Content area
Abstract
Young adult romance novels are written in a formulaic style that promote repetitive themes about romance socialization topics. These prevalent themes will be drawn from category/contemporary romance novels and researched in the context of Bandura's Social Learning Theory to determine the effects of these love stories on young African-American women. Findings indicate that romance themes transcend cultural boundaries. Frequency of romance reading and perceived reality of characters and contents in romance novels were significantly related to many of the romance themes. Perceived reality was a mediator for themes that were confronted with opposite socialization information. Themes that were in accordance with basic social norms disseminated by other social agents were generally predicted by romance reading and perceived reality was not a necessary component. This study provides additional support for the use of social learning theory as a predictor of adolescent's adoption of attitudes and beliefs due to exposure of content.
