Entertainment studies have paid considerable attention to the psychological mechanisms that govern audience reactions to morally ambiguous characters in narrative drama. Researchers working in this area have begun to question the ability of affective disposition theory (ADT: Zillmann, 2000) to explain why audiences like morally ambiguous characters even when they perform behaviors normally considered unacceptable. The current paper replicates and extends a recent study by Bowman, Roman, and Knoster (2014) to determine whether the attributions made by audience members can explain their responses. Bowman et al. (2014) examined how the origin story of a morally ambiguous character in narrative drama can influence viewer dispositions and resultant enjoyment toward both the character and narrative. The origin story, often in the exposition of a story, gives us the background on the protagonist. Using logic from attribution theory, this study tests the proposition that the consistency of behaviors in a narrative will shape the attributions made by audience members, and that these attributions will mediate the influence of immoral behaviors on character and narrative appeal.
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