Men's tendency to exhibit withdrawal behaviors during affective communication has been shown to be a point of contention in romantic discord. The current study was designed to examine whether men's desire to facilitate a discussion regarding affective communication would be affected by media portrayals of subtle versus blatant withdrawal; the latter epitomized by a hypermasculine man who opts to leave an emotionally tense situation, while it is evident that his distressed female partner desires communication. To this end, male and female college students participated in an alleged memory experiment for media clips taken from Hollywood films. Viewing a blatant (but not a subtle) withdrawal clip caused men to shy away from facilitating affective communication as compared to controls. This finding was not obvious, given people's documented tendency to attempt to disconfirm group stereotypes when a prime is blatant. We situate findings at the intersection of social psychological and media theorizing.
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