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Abstract
Previous studies have indicated that media consumption may influence moral intuition sensitivity. The present exploratory studies sought to expand on these findings by employing a three-phase, longitudinal experiment conducted over nine weeks, where participants were exposed to two genres of films (romance, action) mixed in various ratios (high = 100% romance, medium = 60% romance, low = 20% romance, none = 0% romance). Findings from the initial study indicate that repeated exposure to romantic films led to increases in sensitivity for four of the five moral intuitions (i.e., care, fairness, authority, purity); at the same time, any exposure to action films seemed to erode these changes. A follow-up post-hoc content analysis sought to confirm these findings and test an operationalization of “moral conditioning.” We discuss the results in regards to media entertainment theory and research, and the societal implications of the role of media entertainment to reinforce standards of moral judgment.
Notes
1. Both a learning curve and a threshold effect would relate to nonlinear patterns. However, the mechanisms underlying them would differ. The learning curve implies that growth is continuous, but the rate of growth varies over time; the threshold effect implies that change only occurs after a minimum dose is reached.
2. Some researchers criticize MFT for placing too little emphasis on cognitive components of moral decision-making (see, e.g.,, and Bilandzic Citation2011, and Gibbs, Citation2013). Although these criticisms may or may not be valid, the distinction between intuitive versus deliberative processes is inconsequential for this article, because we do not measure response time.
3. Recent studies have indicated a potential sixth moral intuition, liberty/oppression (Iyer, Koleva, Graham, Ditto, & Haidt, Citation2012). However, this intuition has yet to be formally integrated into MFT and is considered provisional (Haidt, Citation2012).
4. We ran our results through the p-checker application (Schönbrodt, Citation2015) in order to examine how they conform to expectations regarding the R-Index and test of insufficient variance (Schimmack, Citation2014) as well as the p curve. Results are available at http://osf.io/cn6s9.
5. This analysis procedure is often employed when the amount of change experienced from exposure is dependent on an individual’s initial score on a variable (see Fossum, Arborelius, & Bremberg, Citation2004; McDonell, Short, Berry, & Dyck, Citation2003; Postmes, Spears, & Lea, Citation2002).
6. These post hoc analyses were suggested by two anonymous reviewers of an original draft of this manuscript.
7. Upon completion of the coding, these coders were asked to join the project as coauthors. They did not have access to any study data or hypotheses prior to the completion of coding.
8. This composite is similar to the disposition vector developed by Weber, Tamborini, Lee, and Stipp, Citation2008.
9. An interesting pattern emerged whereby reliability increased from Phase 1 to Phase 3 for all moral intuitions. This pattern may suggest further evidence of the causal claims made in this article, given that systematic changes as described in the article would increase systematic variance in scores and reliability estimates, which are a function of systematic variance.