When Bad Things Happen to Bad People: Using Disposition Theory to Explore the Effects of Cautionary Tales

Abstract

Cautionary tales are a prevalent form of entertainment narrative in media-saturated environments, yet they have received little empirical examination. Using disposition theory, this study manipulated affective disposition toward the protagonist in order to explore the effects of exposure to a cautionary tale on adoption of prosocial attitudes and behavioral intentions. A between-subjects experimental design was used with 2 conditions (positive/negative) and a control group (n = 305). Results provide evidence that exposure to cautionary tales positively influences adoption of attitudes and intentions to purchase a carbon monoxide detector and talk about accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. Affective disposition influenced identification with the protagonist, and perceptions that the protagonist deserved the negative consequences experienced in the cautionary tale narrative. Findings also suggest that identification mediates the relationship between affective disposition and perceived risk.

An Enjoyable Story, a Persuasive Story

“…Consistent with prior research (Cialdini et al, 1976; Hoeken & Sinkeldam, 2014; Marett, 2015; Snyder et al, 1986; Tal-Or & Cohen, 2010), audience members were indeed more likely to identify with a character that they formed a positive disposition toward (vs. negative) and who received rewards (vs. punishment) for engaging in health behaviors. People may prefer to take the pespective of a narrative character who has positive qualities or who are in positive situations as they need to put themselves in the position of the character to engage in identification (Cohen, 2001).…”

“…Because of the intertwined nature of affective disposition and morality (Lee & Shapiro, 2014), we added cues about the character's morality as well. This manipulation is consistent with previous studies on affective disposition (Hoeken & Sinkeldam, 2014;Marett, 2015;Robinson & Knobloch-Westerwick, 2017).…”

“…This implies that audience members identify with a character with positive affective disposition more than they would a character with negative affective disposition. Supporting this argument, previous studies provide direct empirical evidence that people identify with a person of positive affective disposition more than with one of negative affective disposition (Hoeken & Sinkeldam, 2014;Marett, 2015;Tal-Or & Cohen, 2010). Similarly, studies have found that people tend to identify with a successful individual or group more than with an unsuccessful individual or group (Cialdini et al, 1976;Snyder et al, 1986).…”

“…The role of affective disposition has been examined in narrative persuasion as well—a likeable story character leads to more identification, which in turn leads to story-consistent attitudes (Hoeken & Sinkeldam, 2014; Marett, 2015) and perceived liking of a character is positively associated with self-efficacy regarding sleep hygiene practice (Robinson & Knobloch-Westerwick, 2017). These studies also showed that when something bad happens to a disliked character, the story is less divergent from a just world (Hoeken & Sinkeldam, 2014; Study 2) and a disliked character is more deserving (Marett, 2015) than if the same negative outcome were to happen to a liked character. However, they examined stories with bad endings only.…”

“…Disposition theory, for example, examines the joint effects of an event and a character, suggesting that audiences enjoy narratives when something good happens to a liked character or, conversely, when something bad happens to a disliked character (Zillmann, 2000; Zillmann & Bryant, 1975). Narrative persuasion studies, on the other hand, separately examined effects of narrative events and characters, such as whether something good or bad happens to a story character (Kim & Lee, 2017) and the liking or disliking of a story character (Hoeken & Sinkeldam, 2014; Marett, 2015; Robinson & Knobloch-Westerwick, 2017). However, studies to date have not examined how these events and characters in a narrative produce the same or different effect on enjoyment and persuasion.…”