Repeated Exposure to Daytime Soap Opera and Shifts in Moral Judgment Toward Social Convention

Abstract

This study examined the influence of prolonged exposure to soap opera on character dispositions and real-world moral judgments. Eight groups viewed from 0–7 weeks of soap opera prior to a final week after which participants completed measures of disposition towards show characters as well as perceptions of morality in real-world situations. Results demonstrated the effect of prolonged exposure on both the polarization of dispositions toward characters and a trend in moral judgments toward social convention. These findings highlight the role of disposition within social cognitive theory, and the importance of dispositional considerations in understanding learned morality.

Notes

¹Although the current study used might appear similar to a study by Weber et al. (2008), no data from the earlier study were used in the current paper. The current paper is based on new data, collected a year later than those reported in Weber et al. (2008), and using an independent sample and completely different protocol.

²By conventional, the authors refer to one being more accepting of normative social conventions.

³Marlena suffered from amnesia for the entirety of the 8 weeks of programming. The absence of any concrete information about Marlena's motives might have caused lower reliability of her virtuousness score. Therefore, Marlena was removed from subsequent analyses.

⁴There were only 13 participants who responded that they were fans or watched the show more than “Almost never.” Excluding these subjects has a negligible effect on the fit of the model, CMIN/df = 2.77, RMSEA = .08, CFI = .96. There were no changes in the direction or significance of any of the path coefficients.

⁵Anecdotally, many students reported becoming engrossed in the serial.