Character morality, enjoyment, and appreciation: a replication of Eden, Daalmans, and Johnson (2017)

Abstract

Character morality, enjoyment, and appreciation: A replication of Eden, Daalmans, and Johnson (2017) Koji Yoshimura Much research on media entertainment seeks to explain why viewers enjoy and appreciate a variety of media content. Affective disposition theory suggests that media enjoyment results from perceptions of the morality of characters and viewers' expectations for characters' narrative outcomes. However, research has struggled to explain how characters with varying morality (i.e., not perfectly good or bad) entertain viewers. This study replicates a previous study conducted by Eden, Daalmans, and Johnson (2017) that investigated different types of morally ambiguous characters, using a typology of character types based on an online, collaboratively sourced typology. Like the original study, this study found that character types varied in morality across moral domains, and that MACs were not more associated with variables related to self. However, unlike the original study, the present study found that morality was not significantly related to enjoyment or appreciation. Rather, according to the replicated analyses, value homophily was found to be significantly related to enjoyment, and both value homophily and self-expansion were significantly related to appreciation. Additionally, after collapsing the self-expansion, wishful identification, value homophily, and IOS variables into a single aggregate variable, the new combined variable was significantly related to both enjoyment and appreciation. The results of this study suggest that media viewers do not make very nuanced moral evaluations of media characters. Character types including heroes, villains, and different types of MACs were often not significantly different from one another in terms of perceived moral upholding. This may be explained by the schemas that viewers access, which guide their affective dispositions and moral disengagement. Implications for entertainment media research and are discussed.

On the Continued Need for Replication in Media and Communication Research

“…As outlined by Janz (2016), replication studies are especially useful for graduate student training with respect to research methods and data analysis, as well as establishing replication as a routine approach to their scientific program. Such efforts, in tandem with arguments earlier in this essay, can also facilitate early career publications (for example, see Yoshimura et al, 2022) relevant to helping early career scholars establish themselves within a given area of research.…”

“…Drawing back to Yoshimura et al (2022), that replication would not have been possible without having access to shared study materials and data from Eden et al (2017).…”

Rise of the Anti-Hero

“…However, when a hero behaves in an immoral manner, it introduces a moral gray area or a sense of ambivalence that can manifest on multiple levels. Presently, most research employs the terms "ambiguous," "ambivalent," and "anti-hero" interchangeably, which complicates the ability to establish a unified definition (Yoshimura et al, 2017). Popular media employs the term "antihero" to depict characters with significant moral ambivalence (Eden et al, 2016).…”