TY - JOUR
T1 - Perceptions of Moral Violations and Personality Traits Among Heroes and Villains
AU - Eden, Allison
AU - Oliver, Mary Beth
AU - Tamborini, Ron
AU - Limperos, Anthony
AU - Woolley, Julia
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Mass Communication & Society Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
PY - 2015/3/4
Y1 - 2015/3/4
N2 - 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) as well as along dimensions of warmth, competence, and duplicity used in impression-formation research (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). 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.
AB - 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) as well as along dimensions of warmth, competence, and duplicity used in impression-formation research (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). 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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U2 - 10.1080/15205436.2014.923462
DO - 10.1080/15205436.2014.923462
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84937634909
VL - 18
SP - 186
EP - 208
JO - Mass Communication and Society
JF - Mass Communication and Society
SN - 1520-5436
IS - 2
ER -