About

Robin Nabi is a Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a position she has held since 2009. She received her AB from Harvard College and her MA/PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the role of emotion in media processes and effects, with particular emphasis on the persuasive effect of emotion-based messages and the relationship between media use and well-being. She has published over 100 articles and book chapters in these areas and has co-edited the SAGE Handbook of Media Processes and Effects and Emotions in the Digital World with Oxford Press. Nabi has served as managing editor of Media Psychology, associate editor of the Journal of Communication, and on the editorial board of numerous top communication journals. She is a past chair of the Mass Communication Division of the International Communication Association and the Communication and Social Cognition Division of the National Communication Association. Her work has been featured in major media outlets including NPR, the New York Times, and Harvard Business Review. She teaches courses in persuasion, emotion and media, communication and emotion, health communication, and mass media effects. Her current research projects focus on media use to mitigate stress and enhance well-being, goal motivation, and empathy.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Clinical psychology
• Medicine
• Virology
• Social psychology
• Psychiatry
• Philosophy
• Psychotherapist
• Nursing
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• The German Depression Anxiety Stress Scales for Youth (DASS-Y): Structure, Convergent Validity, and Measurement Invariance by Gender, Age, and Language (German-English)

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Role of Screen Time in Adolescent Empathy Development

  Open MIND · 2026-01-01

  otherOpen accessSenior author

  Purpose This study investigates the relationship between children's digital media consumption and their emotional skills, specifically empathy and emotional regulation. Despite media being a dominant source of learning and socialization for children, research on how digital media use affects emotional intelligence development remains limited and inconclusive. This project addresses this gap by examining whether and how children's screen time relates to their empathic abilities and emotional regulation skills. Theoretical Background The relationship between media use and emotional skills is theoretically ambiguous. On one hand, extensive screen time may displace face-to-face social interactions that are critical for developing empathy and emotional regulation skills. Digital environments may also challenge these skills through depersonalization, desensitization, and reduced social cues. On the other hand, digital platforms may provide opportunities to practice emotional skills by exposing children to diverse emotional expressions, allowing observation of others' responses in various contexts, and enabling practice with reduced immediate social demands. Research Questions RQ1: Does child digital media consumption relate to empathy or emotional regulation skills over time? RQ2: What psychological, social, and environmental moderators influence these relationships? RQ3: How do different types of digital media consumption impact these relationships (watching videos, gaming, texting, social media, video chatting, phone calls, and browsing)? Data Source This study utilizes data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study Dataset Release 6.0, specifically including participants from the National Institute of Justice Social Development sub-study. The sample includes around 2,000 youth aged 9-13 from five data collection sites across the United States, with data collected both pre-COVID (2019), during COVID (2020), and after COVID (2021). Expected Outcomes Given the mixed theoretical perspectives and inconsistent prior research, we do not propose directional hypotheses. However, we anticipate identifying potential relationships between specific types of digital media use and components of empathy and emotional regulation. We will also explore how demographic, psychological, social, and environmental factors moderate these relationships between empathy and forms of digital media use. These exploratory analyses will provide empirical evidence to inform future research and guide parents, educators, and policymakers regarding children's digital media use.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Pulse of Privacy: The Role of Efficacy Framing and Discrete Emotion in Combating Privacy Powerlessness and Motivating Online Privacy Protection

  Communication Research · 2026-02-16

  articleSenior author

  Can discrete emotions be leveraged to combat privacy powerlessness and motivate privacy protection? Extending theorizing and research that exclusively focus on cognitive processes underlying online privacy decision-making, this study builds on gain/loss framing research and the emotions-as-frames model to understand the effectiveness of emotional appeals (i.e., hope and fear) in generating attitudinal and behavioral change in online privacy. Two online experiments that differed in message topics (Study 1: changing social media privacy settings; Study 2: rejecting website cookies) were conducted with demographically-stratified samples of U.S. adults. Results showed that gain-frame-induced hope consistently led to reduced privacy powerlessness, which was associated with increased privacy protection intention across both topics, whereas loss-frame-induced fear only led to increased protection intention in the social media context. This study advances theorizing on the role that discrete emotion plays in online privacy management from a communication perspective and highlights the novel effect of hope in motivating attitudinal and behavioral change. Findings also help to answer recent calls for remedies to privacy powerlessness and inform message-based intervention designs for consumer empowerment.

  PublisherDOI

• Self-Administered Media Prescriptions: Training Algorithms to Deliver Inspirational Content to Reduce Stress and Increase Goal Motivation

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2026-01-30

  other1st authorCorresponding

  This research extends the growing body of media prescription research by determining whether instructing young adults to select their own inspirational media content has the same benefits on stress relief and goal motivation as previously found in studies assigning inspirational content. In a 4-week longitudinal intervention, the young adult sample (N = 132) was instructed to select 3-5 minutes of content that they found personally inspiring on their preferred short-form video platform every day for 5 days. The effects of this self-selected exposure were tracked for up to 10 days after the intervention.

  Publisher

• Entertainment-education Theory

  2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  otherSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Media versus meditation: A comparison of the stress-relieving benefits of multiple media experiences.

  Psychology of Popular Media · 2025-10-09 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Psychology Underlying Media-Based Persuasion

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-07-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Attempts at persuasion are as ubiquitous as the media often used to disseminate them. However, to explore persuasion in the context of media, one must first consider the psychological processes and mechanisms that underlie persuasive effects generally and then assess how those strategies might apply in both traditional and more innovative media. This chapter overviews three dominant frameworks of persuasion (cognitive response models, expectancy value theories, and emotional appeals), along with three more subtle forms of influence (framing, narrative, and product placement) and more novel persuasive strategies (influencers, micro-targeting, native advertising) to explore how psychological theory and media effects research intersect to shed light on media-based persuasive influence.

  PublisherDOI

• Guilt over kids’ screen time is common, uncomfortable and can stress family relationships − but it can have a silver lining

  2024-09-05

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Coping with the COVID-19 Pandemic by Using Media: Extending the Coping Goodness-of-Fit Hypothesis to Media Use

  Communication Studies · 2024-06-24 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  During the COVID-19 pandemic, people had to cope with stress in two different ways: engaging in problem-focused behaviors (e.g. seeking information) and regulating their emotions. In particular, during lockdowns, media played an important role in these coping processes. This short-term longitudinal study during the first stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020 in Germany (<i>N</i> = 348) tested how coping strategies related to two categories of coping effectiveness outcomes, situation-addressing outcomes (preventive behaviors and knowledge) and mental health outcomes (stress and perceived coping efficacy). We moreover tested which kind of media use is related to effective coping derived from a combination of the coping goodness-of-fit hypothesis and mood management theory. The study demonstrated that information seeking during the uncertain pandemic circumstances might have been a double-edged sword: Increased use of the coping strategy information seeking was related to increased stress but also to enhanced knowledge and better adherence to behavioral guidelines, however only on the cross-sectional level. Additionally, our results showed that using positive media content might have helped media users to reduce stress and to adhere to behavioral guidelines. Thus, a combination of seeking information at predefined, limited time points and using positive media content might have been a fruitful way of using media for coping during this situation of crisis.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Too Much Screen Time or Too Much Guilt? How Child Screen Time and Parental Screen Guilt Affect Parental Stress and Relationship Satisfaction

  Media Psychology · 2024-02-12 · 26 citations

  articleOpen access

  Recent decades have witnessed a surge in public discourse around the negative effects of media technologies. One of these public debates concerned the negative effects of child screen time on children’s development resulting in parental feelings of guilt and stress as parents struggle to limit their children’s screen use. Based on a social constructivist perspec­ tive, we suggest that parental stress around child screen time and subsequent relational strain with children is affected not simply by the amount of time children spend with screens but by the amount of guilt parents feel over allowing such use. Based on cross-sectional (<i>N₁</i> = 140/<i>N₂</i> = 474) and longitudinal (<i>N</i> = 192) data of American parents, evidence indicates that parental guilt around their child’s screen use enhances the amount of stress parents feel around their child’s screen time, which, in turn, relates to lower parent-child relationship satisfac­ tion. Implications for future research and the public debate around child screen use as well as for the larger debate on digital well-being are discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Abby Prestin

  13 shared

• Nathan Walter

  10 shared

• Lara N. Wolfers

  University of Amsterdam

  8 shared

• Jiyeon So

  Yonsei University

  7 shared

• Karyn Riddle

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  5 shared

• Marina Krcmar

  5 shared

• Eric Zimmer

  4 shared

• Kathleen Hall-Jamieson

  University of Pennsylvania

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• McQuail Award for the best article advancing communication t…
• 2018 Innovation in Theory Award from the Mass Communication…
• Fellow of the International Communication Association (2017)