How Dramas Featuring Morally Ambiguous Protagonists Increase a Sense of Life Expansion: The Role of Moral Judgment

ABSTRACT

Building on moral foundations theory, this article explores which combinations of moral ambiguity domains (care–harm, care–unfairness, fairness–harm, and fairness–unfairness) exhibited by morally ambiguous protagonists (MAPs) in movies evoke a stronger sense of moral conflict in viewers. It further explores viewers’ moral judgment process when they perceive moral conflicts in protagonists who demonstrate moral ambiguity. Study 1, using a measurement-of-mediation design, confirms a moral judgment process; perceived moral conflict encourages viewers to infer that the protagonists suffer a disturbed moral conscience when they find justification in MAPs’ motives for their behaviors. Such inferences lead to the approbation of their behaviors and then result in eudaimonic experiences and a sense of self-expansion. With a moderation-of-process design, Study 2 provides further evidence that behavioral approbation has a mediating role in viewers’ appreciation processes.

Acknowledgment

I appreciate Acer Chiu for editing the videos, and Jeff Chen and Yu-chuan Hung for their assistance in collecting data on Mechanical Turk.

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2024.2347333

Notes

¹ Justification of motives evaluates internal intent against moral standards, as might be exemplified by donating due to compassion versus donating for tax benefits. Conversely, behavioral approbation pertains to external approval of actions, such as others offering commendation for charitable acts, irrespective of their motive. Even if justified motives may boost approbation for morally ambiguous actions, as demonstrated in this study, behaviors can still gain approval, even with unjustified motives, like donating for a tax deduction.

² When all predictors were simultaneously included in the regression model, none of the four types of ambiguity reached significance; however, care-harm ambiguity approached significance: b = .14, SE = .07, β = .21, t = 1.94, p = .055, R² = .08.

³ When all predictors were simultaneously included in the regression model, only care-harm ambiguity was a significant predictor (b = .18, SE = .04, β = .26, t = 4.23, p < .001, R² = .12.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Science Council [108-2410-H-001 -108 -SS3] in Taiwan.

Notes on contributors

Chingching Chang

Chingching Chang (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica. Her research primarily focuses on media psychology, consumer psychology, and the effects of media.