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Publication

Cooling down or charging up? Engagement with aggressive entertainment contents as an emotion regulation strategy of boredom and anger

Book Contribution - Chapter

In this chapter we argue that the selection of, and engagement with, aggressive entertainment contents can be an emotion regulation strategy, or a way of influencing the nature, expression and intensity of an experienced emotion. We explain this in the context of two, often experienced, negative emotions that have been linked to aggression in the general emotion literature: anger and boredom. By first defining these two emotions and describing their typical action tendencies, we aim to show how the engagement with aggressive media content can be a way of regulating these emotions, sometimes in functional but also in dysfunctional ways. We hereby extend the scope from passively watching aggressive entertainment contents to actively participating and enjoying aggressive acts in the online environment (e.g. online bashing, trolling and cyberbullying).
Book: The Oxford handbook of entertainment theory / Vorderer, P. [edit.]; Klimmt, Ch. [edit.]
Pages: 479 - 497
ISBN:978-0-19-007221-6
Publication year:2021
Keywords:H1 Book chapter
BOF-keylabel:yes
Accessibility:Open