Media Coping & Comforting Experiences Across Four Countries: Seeking the Familiar In Times of Distress?

People use media to cope with negative emotions, self-regulate, and enhance their well-being (Reinecke & Eden, 2017; Wolfers & Schneider, 2020). Yet prior work has not explored what features and dimensions of media make it effective as a source of comfort in times of unavoidable distress. This study has two goals: (1) defining comforting media during stress (by examining preferred content, its features, and anticipated outcomes of use, in response to 2 distinct stressors and across 4 countries, and (2) examining media-based coping strategies in different cultures. Using a large international sample of adults (US, UK, Germany, South Korea), a survey experiment will randomly distribute participants among three induction conditions (social stressor, physical stressor or control) and ask about tv and film preferences under stress. Users rate their preferred content along several dimensions. Survey items explore how media preferences and anticipated outcomes of use vary across two different stressors and four countries (Aim 1) as well as comparing reported media-coping strategies across cultural contexts (Aim 2).