ABSTRACT

People harbor unique biases about the relative influence of popular media on themselves compared to others. Broadly, they expect others to experience greater harm from exposure to negative depictions (e.g., violent content) and to derive fewer benefits from exposure to positive depictions (e.g., educational content). The current experiment examined if these biases impact how parents monitor their children’s television exposure, specifically programs about same-sex attraction. Parents (N = 702) watched a cartoon about a young girl who expresses romantic interest in another girl. Although biases emerged with regard to parents’ beliefs that this content would harm or benefit their own (vs. other) children, these biases did not influence their monitoring intentions. Instead, parents with conservative (vs. liberal) attitudes perceived the show as more threatening and less valuable for all children, which enhanced their desire to criticize, restrict, and censor that content.

摘要

与其他人相比，人们对流行媒体对自己的相对影响怀有独特的偏见。从广义上讲，他们期望其他人因接触负面描述（例如，暴力内容）而遭受更大的伤害，而从接触正面描述（例如，教育内容）中获得的好处更少。目前的实验检查了这些偏见是否会影响父母如何监控孩子的电视曝光，特别是关于同性吸引力的节目。父母（N= 702) 看了一部关于一个年轻女孩对另一个女孩表达浪漫兴趣的卡通片。尽管关于父母认为该内容会伤害或有益于他们自己（相对于其他）孩子的信念出现了偏见，但这些偏见并未影响他们的监控意图。相反，持有保守（相对于自由主义）态度的父母认为该节目对所有孩子更具威胁性且价值较低，这增强了他们批评、限制和审查该内容的愿望。