Hierarchy in the Library: Egalitarian Dynamics in Victorian Novels

Abstract

The current research investigated the psychological differences between protagonists and antagonists in literature and the impact of these differences on readers. It was hypothesized that protagonists would embody cooperative motives and behaviors that are valued by egalitarian hunter-gatherers groups, whereas antagonists would demonstrate status-seeking and dominance behaviors that are stigmatized in such groups. This hypothesis was tested with an online questionnaire listing characters from 201 canonical British novels of the longer nineteenth century. 519 respondents generated 1470 protocols on 435 characters. Respondents identified the characters as protagonists, antagonists, or minor characters, judged the characters' motives according to human life history theory, rated the characters' traits according to the five-factor model of personality, and specified their own emotional responses to the characters on categories adapted from Ekman's seven basic emotions. As expected, antagonists are motivated almost exclusively by the desire for social dominance, their personality traits correspond to this motive, and they elicit strongly negative emotional responses from readers. Protagonists are oriented to cooperative and affiliative behavior and elicit positive emotional responses from readers. Novels therefore apparently enable readers to participate vicariously in an egalitarian social dynamic like that found in hunter-gatherer societies. We infer that agonistic structure in novels simulates social behaviors that fulfill an adaptive social function and perhaps stimulates impulses toward these behaviors in real life.

Graphing Jane Austen

“…Approximately 519 respondents completed a total of 1,470 protocols on 435 separate characters from 144 novels. (Further details on the demographics of the respondents and on our statistical methods can be found in two peviously published articles: Johnson, Carroll, Gottschall, & Kruger, 2008, 2011.…”

A rationale for evolutionary studies of literature

“…Moreover, narratives have empirically ascertainable effects on minds (Mar et al, 2011;Oatley, 2011). Those effects can be correlated with evidence-based arguments for the behavioral ecology of modern hunter-gatherers and, by extension, of ancient humans (Boyd, 2009;Carroll, 2012;Dissanayake, 2000;Johnson, Carroll, Gottschall, & Kruger, 2008). However, the arguments I make in the previous paragraphs of this essay do not depend on the idea that literature and its oral antecedents have an adaptive function.…”

The Pleistocene protagonist: An evolutionary framework for the analysis of film protagonists

“…Any evolutionary analysis of artistic content must address the fact that works with mass appeal, and which may best reflect psychological universals, are not necessarily the works which are critically-acclaimed and perhaps considered to reflect best artistic practice (Pinker 2007). For example , Johnson, Carroll, Gottschall and Kruger's (2008) analysis of main characters' motivations, emotions and personality traits in 19 th Century British novels samples the 201 'canonical' novels of the period, which although critically-acclaimed, were often far less popular with the general public (eg Southam 2009). Thus, the conclusions the authors draw about how these novels' protagonists tend to differ from their antagonists may be unique to the kinds of narratives preferred by academics, and not the best place to search for the most broadly appealing narrative universals.…”