemorations. Our evidence shows that the percentage of Americans who consider 9/11 an “especially important” event is related to commemorative activity, and we likewise find that greater knowledge about the Woodstock Festival is associated with commemoration of that event. In addition, the impact of commemoration on knowledge of Woodstock was greatest among those with lower levels of education. For memory of 9/11, we found that commemoration’s effects were stronger for blacks than for whites, suggesting that commemoration may enhance the salience of national, as opposed to racial, identity. These findings offer insights into the educative and evocative roles of commemoration.
----------------------
Francesco Giavazzi, Fabio Schiantarelli & Michel Serafinelli
Journal of the European Economic Association, December 2013, Pages 1256-1289
Abstract:
We study whether cultural attitudes towards gender, the young, and leisure are significant determinants of the employment rates of women and of the young, and of hours worked. We do this controlling for policies, institutions and other structural characteristics of the economy which may influence labor market outcomes. We identify the effect of culture exploiting the evolution over time within country, as well as across countries, of cultural attitudes. We also address the endogeneity of attitudes, policies, and institutions, and allow for the persistent nature of labor market outcomes. We find that culture matters for women's employment rates and for hours worked. However, policies, in particular employment protection legislation and taxes, are also important and their quantitative impact substantial.
----------------------
Brad Bushman et al.
Pediatrics, December 2013, Pages 1014-1018
Background: Many scientific studies have shown that the mere presence of guns can increase aggression, an effect dubbed the “weapons effect.” The current research examines a potential source of the weapons effect: guns depicted in top-selling films.
Methods: Trained coders identified the presence of violence in each 5-minute film segment for one-half of the top 30 films since 1950 and the presence of guns in violent segments since 1985, the first full year the PG-13 rating (age 13+) was used. PG-13-rated films are among the top-selling films and are especially attractive to youth.
Results: Results found that violence in films has more than doubled since 1950, and gun violence in PG-13-rated films has more than tripled since 1985. When the PG-13 rating was introduced, these films contained about as much gun violence as G (general audiences) and PG (parental guidance suggested for young children) films. Since 2009, PG-13-rated films have contained as much or more violence as R-rated films (age 17+) films.
Conclusions: Even if youth do not use guns, these findings suggest that they are exposed to increasing gun violence in top-selling films. By including guns in violent scenes, film producers may be strengthening the weapons effect and providing youth with scripts for using guns. These findings are concerning because many scientific studies have shown that violent films can increase aggression. Violent films are also now easily accessible to youth (eg, on the Internet and cable). This research suggests that the presence of weapons in films might amplify the effects of violent films on aggression.
----------------------
Violent Film Characters’ Portrayal of Alcohol, Sex, and Tobacco-Related Behaviors
Amy Bleakley, Daniel Romer & Patrick Jamieson
Pediatrics, forthcoming
Objective: To determine the extent to which movies popular with adolescents feature characters who jointly engage in violence and other risk behaviors. We hypothesized that violent characters engage in other risk behaviors equally often in films rated appropriate for children over 12 (PG-13) and Restricted (R)-rated films.
Methods: Content analysis of a sample of top-grossing movies from 1985 to 2010 (n = 390). We coded movies for the presence of at least 1 main character who was involved in violence and either sex, tobacco, or alcohol use within a 5-minute movie segment and throughout a film.
Results: Approximately 90% of the movies contained a segment with a main character involved in violence, and ∼77% of the films had the same character engaging in at least 1 other risk behavior. A violent character was portrayed most often partaking in alcohol-related and sexual behaviors. G and PG movies had less co-occurrence than PG-13 or R-rated movies, but there was no statistical difference between PG-13 and R-rated movies with regards to violence co-occurring with other risk behaviors. These trends did not vary over time.
Conclusions: Popular films that contain violent characters also show those characters engaging in other risk behaviors. Similar rates of co-occurrence between PG-13 and R-rated films suggest that the Motion Picture Association of America ratings system is not sensitive to the joint portrayal of violence and alcohol, sex, and tobacco-related risk behaviors. The on-screen clustering of violence with other risk behaviors is cause for concern and worthy of additional research.
----------------------
Specificity of Early Movie Effects on Adolescent Sexual Behavior and Alcohol Use
Ross O'Hara et al.
Social Science & Medicine, November 2013, Pages 200-207
Abstract:
Adolescents' movie sex exposure (MSE) and movie alcohol exposure (MAE) have been shown to influence later sexual behavior and drinking, respectively. No study to date, however, has tested whether these effects generalize across behaviors. This study examined the concurrent influences of early (i.e., before age 16) MSE and MAE on subsequent risky sex and alcohol use among a national sample of 1,228 U.S. adolescents. Participants reported their health behaviors and movie viewing up to six times between 2003 and 2009 in telephone interviews. The Beach method was used to create a population-based estimate of each participant's MSE and MAE, which were then entered into a structural equation model (SEM) to predict lifetime risky sex and past month alcohol use at ages 18-21. For both men and women, MAE predicted alcohol use, mediated by age of initiation of heavy episodic drinking (HED) and age of sexual debut; MAE also predicted risky sex via age of sexual debut. Among men only, MSE indirectly predicted risky sex and alcohol use. Findings indicated that early exposure to risk content from movies had both specific and general effects on later risk-taking, but gender differences were evident: for men, MSE was a stronger predictor than MAE, but for women, only MAE predicted later risk behavior. These results have implications for future media research, prevention programs for adolescent sex and alcohol use, and movie ratings that can guide parents' decisions as to which movies are appropriate for their children.