Do dark personalities prefer dark characters? A personality psychological approach to positive engagement with fictional villainy

Kjeldgaard‐Christiansen, Jens; Fiskaali, Anne; Høgh‐Olesen, Henrik; Johnson, John A.; Smith, Murray; Clasen, Mathias

doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2020.101511

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Although current studies focused on the film genre preferences are still relatively rare, researchers also found unique correlations between personality traits, based on the Big Five model [8], and the five entertainment-preference dimensions (i.e., Communal, Aesthetic, Thrilling, Dark, and Cerebral) [9]. Researchers also argued that individuals with dark personalities (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) have a preference for the dark characters in the movie [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Personality and Film Genre Preferences: An Analysis Based on the Big Five Model

Yang

2023

CHR

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Studies have investigated the factors that affect entertainment preferences, including what we listen to, watch, and read. Only a few studies focused on the film genres and current findings are still insufficient. To explore the relationship between personality and film genre preferences, this study uses the self-reported questionnaire to collect data and test the correlations between the two variables. The personality traits are analyzed based on the Big Five Model, which consisted of Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Openness to Experiences. The results indicate 1) there are positive correlations between the Big Five personality traits and film genre preferences, 2) the incorporation of Conscientiousness and Openness to Experiences could predict the film genre preferences, 3) the gender differences should be considered in the analysis of personality and film genre preferences as well.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Personality and Film Genre Preferences: An Analysis Based on the Big Five Model

Yang

2023

CHR

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“…Is my father still well?” [Etz Hayim, 2001, p. 276]). Appreciation of altruistic and prosocial behavior and the resulting “moral elevation” constitute a viable starting point for our assessment of audiences’ emotional responses to such scenes, even though more granular emotional overtones depend on specific contexts of depicted situations, as well as on characteristics and personality traits of individual readers and viewers (Clasen et al, 2020; Kjeldgaard-Christiansen et al, 2021; Kuijpers et al, 2019).…”

Section: Reversals Of Mindreading Hierarchiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Don’t Be Too Good at Reading Other People's Minds

Zunshine

2024

Emotion Review

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Attribution of mental states is fundamental to our engagement with fiction. Crucially, its social content depends on mental states recursively “embedded” within each other; for instance, when a person doesn’t want other people to know about her intentions. Given that some characters seem to be consistently capable of embedding mental states on a higher level than others, this essay reviews factors that may influence authors’ constructions of such mindreading hierarchies as well as their reversals. The argument focuses on the reversal scenes in films Goodbye Lenin, The Lives of Others, and Never Look Away, and on prosocial emotions evoked by their depiction of a more equitable distribution of a presumably valuable and scarce resource, that is, access to other people's minds.

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“…Because the Dark Tetrad is a recent outgrowth of the Dark Triad (Paulhus & Williams, 2002), which neglects sadism, most research works on consensus and assumed similarity effects have used Dark Triad measures (Jonason & Webster, 2010). For example, people scoring high on narcissism were more likely to engage positively with villain characters (Kjeldgaard-Christiansen et al, 2021) and identified more closely with characters who were similarly narcissistic (Gibson et al, 2018). Similarly, people scoring high on Machiavellianism identified more closely with villains and antiheroes with similarly dark traits (Black et al, 2019).…”

Section: Personality Perception Of Other People and Fictional Charactersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality perception in Game of Thrones: Character consensus and assumed similarity.

Webster¹,

Campbell²

2023

Psychology of Popular Media

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This study examined Big Five and Dark Tetrad personality perception for 56 characters from the popular TV show Game of Thrones—and the book series that inspired it, A Song of Ice and Fire—by 309 fans recruited from 3 relevant subreddits. Specifically, we examined consensus—the extent to which multiple perceivers (participants) rate 1 or more targets (characters) similarly—and assumed similarity—the extent to which perceivers (participants) see targets (characters) as they see themselves. Using cross-classified structural equation models, we found that consensus correlations were significant for all Big Five and Dark Tetrad traits, ranging from .54 for narcissism to .83 for agreeableness (M = .66, SD = .10). Assumed similarity slopes were positive (range: .07–.29; M = .15, SD = .06) and significant for all traits except conscientiousness and open-mindedness. Thus, raters reliably assumed that characters were similar to themselves on 7 of 9 traits. Exploratory sex-differences analyses showed no sex-of-character effects but significant sex-of-perceiver effects for conscientiousness, open-mindedness, and Machiavellianism; women perceived characters to be higher on these traits than men. In addition, women (vs. men) rated themselves as higher on extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness but lower on Machiavellianism. We also present rankings for characters with the highest and lowest scores on each trait. Broadly, this work is important for understanding not only how our perceptions of personality generalize to fictional characters but also how we use fiction characters—and our perceptions of their personalities—to better understand our own social world.

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Do dark personalities prefer dark characters? A personality psychological approach to positive engagement with fictional villainy

Cited by 13 publications

References 58 publications

Personality and Film Genre Preferences: An Analysis Based on the Big Five Model

Personality and Film Genre Preferences: An Analysis Based on the Big Five Model

Don’t Be Too Good at Reading Other People's Minds

Personality perception in Game of Thrones: Character consensus and assumed similarity.

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