| Description |
As an important psychological construct, blame has not been clearly explicated and has been understudied in communication research. Situated in the context of childhood obesity, this dissertation aims to reveal the underlying structure of blame and examine its mediating role between media messages and social responses. A pilot study, using a convenience sample of college students, and a main study, using a general population sample from MTurk, which is marketplace for work that requires human intelligence, were carried out. The pilot study employed a 2 (outcome severity: high vs. low) ×2 (outcome preventability: high vs. low) between-participants experimental design (N =118), and the main study was of a 2 (outcome severity high vs. low) x 2 (outcome preventability high vs. low) ×2 (disease type: asthma attack vs. heart attack) design (N =373). Results showed that blame should be conceptualized as an amalgam of cognition and affect. Outcome preventability was found to influence the amount of blame, and that its effect was further enhanced when the outcome was described as more severe. Blame then led to greater policy support, information sharing behaviors, civic participation activities, and punishment. Blame was a significant mediator between outcome preventability and most of these social responses. There were also a few moderating effects, from need for cognition, need for affect, and moral identity, on the relationship between blame and social responses. Overall, this research extended the scope of the current research on blame and contributed to an understanding about the nature of blame and as well as its role in communication processes. |
