The COVID-19 pandemic created a historic opportunity to study the link between identity threat and individuals' temporary expansion of the boundaries of the self (TEBOTS) through stories. Concurrently, the relationship between eudaimonic entertainment processes and self-expansion, particularly feeling moved and self-awareness, was examined. A quasi-experiment was conducted with an online sample (N = 172) that was randomly assigned to watch either a tragic drama or comedy. Results showed that key TEBOTS predictions were largely confirmed for boundary expansion and the outcomes of narrative engagement and entertainment gratifications. Although identity threat was negatively associated with positive coping with the pandemic, this relationship turned positive when mediated by boundary expansion. Further, exposure to tragedy raised feelings of "being moved," which, in turn, was linked to self-perceptual depth and expanded boundaries of the self downstream. The present findings suggest that self-expansion through story consumption could benefit viewers' positive reframing of challenging life experiences.
Research has shown that television viewing cultivates a materialistic worldview in children. However, other socialization factors may also influence children's materialism. The current research tests two socialization pathways of parental influence: (a) an indirect path in which parents pass on their own materialism to their children, and the parent's materialism is at least partly the result of a parent cultivation effect (parent cultivation); (b) an indirect path in which parents pass on their television viewing behavior to their children, which in turn positively predicts the children's level of materialism (child cultivation). The results of two studies (initial study plus direct replication, N = 818) of U.S. parent-child dyads with 14- to 17-year-old children support the first path but not the second: The relation between parent TV viewing and child materialism is mediated through parent materialism. Child TV viewing is positively correlated with child materialism, but is nonsignificant when parent materialism is controlled.