Psychology of Popular Media

Article	Citations
Facebook-based social support and health: A systematic review.	72
The use of social networking sites, body image dissatisfaction, and body dysmorphic disorder: A systematic review of psychological research.	65
Every (Insta)Gram counts? Applying cultivation theory to explore the effects of Instagram on young users’ body image.	38
Lack of consensus among scholars on the issue of video game “addiction”.	36
Personality as a predictor of cybersecurity behavior.	31
Alone and online: Understanding the relationships between social media, solitude, and psychological adjustment.	26
Cognitive abilities of action video game and role-playing video game players: Data from a massive open online course.	23
Are there two types of escapism? Exploring a dualistic model of escapism in digital gaming and online streaming.	23
Escaping the pandemic present: The relationship between nostalgic media use, escapism, and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.	21
Consuming memes during the COVID pandemic: Effects of memes and meme type on COVID-related stress and coping efficacy.	20
Solving the puzzle of null violent media effects.	20
“My smartphone is an extension of myself”: A holistic qualitative exploration of the impact of using a smartphone.	19
A closer look at appearance and social media: Measuring activity, self-presentation, and social comparison and their associations with emotional adjustment.	19
The impact of fitspiration content on body satisfaction and negative mood: An experimental study.	18
Coping with COVID-19 stress: The role of media consumption in emotion- and problem-focused coping.	16
Entertainment motivations and gaming-specific gratifications as antecedents of digital game enjoyment and appreciation.	15
Perceptions of fake news, misinformation, and disinformation amid the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative exploration.	14
The psychology of likes: Relevance of feedback on Instagram and relationship to self-esteem and social status.	14
Disappearing in the age of hypervisibility: Definition, context, and perceived psychological consequences of social media ghosting.	13
He does not look like video games made him do it: Racial stereotypes and school shootings.	13
Video game players’ personality traits: An exploratory cluster approach to identifying gaming preferences.	13
Social comparison and state–trait dynamics: Viewing image-conscious Instagram accounts affects college students’ mood and anxiety.	12
Unsatisfied needs as a predictor of obsessive passion for videogame play.	12
The relationship between social short-form videos and youth’s well-being: It depends on usage types and content categories.	11
Using narrative media to satisfy intrinsic needs: Connecting parasocial relationships, retrospective imaginative involvement, and self-determination theory.	11

Associations between parental media monitoring, media use, and internalizing symptoms during adolescence.	11
Who are GamerGate? A descriptive study of individuals involved in the GamerGate controversy.	11
Binge-watching in times of COVID-19: A longitudinal examination of changes in affect and TV series consumption patterns during lockdown.	11
Motivation for different Facebook activities and well-being: A daily experience sampling study.	11
Dark personality traits and anger in cyber aggression perpetration: Is moral disengagement to blame?	10
How audience involvement and social norms foster vulnerability to celebrity-based dietary misinformation.	10
Fiction and morality: Investigating the associations between reading exposure, empathy, morality, and moral judgment.	10
Not all media multitasking is the same: The frequency of media multitasking depends on cognitive and affective characteristics of media combinations.	9
Self-control and need satisfaction in primetime: Television, social media, and friends can enhance regulatory resources via perceived autonomy and competence.	9
Policy on unreliable game addiction diagnoses puts the cart before the horse.	8
Fandom, social media, and identity work: The emergence of virtual community through the pronoun “we”.	8
A new avenue to reach out for the stars: The association of celebrity worship with problematic and nonproblematic social media use.	8
Inspired to mask up: The effect of uplifting media messages on attitudes about wearing face masks among Democrats and Republicans.	8
Looking through a filtered lens: Negative social comparison on social media and suicidal ideation among young adults.	8
College students’ media habits, concern for themselves and others, and mental health in the era of COVID-19.	7
The effects of interaction fidelity on game experience in virtual reality.	7
Selfie appearance investment and peer feedback concern: Multimethod investigation of adolescent selfie practices and adjustment.	7
The role of need satisfaction in explaining intentions to purchase and play in Pokémon Go and the moderating role of prior experience.	7
“Get out of my selfie!” Narcissism, gender, and motives for self-photography among emerging adults.	7
Examining the effects of exposure to a sexualized female video game protagonist on women’s body image.	7
Parenting and tweens’ media use during the COVID-19 pandemic.	7
“To be yourself or your selfies, that is the question”: The moderation role of gender, nationality, and privacy settings in the relationship between selfie-engagement and body shame.	7
Tourism, migration, and the exodus to virtual worlds: Place attachment in massively multiplayer online gamers.	7
“Ur a freakin goddess!”: Examining appearance commentary on Instagram.	7
Who finds media violence funny? Testing the effects of media violence exposure and dark personality traits.	6
When comedy goes to extremes: The influence of ideology and social identity on source liking, credibility, and counterarguing.	6
Fear of missing out and compulsive social media use as mediators between OCD symptoms and social media fatigue.	6
Reducing social media use improves appearance and weight esteem in youth with emotional distress.	6
Gotta catch ‘em all: Exploring the use of Pokémon Go to enhance cognition and affect.	6
Twitch in the time of quarantine: The role of engagement in needs fulfillment.	6
The role of envy in linking active and passive social media use to memory functioning.	5
Queer folklore: Examining the influence of fandom on sexual identity development and fluidity acceptance among Taylor Swift fans.	5
Loving to hate the Kardashians: Examining the interaction of character liking and hate-watching on the social influence of a reality TV show.	5
The woman in the (rearview) mirror: Viewers’ attitudes toward objectified car selfies of Black and White women.	5
What babies, infants, and toddlers hear on Fox/Disney BabyTV: An exploratory study.	5
Predicting internet addiction with the dark triad: Beyond the five-factor model.	5
Disparaged dads? A content analysis of depictions of fathers in U.S. sitcoms over time.	5
“I need to just have a couple of White claws and play animal crossing tonight”: Parents coping with video games during the COVID-19 pandemic.	5
Is it painful? Playing violent video games affects brain responses to painful pictures: An event-related potential study.	5
Ontological insecurity, nostalgia, and social media: Viewing YouTube videos of old TV commercials reestablishes continuity of the self over time.	5
Personality perception in Game of Thrones: Character consensus and assumed similarity.	4
The impact of domain-specific interest on exemplification effects in sports media.	4
Social norms and social identity explain the selection and anticipated enjoyment of in-group versus out-group films.	4
Adolescents’ perceptions of nicotine vaping-related social media content.	4
Further tests of the media violence–aggression link: Replication and extension of the 7 Nations Project with multiple Latinx samples.	4
Mimetic representations of the COVID-19 pandemic: An analysis of objectification, anchoring, and identification processes in coronavirus memes.	4
Women’s exposure to sexualized TV, self-objectification, and consideration of cosmetic surgery: The role of age.	4
Empathy, narcissism, alexithymia, and social media use.	4
Problematic video gaming is associated with poor sleep quality, diet quality, and personal hygiene.	4
Mirror, mirror on the wall: The effect of listening to body positive music on implicit and explicit body esteem.	4

Extensions of the proteus effect on intergroup aggression in the real world.	4
What does the Cat in the Hat know about that? An analysis of the educational and unrealistic content of children’s narrative science media.	4
The effects of daily Instagram use on state self-objectification, well-being, and mood for young women.	4
Achieving the ideal-self while harming my relationship: Examining associations between self-discrepancy, instagram photo manipulation, and romantic relationship outcomes.	4
Love, desire, and problematic behaviors: Exploring young adults’ smartphone use from a uses and gratifications perspective.	4
Navigating a muscular and sexualized Instagram feed: An experimental study examining how Instagram affects both heterosexual and nonheterosexual men’s body image.	4
Discovering hidden digital producers: Understanding motivation and creativity in social media production.	4
Celebrity worship in the United Arab Emirates: An examination of its association with problematic internet use, maladaptive daydreaming, and desire for fame.	4
Pressure, preoccupation, and porn: The relationship between internet pornography, gendered attitudes, and sexual coercion in young adults.	3
Identification with characters in parasocial relationships predicts sharing their personality traits.	3
The dark side of antiheroes: Antisocial tendencies and affinity for morally ambiguous characters.	3
Digital media impacts multiple aspects of self-representation: An investigation of flow, agency, presence, character identification, and time perception.	3
If your girl only knew: The effects of infidelity-themed song lyrics on cognitions related to infidelity.	3
Women in fiction: Bechdel-Wallace Test results for the highest-grossing movies of the last four decades.	3
Recognition as a measure of television exposure: Multiple measures and their relationship to theory of mind.	3
Predicting the use of YouTube and content exposure among 10–12-year-old children: Dispositional, developmental, and social factors.	3
Apologies in the #MeToo moment.	3
The role of cliffhangers in serial entertainment: An experiment on cliffhangers’ effects on enjoyment, arousal, and intention to continue watching.	3
#Instabod versus #BoPo: An experimental study of the effects of viewing idealized versus body-positive content on collegiate males’ and females’ body satisfaction.	3
Just my imagination: The influence of celebrities’ romantic relationship announcements on romance fans and friendship fans.	3
Examining the postpartum period through social media: A content and thematic analysis of #postpartum Instagram posts.	3
Is that a real woman? Reality TV viewing and black viewers’ beliefs about femininity.	3
Interactive decision-making in entertainment movies: A mixed-methods approach.	3
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: Simultaneously examining the association between three social networking sites and relationship stress and satisfaction.	3
Celebrity hate: Credibility and belief in a just world in prediction of celebrity hate.	3
Conjuring up the departed in virtual reality: The good, the bad, and the potentially ugly.	3
Female-oriented dating sims in China: Players’ parasocial relationships, gender attitudes, and romantic beliefs.	3
The costs of sexualization: Examining viewers’ perceptions of sexualized profile owners in online dating.	3
Does gender matter? Comic hosts, audience reception, and the processing of political satire content.	2
Be complex, be very complex: Evaluating the integrative complexity of main characters in horror films.	2
Self-compassion and women's experience of social media content portraying body positivity and appearance ideals.	2
Better than scrolling: Digital detox in the search for the ideal self.	2
Exploring identity and coping among Black viewers of Marvel’s Black Panther.	2
Measurement and correlates of celebrity culture hate.	2
One of us or one of them? How “peripheral” adverts on social media affect the social categorization of sociopolitical message givers.	2
Development and validation of the Female Gamer Stereotypes Scale.	2
Exploring the links between perceptions of protection and control online and social connectedness among socially anxious youth.	2
Whose bed have your boots been under? People's expected responses toward celebrities’ romantic relationship infidelity.	2
Why lurk, why join, and why post? The uses and gratifications of lurkers, infrequent posters, and frequent posters in the brand community context.	2
Laughing about a health risk? Alcohol in comedy series and its connection to humor.	2
Situational and personal determinants of adolescents’ attitudes toward online celebrity bashing.	2
Rage in video gaming, characteristics of loss of control among gamers: A qualitative study.	2
Unemployment rate predicts anger in popular music lyrics: Evidence from top 10 songs in the United States and Germany from 1980 to 2017.	2
Do you “like” me? The roles of Facebook reassurance seeking and attachment style on depression.	2
Less is more when rating extraversion: Behavioral cues and interpersonal perceptions on the platform of facebook.	2
Should the cat in the hat keep talking like that? Educational correlates of anthropomorphism in children's science media.	2
That bygone feeling: Controller ergonomics and nostalgia in video game play.	2
Linking adolescents’ exposure to and identification with reality TV to materialism, narcissism, and entitlement.	2
Playing with privilege: Examining demographics in choosing player-characters in video games.	2
Select your character: Individual needs and avatar choice.	2
The prosocial and cathartic potential of immersive media on eudaimonic entertainment experiences.	2
The Big Five and beyond: Which personality traits do predict movie and reading preferences?	2
Entertainment and social media use during social distancing: Examining trait differences in transportability and need for social assurance.	2
Directional is the new null? A comment on Bushman and Anderson (2021).	2
When the camera does lie: Selfies are dishonest indicators of dominance.	2
Spoilers ahead, proceed with caution: How engagement, enjoyment, and FoMO predict avoidance of spoilers.	1
Parent–child communication about gender and race through the films Black Panther and Wonder Woman: The roles of parental mediation and media literacy.	1
Supplemental Material for Parasocial Relationships as Functional Social Alternatives During Pandemic-Induced Social Distancing	1
Postexposure engagement with more and less eudaimonic films: 10-year patterns of response and the role of parasocial relationship and retrospective imaginative involvement.	1
Strange new worlds: Social content in popular Star Trek fanfiction versus commercial novels.	1
The associations between parents’ technoference, their problematic use of digital technology, and the psychological state of their children.	1
Intergroup contact with a virtual refugee: Reducing prejudice through a cooperative game.	1
Binge-watching to feel better: Mental health gratifications sought and obtained through binge-watching.	1
Belongingness needs mediate the link between attachment anxiety and parasocial relationship strength.	1
Perceptions of health changes and support for self-limiting social media use among young adults in Finland—A qualitative study.	1
Examining the self- and others-oriented effects of exposure to a mental health narrative.	1
I’ll see your beautified photo and raise you one: An experimental investigation of the effect of edited social media photo exposure.	1
The fairest of them all: Representations of bodies across Disney animated films from 1937 to 2019.	1
Social media usage is associated with lower knowledge about anxiety and indiscriminate use of anxiety coping strategies.	1
Character immersion in video games as a form of acting.	1
Problematic smartphone use versus “technoference”: Examining their unique predictive power on relational and life satisfaction.	1
Editorial.	1
Prejudice norms in online gaming: Game context and gamer identification as predictors of the acceptability of prejudice.	1
The portrayal of mental illness in popular children's programs on Netflix: A content and thematic analysis.	1
An examination of viewers’ mental model drawings after they watched a transgender-themed TV narrative.	1
The role of different screen media devices, child dysregulation, and parent screen media use in children’s self-regulation.	1
Connecting the pro-recovery eating disorder community: An analysis of the language on science, Twitter, and Reddit.	1
The role of different characters on story-consistent attitudes and self-reported mental health-related behavior change among viewers of 13 Reasons Why.	1
Random app of kindness: Evaluating the potential of a smartphone intervention to impact adolescents’ empathy, prosocial behavior, and aggression.	1
Losing parasocial friendships over celebrity politics: A cognitive discrepancies approach.	1

Magical thinking and fans of fictional texts.	1
Are you still watching? Antecedents and outcomes of binge-watching.	1
The green side of parasocial romantic relationships: An exploratory investigation of parasocial jealousy.	1
Hetero-(sex)pectations: Exploring the link between compulsive pornography consumption, heterosexual script endorsement, and hookups among emerging adults.	1
Big data, actually: Examining systematic messaging in 188 romantic comedies using unsupervised machine learning.	1
“You have to know how to live with it without getting to the addiction part”: British young adult experiences of smartphone overreliance and disconnectivity.	1
Exploring the association between Twitch use and well-being.	1
Black lives matter, Black stories matter, Black voices matter: Black Lives Matter protests, COVID-19, and streaming services.	1
Supplemental Material for Disappearing in the Age of Hypervisibility: Definition, Context, and Perceived Psychological Consequences of Social Media Ghosting	1
Unfulfilled romantic needs: Effects of relationship status, presence of romantic partners, and relationship satisfaction on romantic parasocial phenomena.	1
How sex is referenced in Netflix original, adolescent-directed series: A content analysis of subtitles.	1
The effect of gender stereotype content, program congruity, and liking on unconventional French television advertisement recall and purchase intention.	1
Ariel, Aurora, or Anna? Disney princess body size as a predictor of body esteem and gendered play in early childhood.	1
Using comics and tweets to raise awareness about gender biases in STEM.	1
Sorority see, sorority do: How social identity and media engagement relate to in-group stereotyping and self-stereotyping.	1
Recognizing the similarities and appreciating the differences? Content choices and perceived (dis)similarity with TV show characters among youth.	1
Crime in your area: Use of neighborhood apps is associated with inaccurate perceptions of higher local crime rates.	1
Subtle threat cues in marketing horror and children’s entertainment.	1
Content of social media fitspiration and its effect on physical activity-related behavior: A systematic review.	1
The dark triad of personality and hero/villain status as predictors of parasocial relationships with comic book characters.	1
How popular are pop stars? The false consensus of perceived celebrity popularity.	1
The Virtual Violence Against Women Scale (VVAWS): A measure of players’ experiences of violence against women in video games.	1
Looking to the stars: Validating the existence of para-couple relationships among emerging adults.	1