James B. Weaver

Exploring the social and sexual “reality” of contemporary pornography

What are the social roles assumed by men and women in contemporary sexually explicit movies, and in what contexts are their actions portrayed? Perhaps more important, have the predominant themes of pornography shifted in response to the public scrutiny and criticism popular in the mid‐1980s? In this investigation we addressed these questions using a random sample of 50 pornographic videotapes drawn from an archive of essentially all such materials targeted for heterosexual consumers available in the international marketplace from 1979 to 1988. The findings revealed that some thematic aspects of modern pornographic movies have shifted over time. Significant increases were evident in the frequency of portrayals of sex between casual acquaintances, males engaging in sex with female superordinates, female characters persuading males into sexual activities, and the performance of fellatio as the initial sexual behavior among heterosexual partners. Over time, a significant decrease in the number of depictions i...

The Listening Styles Profile (LSP-16): Development and Validation of an Instrument to Assess Four Listening Styles

Abstract The Listening Styles Profile (LSP-16) is a sixteen-item inventory designed to assess four distinct approaches—labeled people-, action-, content-, and time-oriented styles—to receiving information. Responses from a large sample of young adults were employed to evaluate the psychometric characteristics of the LSP-16. Specifically, an extensive scrutiny of the factor structure underlying the LSP-16 was conducted and the internal consistency, stability, and reliability of the four style subscales was assessed. The data at hand suggest that the Listening Styles Profile (LSP-16) may have considerable utility in clinical, training, and research environments for measurement and study of the ways that people prefer to listen.

THE GENDER GAP IN THE ENJOYMENT OF TELEVISED SPORTS

Does spectator gender exert an appreciable influence on the enjoyment of sports? Are men generally more intrigued with athletic competition, or might there be a gender gap in enjoyment that is specific to particular sports? The findings of the present investigation show that male and female spectators enjoy distinctly different types of sports. Males were found to be partial to football, ice hockey, basketball, soccer, baseball, boxing, and karate. Females, by contrast, expressed greater enjoyment of gymnastics, skiing, diving, and figure skating. The enjoyment differentiation by gender suggests that men extract gratification mostly from seeing athletic confrontations that emphasize combative coordination, whereas women are more gratified when seeing competition that avoids overt aggressiveness and highlights the stylish movement of individual bodies in terms of beauty.

Enjoyment and Consumption of Defiant Rock Music as a Function of Adolescent Rebelliousness.

Trait rebelliousness and enjoyment of defiant or nondefiant rock music videos were assessed in male and female high school students. Data were analyzed in a 2 X 2 X 2 mixed‐measures design, with subject rebelliousness (low, high) and gender as independent‐measures factors and defiance expressed in rock music (absent, present) as a repeated‐measures factor. Rebellious male students outnumbered rebellious female students by a factor of three. Counter to expectations, highly rebellious students did not enjoy defiant rock videos more than did their less rebellious peers, nor did they consume more defiant rock music than did their peers. Highly rebellious students enjoyed rock videos devoid of defiance significantly less than did their peers, and they consumed significantly less nondefiant rock music than did their peers. Rebellious youths, then, appear to be partial to defiance as a salient theme in rock music, mostly by avoiding rock that is devoid of this theme.

Psychoticism in the effect of prolonged exposure to gratuitous media violence on the acceptance of violence as a preferred means of conflict resolution

Abstract Within a prolonged-exposure, delayed-measurement paradigm, respondents consumed films that featured no violence, old-style violence, gratuitous violence, or horror. Both male and female respondents had been classified as low vs high in psychoticism weeks prior to consumption. Delayed measures were: (1) the acceptance of violence as a means of conflict resolution; (2) crime apprehension; (3) evaluation of police brutality; and (4) the endorsement of the death penalty for perpetrators of violent crime. Female respondents, whether low or high in psychoticism, were not appreciably affected by the consumption of any of the violent genres. Similarly, male respondents in the lower half of psychoticism were not appreciably affected. In contrast, male respondents in the upper half of psychoticism, estimated to represent half the population, were significantly affected: Consumption of gratuitous violence consistently fostered greater acceptance of violence as a means of conflict resolution. Consumption of old-style violence and horror did not. Crime apprehension was not appreciably affected by genres differing in amount and type of violence featured. Neither were evaluations of police brutality. However, respondents, especially male respondents and respondents in the upper half of psychoticism, endorsed the death penalty more strongly after gratuitous violence than after consumption of alternative genres.

Personality and movie preferences: a comparison of American and German audiences

Abstract The impact of personality type (extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism) and culture (American, German) on preferences for contemporary movies was explored. Consistent with theoretical expectations, the findings revealed that movie preferences were mediated by both the psychoticism and extraversion personality types and by an interaction between psychoticism by culture.

Profile: Perception of threatening events in the emotional aftermath of a televised college football game

Affective reactions to a football game were expected and found to influence the perception of a threatening event outside of sports. The outlook of fans distressed about their teams defeat proved to be more pessimistic than that of fans exuberant about their teams victory. In December 1990, distraught fans deemed a feared war with Iraq significantly more likely and devastating, in loss of life, than did their ecstatic counterparts.

Exploring the Relation between Personality and the Appreciation of Rock Music

Scores on five personality characteristics, extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism as well as reactive and proactive rebelliousness, and the appreciation of soft/nonrebellious and hard/rebellious rock-music videotapes were explored. After completing the personality tests, female and male undergraduates were exposed to rock-music videotapes and asked to rate various aspects of their enjoyment of each. Analysis indicated that psychoticism and reactive rebelliousness were associated with enjoyment in a parallel fashion. Specifically, respondents scoring high on psychoticism or high on reactive rebelliousness enjoyed hard/rebellious rock-music videotapes more than did their peers scoring low on psychoticism or low on reactive rebelliousness. The reverse was evident for the enjoyment of soft/nonrebellious rock-music videotapes. In contrast, scores on extraversion, neuroticism, and proactive rebelliousness were not associated with enjoyment. Gender differences emerged, however; women (n = 78) enjoyed soft/nonrebellious rock music more than did men (n = 60); and conversely, men enjoyed hard/rebellious rock music more than did women.

Listening styles and empathy

Linkages between four listening styles (people‐, action‐, content‐, and time‐oriented) and three constructs of empathy (empathetic responsiveness, perspective taking, and sympathetic responsiveness) were examined. Data from an extensive survey reveal that individuals scoring high on the people listening style reported a tendency to be sympathetic but not empathetic with regard to another in an aversive situation. Conversely, individuals scoring high on either the action or time listening styles exhibited a tendency to feel little concern or pity for others in need. And, those scoring high on the content listening style exhibited the ability to interact with emotionally upset others without experiencing a congruent affective response. Taken together, these findings provide a strong foundation for further research into the links between individual differences in listening styles and empathy.

Effects of Disturbing News on Recall of Subsequently Presented News

Both male and female respondents were exposed to a television news program. Immediately following exposure to either an emotionally disturbing or an innocuous, affectively neutral news story, respondents watched a sequence of standard news items. The placement of these items was systematically varied through three time slots of 90 s each. In the two preexposure conditions, all items appeared equally often in all time slots, thus allowing comparisons over time as well as at given times. A surprise information-acquisition test was administered for the contents of the news items. Compared with the control condition, the acquisition of information from the news items following the emotionally charged, disturbing story was significantly poorer for a period of 3 min. No appreciable difference in information acquisition was observed thereafter. The apparent impairment of information acquisition, processing, storage, and retrieval after emotionally charged news stories is discussed in terms of emotion theory. Practical implications are considered.