Prosocial-Media Use,Empatby,and Prosocial Bebavior 3 design allowed for stronger tests of our causal mediation Similarly,ratings on the two violent-content items were d that oducts liste h of the（up to)nine s over time. ideo s)had a fre content score.and a violentcontent score.such sefrat Study 1 ings of media content have been shown to correlate validities si expert ratings Method 13 ath ed b ct al an Particibants.This cross-sectional correlational studv the explored relations among prosocial-media use,empathy. perspective-taking subscales from Interpersonal and prosocial behavior across cultures Reactivity Index (IRI;Davis,1980,1983;14 items).The Samples wer even cou (2 stable pe onality cha ng many (200 participants).lapan (395 I would fee in nia (233 participants),and the United States (30 Items were rated on a scale from 1 (does mot describe me well)to 5(describes me very well).Empathy scores were nple of 2,202 adol scents and 0.09 .49%0 computed y averaging across the 14 items the Brie age of 21 years (D. e had )an cial Scale (adar ad fr e.c 1998:10 items).An example item is"I try to be helpful to Participants people even if I don't expect to see them ever again. either y aine Items were rated on a scale from 1(extremely uncbara racteristic of me).Score priateness to each Also as sed were gender,age,race,grade point country average.socioeconomic status.and parental education. Mec measured using of the Dill 2000. Particinants listed their three fvorite television shows Results three favorite movies,and three favorite video games Preliminary analyses.To calculate total prosocial separately for or played it ngor playing each favorite wateb/play 5 or more time and then summed these nine ducts.Violent-media Participants rated each of their listed television shows exposure was calculated similarly.Total screen time was compute ratings of how fre each conten (Ho quently th the on n74 as the These two item les that ran favorites.Dese ntive statistics for the seales in this stud from never to all the time.To capture the more active and are shown in Table 1.(See Section 1 of the Supplemental varied characteristics of video-game play we used two Material available online for correlations between the items to me cal conte game Ho main var grade poi average. How often do you he others in this Simila atly re ted to media habits or cial behavion two items were used to measure violent content in each these variables were excluded from further analyses.On game ("How en do characters try to physically injure the basis of geographical location and scores on the cul thi How o you try to dua m(H from 。nations into thre cultural For each vid game listed by the participant,ratings on the two prosocial-content items were averaged to creat States),collectivistic East European countries (Croatia a prosocial-con score font scor to the a),anc collectivistic East Asian countrie each a and Japan 17.203 Prosocial-Media Use, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior 3 design allowed for stronger tests of our causal mediation model. We hypothesized that prosocial-media use would predict increases in trait empathy and prosocial behavior over time. Study 1 Method Participants. This cross-sectional correlational study explored relations among prosocial-media use, empathy, and prosocial behavior across cultures. Samples were obtained in seven countries: Australia (426 participants), China (203 participants), Croatia (438 participants), Ger￾many (200 participants), Japan (395 participants), Roma￾nia (233 participants), and the United States (307 participants). The total sample of 2,202 adolescents and young adults was 40.0% male and 59.6% female (0.4% of participants did not report their gender) and had a mean age of 21 years (SD = 5.6). Measures. Participants responded to a questionnaire either online or in face-to-face interviews by trained research assistants. The choice of an online or in-person questionnaire was based on appropriateness to each country. Media use was measured using a version of the General Media Habits Questionnaire (C. A. Anderson & Dill, 2000; Gentile, Lynch, Linder, & Walsh, 2004). Participants listed their three favorite television shows, three favorite movies, and three favorite video games. They rated each show, movie, and game separately for how frequently they watched or played it (nine items; 5-point scale from watch/play once a month or less to watch/play 5 or more times a week). Participants rated each of their listed television shows and movies for prosocial content (“How often do charac￾ters help each other?”) and for violent content (“How often do characters try to physically injure each other?”). These two items were rated on 7-point scales that ranged from never to all the time. To capture the more active and varied characteristics of video-game play, we used two items to measure prosocial content in each game (“How often do characters help each other in this game?” and “How often do you help others in this game?”). Similarly, two items were used to measure violent content in each game (“How often do characters try to physically injure each other in this game?” and “How often do you try to physically injure players in this game?”). Again, 7-point scales ranging from never to all the time were used. For each video game listed by the participant, ratings on the two prosocial-content items were averaged to create a prosocial-content score comparable to the prosocial￾content score for each television show and movie. Similarly, ratings on the two violent-content items were averaged. Thus, each of the (up to) nine screen entertain￾ment products listed (three TV shows, three movies, three video games) had a frequency score, a prosocial￾content score, and a violent-content score. Such self-rat￾ings of media content have been shown to correlate highly with and yield validities similar to expert ratings (Gentile et al., 2009; Busching et al., 2013). Empathy was measured by the empathic-concern and perspective-taking subscales from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980, 1983; 14 items). The IRI measures empathy as a stable personality characteris￾tic. An example item is “Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place.” Items were rated on a scale from 1 (does not describe me well) to 5 (describes me very well). Empathy scores were computed by averaging across the 14 items. Prosocial behavior was measured using the Brief Prosocial Scale (adapted from P. C. Cheung, Ma, & Shek, 1998; 10 items). An example item is “I try to be helpful to people even if I don’t expect to see them ever again.” Items were rated on a scale from 1 (extremely uncharac￾teristic of me) to 7 (extremely characteristic of me). Scores were averaged across the 10 items. Also assessed were gender, age, race, grade point average, socioeconomic status, and parental education. Results Preliminary analyses. To calculate total prosocial￾media exposure, we multiplied the frequency of watch￾ing or playing each favorite television show, movie, and video game by its corresponding prosocial-content rating and then summed these nine products. Violent-media exposure was calculated similarly. Total screen time was computed by summing participants’ ratings of how fre￾quently they watched and played the television shows, movies, and video games that they had listed as their favorites. Descriptive statistics for the scales in this study are shown in Table 1. (See Section 1 of the Supplemental Material available online for correlations between the main variables.) Race, grade point average, socioeco￾nomic status, and parental education were not signifi￾cantly related to media habits or prosocial behaviors, so these variables were excluded from further analyses. On the basis of geographical location and scores on the cul￾tural dimension of individualism-collectivism (Hofstede, 1980; Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010), we divided the nations into three cultural groups: individualistic Western countries (Australia, Germany, and the United States), collectivistic East European countries (Croatia and Romania), and collectivistic East Asian countries (China and Japan). Downloaded from pss.sagepub.com by Cai Xing on December 17, 2013