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CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Media Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1395895

The Involvement Concept -Replaceable or Irreplaceable? A Case for a Conceptual Analysis of a Core Concept of Media Psychological Communication Research

Provisionally accepted
Holger Schramm Holger Schramm *Zoe Olbermann Zoe Olbermann Fabian Mayer Fabian Mayer
  • Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The concept of involvement has enriched media psychological communication studies for more than three quarters of a century. The original concept of Sherif and colleaguesthe so-called egoinvolvementhas been extended piece by piece by various researchers over the decades, so that already in the 1980s voices were raised questioning the usefulness of such a broad meta-concept. In this article, we try to answer the question whether the involvement concept has become obsolete in the meantime by taking a more differentiated look at three different central understandings of the involvement concept (involvement as ego-involvement, as personal relevance and as mode of reception) and discussing their explanatory value. As a result, we conclude that the original conception still has its raison d'être and that media psychological communication research should take more account of this fact when designing its studies.

    Keywords: Involvement, Ego-involvement, personal relevance, resonance, reception mode, twoprocess models of persuasion

    Received: 04 Mar 2024; Accepted: 04 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Schramm, Olbermann and Mayer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Holger Schramm, Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

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