Reinforcing Spirals Model: Conceptualizing the Relationship Between Media Content Exposure and the Development and Maintenance of Attitudes

Abstract

The Reinforcing Spirals Model (RSM, Citation Withheld) has two primary purposes. First, the RSM provides a general framework for conceptualizing media use as part of a dynamic, endogenous process combining selective exposure and media effects that may be drawn on by theorists concerned with a variety of social processes and effects. Second, the RSM utilizes a systems-theory perspective to describe how patterns of mediated and interpersonal communication contribute to the development and maintenance of social identities and ideology as well as more transient attitudes and related behaviors, and how those outcomes may influence subsequent media use. The RSM suggests contingencies that may lead to homeostasis or encourage certain individuals or groups to extreme polarization of such attitudes. In addition, the RSM proposes social cognitive mechanisms that may be responsible for attitude maintenance and reinforcement. This article discusses empirical progress in testing the model, addresses misconceptions that have arisen, and provides elaborated illustrations of the model. The article also identifies potentially fruitful directions for further conceptual development and empirical testing of the RSM.

The Role of Perceived Peer Norms in the Relationship Between Media Violence Exposure and Adolescents' Aggression

“…aggressive behavior has been put forward in several theoretical models (e.g., Social Cognitive Theory, Bandura, 2001;Cultivation Theory, Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1980; Reinforcing Spirals Model, Slater, 2014; the Differential Susceptibility to Media-effects Model, Valkenburg & Peter, 2013a). In these theories, the concepts of "resonance" (Gerbner et al, 1980) and "context-content convergence" (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013a) predict that stronger media effects may occur among those media users for whom media messages are congruent with their real life.…”

Stable Attitudes and Behaviors as Boundary Conditions of Reinforcing Spirals Models

“…A minimum of three consecutive measurements per person is necessary to establish the complete process as proposed in Slater's (2007Slater's ( , 2015Slater's ( , 2017 conceptual work. The data is most commonly analyzed with cross-lagged panel models (CLPM; see, e.g., Figure 1 in Slater, 2007) or variants of parallel latent growth-curve models (PLGCM; e.g., Moeller & de Vreese, 2015;Schemer, 2012;Slater & Hayes, 2010).…”

“…The reinforcing spirals model (RSM, Slater, 2007, 2015 has become a popular way of thinking about such reciprocal dynamics of media use and effects: Higher exposure to certain media messages leads to attitude change, which in turn leads to selective media use and higher exposure to similar messages, which in turn reinforces the attitude change, and so on. Moeller and de Vreese (2015), for example, investigated whether learning from the news and political news use reinforce each other over time in a sample of Dutch adolescents.…”

The reliability and temporal stability of self-reported media exposure - a meta-analysis

“…If, on the other hand, media exposure varies strongly across occasions, it might be more useful to look at situational factors rather than interpersonal differences or structural effects in order to understand media use and effects. The stability of media exposure is an important boundary condition for many contemporary theories of media effects, most notably the Reinforcing Spirals model (Slater, 2007(Slater, , 2015.Summarizing these arguments, Lee et al (2008) argue that understanding the reliability and the temporal stability of media exposure is essential to communication research. However, only very few studies have investigated this issue: Allen and Taylor (1985) compared the reliability and stability of exposure to different types of newspaper and television content.…”