Creating Character Identification and Liking in Narratives: The Impact of Protagonist Motivations on Real-Time Audience Responses

ABSTRACT

Popular narratives can have a significant cultural and persuasive impact. Audience identification with a protagonist and liking of the protagonist are two important types of audience engagement. The present study proposes that character motivations play a central role in the establishment of both identification and liking. Two typologies of motivations are tested (one from a hierarchy of psychological needs perspective, and the other from the professional field of screenwriting) as predictors of dynamic fluctuations in audience identification and liking. Three professional screenwriters served as “expert coders” of three randomly selected films and identified key moments that were of particular importance for establishing character motivation. N = 308 participants viewed the first 35 minutes of one of the three films and provided real-time ratings of either liking or identification. Results indicated that the establishment of character motivations does indeed have a major impact on shaping identification and liking in real time.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the following individuals for their advice and/or assistance with this project: Matthew Bradford, Emily Moyer-Gusé, Daniel Rospert, Michael Russo, Michael Slater, Bryan Wang, Joyce Wang, and four anonymous peer reviewers.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at re3data.org: osf.io/nh7uy.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Data. The data are openly accessible at re3data.org: osf.io/nh7uy.

Notes

1. Alternative factor structures/dimensions for identification have been proposed by Igartua (2010) and Tal-Or (2019), among others.

2. Pittman and Zeigler’s (2007) level of basic/biological needs, consisting of necessities for survival such as food, water, and oxygen, correspond to ERG theory’s (Alderfer, 1969, 1972) existence needs. Pittman and Zeigler’s (2007) individual level of analysis consists of “fundamental aspects of individual human functioning that would be present and important to understand even in the absence of social considerations” (p. 483). This level of analysis would include ERG’s growth needs (though the individual level of analysis can also contain needs not directly related to growth, such as the maintenance of self-esteem). Lastly, needs in Pittman and Zeigler’s (2007) social group/societal level of analysis are “processes operating within an individual, but they depend on and are oriented toward social groups” (p. 484), akin to ERG’s relatedness needs.

3. The coders were trained to recognize ERG motivations by reading and discussing summaries of ERG theory and excerpts of Alderfer’s (1969 & 1972) work.

4. There was one exception, in that existence needs were established much later in the film for Apes. Participant responses were not collected for the existence needs in Apes due to concerns about participant fatigue.

5. The interval of 30 seconds was selected because it was roughly equivalent to the shortest key moments and was deemed an appropriate baseline for comparison.