Television stories and social reality: Moral effects and the role of emotional processes

• Applicant: Professorin Helena Bilandzic, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences
• Term: from 2009 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 133078326

This project seeks to explore the complex relationships of fictional television as a major source of vicarious social experience and its audiences social reality notions. We build on insights gained in the first period funded by the DFG (2009-2012), where we analyzed genre-specific patterns of moral messages in contemporary television series and derived a set of moral messages (implications of media portrayals about right and wrong behavior). The next period (2012-2014) will explore the influence of moral messages in media on audiences moral cognition and behavior in two related studies. The first study proposed here is a cross-sectional cultivation survey, which deals with the way in which genre-specific patterns of moral messages affect regular viewers. Building on cultivation theory and moral psychology, we assume that heavy viewers of morally laden genres, in comparison to light viewers, will overestimate norm violations prevalent in their favored genre, be more likely to recognize the moral relevance of a particular situation (moral sensitivity), will have certain moral constructs chronically accessible for social judgments (moral chronicity) and will more likely use genre-consistent schemas of moral reasoning. We assume that dispositions to feel emotions such as empathy, sympathy, and need for affect moderate these relationships, in addition to the propensity for narrative engagement. For the latter, we have developed a valid and reliable measure in the first period that will be employed now. The second study sets out from another important finding of the narrative content analysis conducted in the first period: Anger is the most frequent emotional reaction to norm violations displayed in fictional television. The goal of the second study in the suggested project is to explore the effects of such emotional displays in television narratives for moral cognition and retaliation behavior. We assume that watching norm violation scripts containing anger and retribution should make the corresponding moral schema more accessible; this will increase moral sensitivity. Also, moral schemas are more accessible for processing subsequent social information; people will tend to memorize and recall social information related to moral concepts. Finally, exposure will prime immoral options of behavior (including retaliation); people will make use of the activated schemas and specifically the emotionally laden behavioral scripts to plan their own behavior. Emotional processes play a decisive role in both narrative effects and moral development. Thus we assume that the effects described above will be mediated through emotional processes during viewing (narrative emotional engagement, empathy, sympathy).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants