The Complicated Relationship Between Media and Morality
A Response to Ron Tamborini’s Model of “Moral Intuition and Media Entertainment,” From a Narrative Perspective
Abstract
This contribution reflects content and effects of moral messages in media from a narrative perspective. Building on Tamborini’s (2011) Model of Moral Intuition and Media Enjoyment, several issues are raised: First, the difficulty of conceptually and empirically defining “morality” in media entertainment is elaborated. Several options of moral ambiguity arising from the narrative structure of a story are sketched. Then, the link between processing moral content and positive media experiences such as enjoyment and appreciation is considered. Finally, issues of effects, especially on the long-term, are raised and implications for empirical questions are discussed.
References
(2008). Transportation and transportability in the cultivation of genre-consistent attitudes and estimates. Journal of Communication, 58, 508–529.
(
in press ). Talking about Big Brother: Interpersonal communication about a controversial television format. In , Reality television: Merging the global and the local.(2008). Die Moral von der Geschichte: Methodische Probleme und Methodenentwicklung in der Medienanalyse
[The Moral of the Story: Methodological problems and method development for media analysis] . In , Verlorene Werte? Medien und die Entwicklung von Ethik und Moral (pp. 245–256). Konstanz: UVK-Verlag.(1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1–21.
(2008). Fictionality and perceived realism in experiencing stories: A model of narrative comprehension and engagement. Communication Theory, 18, 255–280.
(2009). Measuring narrative engagement. Media Psychology, 12, 321–347.
(1998). Art, narrative, and moral understanding. In , Aesthetics and ethics: Essays at the intersection (pp. 126–160). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
(1989). Story and discourse: Narrative structure in fiction and film (5th ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
(2009). “Fools rush in”: A JDM perspective on the role of emotions in decisions, moral and otherwise. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 50, 275–306.
(1999). The feeling of what happens. New York, NY: Grosset/Putnam.
(2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 701–721.
(2002). In the mind’s eye: Transportation-imagery model of narrative persuasion. In , Narrative impact: Social and cognitive foundations (pp. 315–341). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
(2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108, 814–834.
(2008). The moral mind: How five sets of innate intuitions guide the development f many culture-specific virtues, and perhaps even modules. In , The innate mind: Vol. 3. Foundations and the future (Evolution and Cognition) (pp. 367–392). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
(2000). The moral laboratory: Experiments examining the effects of reading literature on social perception and moral self-concept. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
(2008). Literary potential: The unexplored powers of reading. Information Design Journal, 16, 126–132.
(1981). The philosophy of moral development: Moral stages and the idea of justice (Essays on moral development, Volume 1). San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.
(
in press ). Appreciation as audience response: Exploring entertainment gratifications beyond hedonism. Human Communication Research.(2004). A process model of consumer cultivation: The role of television is a function of the type of judgment. In , The psychology of entertainment media: blurring the lines between entertainment and persuasion (pp. 177–191). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
(2009). Causal models: The representational infrastructure for moral judgment. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 50, 1–26.
(2011). Moral intuition and media entertainment. Journal of Media Psychology, 23, 39–45.
(2003). The datasetting effect of learning fact from fiction: Toward an on-line processing model of television effects. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA.
