Media
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Industry Expertise (4)
Media - Broadcast
Entertainment
Education/Learning
Research
Areas of Expertise (6)
Stereotyping
Media Violence
Media portrayals
Emotional and cognitive effects of media
Positive media psychology
Reality television
Biography
Mary Beth Oliver is a Distinguished Professor of Media Studies and the co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory in the College of Communications at Penn State. Her specialties are in media and psychology, and she focuses on the psychological effects of media and on viewers’ attraction to or enjoyment of media content. She has additional expertise in the emotional and cognitive effects of media, media portrayals, media violence, reality television and stereotyping.
Oliver’s research is widely published, and she has won multiple prizes for it, including most recently the 2015 Dean's Award for Excellence in Research in the College of Communications at Penn State.
Education (3)
University of Wisconsin at Madison: Ph.D., Communication Arts 1991
University of Wisconsin at Madison: M.A., Communication Arts 1988
Virginia Tech: B.A., Communication Studies 1986
Links (3)
Media Appearances (4)
Bellisario College faculty identifies emotions in media messages
Penn State News online
2017-07-19
Jessica Myrick was a multimedia journalist for the public radio/TV station in Bloomington, Indiana, when she gained an intense interest in how people responded to her stories. She began auditing communications courses at nearby Indiana University to get a perspective on how readers and viewers reacted to news stories. That’s when it clicked.
Oliver earns mentorship award from International Communication Association
Penn State News online
2017-05-31
Mary Beth Oliver, distinguished professor in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State, was honored with the B. Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award from the International Communication Association (ICA).
Doctors take a hard look at movie villains, warts and all
CNN online
2017-04-05
The first thing people tend to notice about Crystal Hodges is her birthmark: a red and purple patch, called a port-wine stain, that covers the left side of her face. As a child, a bully likened her to a notorious Batman villain.
Who Is Attracted to Inspiring Media?
Huffington Post online
2016-10-18
Cat videos are hilarious, no doubt about that. But videos of altruism—like a bear saving a crow from drowning or a man in the subway giving his T-shirt to a homeless person—also make us somehow feel good inside.
Articles (5)
The relationship between elevation, connectedness, and compassionate love in meaningful films.
Psychology of Popular Media Culture
Sophie H Janicke, Mary Beth Oliver
2017 Expanding on the research of meaningful entertainment media and its effects, this study investigated the relationship between experiences related to elevation responses to film. Whereas research thus far has focused primarily on portrayals of altruism to elicit elevation, the results of this study show that portrayals of connectedness, love, and kindness in meaningful films are also able to elicit feelings of elevation. Moreover, elevation mediated the relationship between meaningful films and feelings of connectedness toward the transcendent, close others, and toward one’s family; compassionate love toward close others; and compassionate motivation to love and be good to humanity. The study demonstrates the potential of meaningful films to increase experiences of connectedness to the transcendent, which ultimately can enhance our concern about the well-being of others, and motivation to be more compassionate even to strangers. Implications for the scholarship of positive media psychology are discussed.
Fun Versus Meaningful Video Game Experiences: A Qualitative Analysis of User Responses
The Computer Games Journal
Ryan Rogers, Julia Woolley, Brett Sherrick, Nicholas David Bowman, Mary Beth Oliver
2017 Emerging research on video games has suggested that feelings of both enjoyment and meaningfulness can be elicited from gameplay. Studies have shown enjoyment and meaningfulness evaluations to be associated with discrete elements of video games (ratings of gameplay and narrative, respectively), but have relied on closed-end data analysis. The current study analyzed participants’ open-ended reviews of either their “most fun” or “most meaningful” video game experience (N = 575, randomly assigned to either condition). Results demonstrated that “fun” games were explained in terms of gameplay mechanics, and “meaningful” games were explained in terms of connections with players and in-game characters.
Entertainment Effects: Media Appreciation
The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects
Mary Beth Oliver, Erica Bailey, Arienne Ferchaud, Chun Yang
2017 The experience of media entertainment can be more than laughs and pleasure—it can also include moving, contemplative, and inspiring moments that are deeply appreciated. The experience of media appreciation encompasses a range of affective and cognitive responses reflecting gratifications associated with the consumption of meaningful entertainment, which itself grapples with questions of life purpose and human virtue. Outcomes associated with media gratification are (among others) an increased sense of well-being, a feeling of greater connectedness with others, and a heightened motivation for altruistic behavior.
Video games as meaningful entertainment experiences.
Psychology of Popular Media Culture
Mary Beth Oliver, Nicholas David Bowman, Julia K Woolley, Ryan Rogers, Brett I Sherrick, Mun-Young Chung
2016 We conducted an experiment to examine individuals’ perceptions of enjoyable and meaningful video games and the game characteristics and dimensions of need satisfaction associated with enjoyment and appreciation. Participants (N = 512) were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups that asked them to recall a game that they found either particularly fun or particularly meaningful, and to then rate their perceptions of the game that they recalled. Enjoyment was high for both groups, though appreciation was higher in the meaningful- than fun-game condition. Further, enjoyment was most strongly associated with gameplay characteristics and satisfaction of needs related to competency and autonomy, whereas appreciation was most strongly associated with story characteristics and satisfaction of needs related to insight and relatedness.
Broadcasting one world: How watching online videos can elicit elevation and reduce stereotypes
New Media & Society
Nicole Krämer, Sabrina C Eimler, German Neubaum, Stephan Winter, Leonie Rösner, Mary Beth Oliver
2016 Research on non-hedonic entertainment suggests the experience of elevation as an important construct leading to beneficial outcomes such as prosocial motivation. This study builds on first findings in this realm by distinguishing between different meaningful media contents. In a 3 × 4 between-subjects online experiment, we varied type of video (beauty of the earth, unity of humankind, portrayals of human kindness, and funny control videos) and context of proliferation (presentation on an unknown video platform or on YouTube with low vs high number of views). Meaningful videos indeed led to greater elevation, more universal orientation, and prosocial motivation—with videos showing human kindness standing out against other forms of meaningful videos. Human kindness videos additionally fostered more positive attitudes toward stereotyped groups—mediated by the feeling of elevation and the subsequent feeling of universal orientation.
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