The Role of Narrative Cues in Shaping ADT

Abstract

Abstract In the current chapter, we provide additional specificity to Zillmann’s dispositional model of emotional reactivity to dramatic happenings. By integrating research on altruistic intuitions and egoistic intuitions we advance understandings of the mechanisms that underlie disposition formation processes (i.e., how viewers come to like/dislike narrative characters) and story outcome evaluation processes (i.e., whether viewers like/dislike a narrative’s resolution). We first explain how research on the disposition formation process has been advanced by applying an a priori categorization scheme of altruistic intuitions adapted from moral psychology. This scheme provides a definition of good/bad behavior as behavior that upholds/violates altruistic intuitions. We describe how audiences evaluate those upholding/violating behaviors to form liking/disliking toward narrative characters and highlight how narrative cues can amplify the effect of certain altruistic intuitions in this process. After discussion of disposition formation, we describe how an a priori categorization scheme of egoistic intuitions might similarly advance understanding of the story outcome evaluation process. We provide a more explicit definition of positive and negative story outcomes based on the satisfaction/thwarting of a character’s egoistic intuitions. Several important processes are described in better detail with such a definition, and we outline empirical investigations that could help advance disposition research considerably. We extend this discussion to examine the separate roles of altruistic and egoistic intuition satisfaction in determining audience response to more complex narratives involving conflict between two or more intuitions. The chapter concludes by discussing the potential advantages of integrating altruistic and egoistic intuitions into Zillmann’s dispositional model.

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