Tuning in to hooking up : an analysis of television's influence on thoughts of hook ups and commitment

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on May 21, 2012).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Dr. Kevin WiseVita.Includes bibliographical references."July 2011"[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] The goal of this experiment was to provide a better understanding of whether television portrayals of sexual behavior in the absence of a committed relationship ("hooking up") versus similar portrayals within a committed relationship more easily bring about thoughts of commitment versus thoughts of hooking up. The current study used media priming measures to gauge whether these varying portrayals were more connected in memory with commitment versus non-commitment/casual sex. Participants viewed either three prime-time drama portrayals of hooking up, three prime-time drama portrayals of commitment, or three nonsexual clips. After viewing the clips, participants took part in a word stem completion task. Completed word stems were later coded as being hook up-related words, commitment-related words, sexual words that could not be distinguished as hook up or commitment, or nonsexual words. Additionally, measures average weekly television viewing, frequency of exposure to sexual television genres, gender, attitudes toward hooking up were taken to understand how each may moderate the relationship between priming condition and activation of hook up constructs relative to commitment constructs. Results showed only partial evidence of a priming effect, specifically for the commitment condition. Further, there was no indication that any of the moderator variables brought about interaction effects