research

Our research is driven by a central question:

How do media messages shape audiences’ thoughts and behaviors - for better and for worse?

Across entertainment, developmental, and political contexts, we study how media can encourage altruism toward others as well as personal well-being, but also how these same features can be leveraged by media creators to justify harm, exclusion, and violence. Using experiments and quantitative content analyses, our work examines the dynamic relationship between media and audiences across a range of contexts.

Entertainment Media, Immersion, & Moral Development

A core focus of our work examines how entertainment media influence moral judgments, emotions, and behavior in audiences across the lifespan. In adults and adolescents (ages 9-14), we study how audiences respond to key features of entertainment narratives such as characters’ moral behaviors and the outcomes they receive in narratives, humor, as well as the suspense imbued in narratives’ presentation. Our work shows that these narrative features systematically shape moral judgments, emotional engagement, and subsequent behavioral tendencies.

Using both traditional experiments and immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences, we examine how emotional engagement and motivation influence attention, enjoyment, and downstream behavioral outcomes.

Morality, Media, & Radicalization

A complementary line of research examines morality at its extreme: how moral language and moral emotions are leveraged to justify radicalization and violence. Contrary to the view that extremists are morally disengaged, our work shows that violent groups often frame their actions as morally necessary, appealing to widely shared concerns such as loyalty and justice for an ingroup.

Using experimental methods and quantitative content analyses of extremist media, we study how moral framing, threat narratives, and immersive messaging can “blind” audiences to harm, facilitating recruitment and sustained commitment to violent causes.