ABSTRACT
It is understandable that media entertainment is most often associated with gratifi cations and responses related to pleasure and diversion (see Bryant 2004). The landscape of entertainment is populated with genres such as sitcoms, action movies, teen romance comedies, and game shows. Such fare affords individuals ample opportunity to laugh at buffoons, cheer for antagonists, and fall in love with heart-throbs on the screen. Perhaps as a result of the popularity of funny, cheerful, and thrilling entertainment, theorizing in media psychology has tended to broadly characterize the predominant desired and experienced outcome of entertainment consumption in terms of enjoyment. Scholars routinely use this term to assess favorable responses to entertainment (e.g., ‘Please rate the extent to which you enjoyed the program’) or to measure anticipated gratifi cations (e.g., ‘How much do you think you would enjoy this movie?’) (see Oliver and Nabi 2004 for a discussion of this issue).
