Perceptions of Moral Violations and Personality Traits Among Heroes and Villains |
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| Authors: | Allison Eden Mary Beth Oliver Ron Tamborini Anthony Limperos Julia Woolley |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Communication Science, VU University Amsterdama.l.eden@vu.nl;3. Department of Film/Video and Media Studies, The Pennsylvania State University;4. Department of Communication, Michigan State University;5. School of Journalism and Telecommunications, University of Kentucky;6. Communication Studies Department, California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo |
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| Abstract: | This study investigates disposition-formation processes in entertainment by predicting perceptions of media heroes and villains by their behavior in specific moral domains. Participants rated self-selected heroes and villains from television and film along the moral domains of care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity (Haidt & Joseph, 2007 Haidt, J. & Joseph, C. (2007). The moral mind: How 5 sets of innate moral intuitions guide the development of many culture-specific virtues, and perhaps even modules. In P. Carruthers S. Laurence & S. Stich (Eds.), The innate mind (Vol. 3, pp. 367–391). New York, NY: Oxford.Crossref] , Google Scholar]) as well as along dimensions of warmth, competence, and duplicity used in impression-formation research (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002 Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P. & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 878–902. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.82.6.878Crossref], PubMed], Web of Science ®] , Google Scholar]). Results show that heroes violate moral norms in domains of authority and purity, whereas villains violated moral norms in the domains of caring and group loyalty. Furthermore, these moral violations are associated with personality dimensions of warmth and competence differently for each character type, such that impressions of heroes are driven by their work in the care domain (i.e., saving or protecting people), whereas for villains, violation of purity norms is most strongly associated with subsequent impression formation processes. |
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