Media Psychology

What Is Media Psychology?

Media psychology is an emerging branch of psychology that deals with the effect of mass media on human behavior. Because media is such a pervasive force in the lives of human beings in the modern world, many psychologists think it is critically important to understand how it affects us, and to educate the public so that their consumption of media (be it television, movies, magazines, or just advertisements) can be properly informed. Essentially, there are two branches of media psychology: one for those who want to study media, and one for those who want to produce it. Media psychologists in the first group, for example, have written about the effect of extended television hours on children’s thought patterns and cognitive development. One such study showed that young children are unable to differentiate between regular programming and advertisements, an ability that many adults take for granted. This is the sort of knowledge that specialists in the area of media psychology are trained to generate and test.

Media psychology also has a role in marketing (the second group mentioned above). Ad agencies and marketing firms often hire psychologists to use their knowledge of media psychology to make advertisements more effective. Because of their understanding of the human psyche and its interaction with mass media, these psychologists know how to create content that will “push the buttons” of the viewer and subtly influence them to buy whatever product is being advertised.

Who Should Study Media Psychology?

It is likely that, as the prevalence of media in our lives grows, media psychology will grow as a field. Some day soon, it may be a required course for all undergraduate psychology majors. Today, however, media psychology remains a fairly small and specialized field. As a theoretical branch of psychology, it is best for those who are interested in doing research and teaching. The majority of media psychologists work in academia, and typically have PhD’s or at least advanced Master’s Degrees.

Media psychology, in the form of marketing psychology, is also one of the most lucrative non-medical areas for people interested in psychology. People in the theoretical branches of psychology usually make considerably less money than those in medical fields such as psychiatry and clinical psychology, but media psychology can be an exception. Advertising agencies place an extremely high value on psychological information that they can use to manipulate or affect the viewer’s emotions, and so they pay extremely well for psychologists who are willing and able to do that sort of work.

The History of Media Psychology

Media psychology is a fairly young discipline, having grown up as part of the emerging field of media studies. Perhaps the first people who practiced media psychology were the propaganda experts of World War II. The use of mass media was critical for authoritarian states such as Italy and Nazi Germany, since it was the only way to effectively control and communicate with a large population. Axis authorities were keenly interested in the developments of professional psychology and wanted to know how psychological theories could be turned into theories of mass control. But it was not just the Axis who used early media psychology to develop propaganda. Allied forces, including Britain and the United States, also produced films, magazines, and advertisements to support their cause.

After the war, many psychologists wanted to understand how the Nazi Party had accomplished such complete control of such a large population. Of course, they turned to media, the Third Reich’s primary weapon of control. This was the birth of critical media psychology, the branch of media psychology that is interested in investigating rather than producing media content. Theories were generated to explain how the use of media worked to keep the German population under control, and these theories were soon applied to media outlets closer to home. In the 1950s and ‘60s, as television became ubiquitous, media psychologists examined the similarities and differences between television advertisements and fascist propaganda. In both cases, the goal was to manipulate the behavior of large groups of people, and in both cases it was remarkably successful – this is what interested the early practitioners of media psychology.

Since the 1960s, the influence of media has only grown, and media psychology has grown with it. Today, even schoolchildren have computers, smartphones, and tablets that give them access to the Internet, the largest and most complicated form of media in history. With the pace of technological development and the rapid expansion of mass media outlets, media psychology is sure to be an active and interesting field of study for many decades to come.