The affective disposition theory (ADT) of drama suggests that moral judgments of a narrative character’s actions are a key determinant of character and story appeal. Specifically, approbation of behaviors prompts positive character dispositions and subsequent story liking. The modified affective disposition model (MADM; Tamborini, Grizzard et al., 2021) attempts to expand ADT by (a) explicating mechanisms that influence how dispositions are formed in morally complex storylines, (b) identifying factors that moderate these mechanisms, and (c) describing the mental processes that underlie them. ADT argues that narrative audiences are constantly monitoring the morality of a character’s behavior (Zillmann, 2000), and disposition formation is shaped by these moral appraisals. The theory suggests that people like characters that behave morally and dislike those that do not, but it gives little detail about how people make moral appraisals. The MADM builds on recent research indicating that moral appraisals are strongly influenced by character behaviors upholding or violating those moral intuitions most salient in the minds of audience members. In doing so, MADM attempts to explicate the mechanisms that increase or decrease the salience of competing intuitions in morally complex stories (i.e., stories wherein two or more moral intuitions are in conflict such that a character must violate one intuition to uphold another). According to the MADM, the salience of different moral intuitions in audience members is shaped by narrative exemplars that vary the prominence of different moral intuitions in the narrative. Specifically, it suggests that when storylines are morally complex, the level of a competing intuition’s prominence in content will strengthen the intuition’s salience in the minds of audience members and the attention that audiences give to intuition-related information. The influence of this prominence on the salience of and attention to different intuitions by audience members is predicted to moderate the disposition process and shape both (a) whether positive or negative dispositions are formed, and (b) whether dispositions are formed intuitively or deliberatively. This dissertation tests these proposed expansions using a 2 X 2 experiment that manipulates the prominence of two conflicting moral intuitions in content (i.e., dominantly vs. overridingly prominent) and whether a character upholds the prominent intuition (i.e., upholds vs. violates).The study results reveal two important findings. The first finding suggests that the comparative prominence of conflicting intuitions in content can influence the level of salience in the minds of audiences, which in turn strengthens or weakens the effect of observing a moral/immoral behavior on approbation. Higher prominence of the superordinate intuition weakens the strength of the subordinate intuition’s salience, which then weakens its ability to moderate the effect of upholding the superordinate intuition on approbation. The second finding suggests that different levels of comparative prominence (dominant versus overriding) can alter whether affect disposition (i.e., character liking) is formed intuitively or deliberatively. When the prominence of a superordinate intuition is dominant, disposition formation is intuitive. By comparison, when the prominence of a superordinate intuition is overriding, disposition formation is deliberative. The theoretical and social implications of these findings are discussed.
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