Moral foundations theory, political identity, and the depiction of morality in children’s movies

Abstract

Children’s movies often provide messages about morally appropriate and inappropriate conduct. In two studies, we draw on Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) to derive predictions about actual depictions of morality, and people’s preferences for different moral depictions, within children’s movies. According to MFT, people’s moral concerns include individualizing foundations of care and fairness and binding foundations of loyalty, authority, and sanctity. Prior work reveals that although there are political differences in the endorsement of these two broad categories—whereby stronger political conservatism predicts stronger binding concerns and weaker individualizing concerns—there nonetheless is broad agreement across political identity in the importance of individualizing concerns. We therefore predicted that heroes would value individualizing foundations more than villains, and that despite political differences in preferences for moral messages, there would be more agreement in the importance of messages promoting individualizing concerns. In Study 1, we coded heroes and villains from popular children’s movies for their valuation of moral foundations. Heroes valued individualizing concerns more, and binding concerns less, than villains did. Participants in Study 2 considered moral dilemmas faced by children’s movie characters, and rated their preferences for resolutions that promoted either individualizing or binding foundations. Although liberals preferred individualizing-promoting resolutions and conservatives preferred binding-promoting resolutions, there was stronger agreement across political identity in the importance of individualizing concerns. Despite political differences in moral preferences, popular depictions of children’s movie characters and people’s self-reported moral endorsement suggest a shared belief in the importance of the individualizing moral virtues of care and fairness. Movies are often infused with moral messages. From their exploration of overarching themes, their ascription of particular traits to heroic and villainous characters, and their resolution of pivotal moral dilemmas, movies provide viewers with depictions of morally virtuous (and morally suspect) behavior. Moral messaging in children’s movies is of particular importance, since it is targeted at an audience for which morality is actively developing. What moral messages do filmmakers (and consumers, including parents) want children’s movies to depict? Are these preferences related to people’s political identity? And what are the actual moral depictions presented in movies? In the present two studies, we draw on an influential theory of moral judgment—Moral Foundations Theory—to develop and test predictions about the depiction of morality in children’s movies.

Detecting Moral Features in TV Series with a Transformer Architecture through Dictionary-Based Word Embedding

“…Gehman et al adopted a focus on children's movies, specifically examining three movies, with the aim of identifying the differences in moral foundations between heroes and villains [37]. The presence of moral foundations was investigated by having a group of human coders fill out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire for each character under analysis.…”

Show Me Who You Respect and I Will Tell You What Your Culture Is

“…It is also likely that some of these cultural differences in moral values may be reflected in the media of their respective cultures, such as TV shows. For example, a content analysis of American popular children's movies by Gehman et al, (2021) revealed that the heroic characters were depicted as abiding by and promoting more individualizing moral values (i.e., care and fairness) and less so of binding moral values (i.e., loyalty, authority, and sanctity) compared to the villains. The villains, on the other hand, were promoting or endorsing binding moral values more and less individualizing foundations.…”