Moral Clarity in Narratives Elicits Greater Cooperation than Moral Ambiguity

In disciplines such as moral psychology and media theory, investigations of moral clarity versus ambiguity in narratives are increasingly important. Untested mechanisms have been proposed for how moral clarity and ambiguity might affect audiences. Based on literature regarding joint action and coordinated experiences, we reason that morally clear narratives elicit coordinated responses across audience members, which should increase within-group cooperation. By contrast, we reason that morally ambiguous narratives elicit divergent, uncoordinated responses across audience members, and this experience decreases cooperation. We conducted three independent studies (one using short text narratives, one using feature-length films, and one using morally and emotionally neutral stimuli). Results indicate that moral clarity is indeed associated with subsequently higher levels of group cooperation than moral ambiguity, and the effect cannot be attributed to changes in affect or moral priming.     

A community psychology of object meanings: Identity negotiation during disaster recovery

What do material goods intended for personal consumption mean to community? We use the extreme example of natural disaster recovery in a community to explore this question. Our work describes how members make sense of material objects that transition from private to public possessions (damaged goods) and public to private possessions (donated goods). By blending consumer and community psychology perspectives with our narratives, we employ a three-dimensional framework for analyzing object meanings: (1) material objects as agents of communitas (a shared sense of “we”), (2) material objects as agents of individualism (a focus on “me”), and (3) material objects as agents of opposition (the “we” that speaks for “me” and “us” versus “them”). This theoretical frame allows us to show how different conceptions of identity lead to conflicting meanings of objects within community, and to explain how and why object meanings shift as objects move across time and space from private to public and from scarcity to abundance. We also provide implications for coping with disasters that consider collective and individual identities as well as oppositional stances in between.     

Regulatory Fit,Processing Fluency,and Narrative Persuasion

For millennia, people have used narratives to inform and persuade. However, little social psychological research addresses how and when narrative persuasion occurs, perhaps because narratives are complex stimuli that are difficult to vary without significantly changing the plot or characters. Existing research suggests that regulatory fit and/or processing fluency can be varied easily and in ways completely exterior to narrative content but that nonetheless affect how much narratives engage, transport, and persuade. We review research on narrative transportation and persuasion and then discuss regulatory fit and its relationship to processing fluency. Afterward, we discuss how regulatory fit and processing fluency may affect psychological engagement, transportation, and persuasion via narratives.     

Fictional narratives change beliefs: replications of Prentice,Gerrig, and Bailis (1997) with mixed corroboration

We report three exact replications of experiments aimed at illuminating how fictional narratives influence beliefs (Prentice, Gerrig, & Bailis, 1997). Students read fictional stories that contained weak, unsupported assertions and which took place either at their home school or at an away school. Prentice et al. found that students were influenced to accept the assertions, even those blatantly false, but that this effect on beliefs was limited to the away-school setting. We questioned the limiting of the narrative effect to remote settings. Our studies consistently reproduced the first finding, heightened acceptance of statements occurring in the conversations of narrative protagonists, but we failed to reproduce the moderating effect of school location. In an attempt to understand these discrepancies, we measured likely moderating factors such as readers’ need for cognition and their extent of scrutiny of the narratives.     

Symbolic providers help people regulate affect relationally: Implications for perceived support

Relational regulation theory (Lakey & Orehek, 2011 ) predicts that the correlation between perceived support and mental health emerges through ordinary conversation and shared activities rather than through conversations about stress and how to cope with it. Observing the conversations and activities of others also helps regulate mental health. Symbolic providers (known only through media) mimic how real providers regulate affect in that recipients observe the conversations and shared activities of symbolic providers. Thus, many perceived support findings obtained for real providers should also be found for symbolic providers. We found the same links between perceived support and affect when recipients rated symbolic providers as when recipients rated real providers. When participants' affect was worsened, viewing symbolic providers helped restore affect.     

Atmospheric memories: Affect and minor politics at the ten-year anniversary of the London bombings

This paper addresses how the ten-year anniversary of the London bombings was made present through political affects and atmospheres on 7 July 2015. Although the anniversary of a terrorist event forms an opportune moment for invoking the nation as united in feeling, we are interested in how people attune to political atmospheres of memory and trauma in multiple ways, which do not always cohere to sovereign narratives about unity and certainty. By focusing on these events through an attentiveness to the atmospheric and affective, we examine how these events were recalled, memorialised, felt and sensed in the small-scale ceremonies taking place across London on that morning, by way of a multi-authored sensory auto-ethnography. As such, we are led towards various moments of encounter, which involve ‘minor gestures’ (Manning, 2016), and imply ways of responding to acts of terror that rub against the unifying forces of the state. In contrast to the ‘rolling maelstroms of affect’ (Thrift 2004: 57) pursued by the state and media following a terrorist attack, this project is attentive to multiple, uncertain and ambivalent encounters. These matter because they suggest other ways of being political and of responding to both terrorist and state-led violence.     

From cooperation to conflict: The role of collective narratives in shaping group behaviour

In this paper, we review the concept of collective narratives and their role in shaping group behaviour. We see collective narratives as ‘meta-stories’ embraced by groups that incorporate values and beliefs about social reality, therefore providing a blueprint for group norms which, in turn, inform group members' behaviour. Our aim is to both describe the psychological processes underpinning the relation between collective narratives and group behaviours and develop an integrative typology of the functions of collective narratives (as they connect to various collective behaviours). We start by discussing definitions in the recent literature and propose an integrative conceptualisation which positions collective narratives in the context of collective action research. Next, we focus on the process by which collective narratives provide the bases for identity formation, development, and change, thus shaping group behaviour. We see collective narratives as central in understanding group behaviour, as they function as ‘meta-stories’ that incorporate moral codes and values, and beliefs about the ingroups and outgroups—providing a blueprint for group norms which, in turn, inform group members' behaviour. In the second part of the article, we describe a typology of collective narratives according to their functions, structured around two core dimensions: the context/s in which collective narratives develop and are shared (i.e., intragroup vs. intergroup) and their effects within these contexts (i.e., driving consensus vs. driving dissent). We identify four distinctive types of collective narrative functions and review research showing how each of them shapes specific social identity content, including behaviour prescribing norms. We then show how these specific norms shape behaviours ranging from cooperation and pro-social action to hostile intergroup conflict. The implications of this contribution are twofold. First, by providing a systematic account and categorisation of how collective narratives function in society and of their connections to social identities (and their content), we can more accurately deduct group norms and predict behaviours in specific circumstances, including in relation to political violence. Second, by better understanding the narratives that provide the bases of identity formation, development, and change, we can improve attempts to create alternative narratives that unify rather than divide people, so that pathways to co-operation might be chosen over conflict.     

The soft embodiment of culture: camera angles and motion through time and space

Cultural assumptions about one's relation to others and one's place in the world can be literally embodied in the way one cognitively maps out one's position and motion in time and space. In three experiments, we examined the psychological perspective that Asian American and Euro-American participants embodied as they both comprehended and produced narratives and mapped out metaphors of time and space. In social situations, Euro-American participants were more likely to embody their own perspective and a sense of their own motion (rather than those of a friend), whereas Asian American participants were more likely to embody a friend's perspective and sense of motion (rather than their own). We discuss how these psychological perspectives represent the soft embodiment of culture by implicitly instantiating cultural injunctions (a) to think about how you look to others and to harmonize with them or (b) to know yourself, trust yourself, and act with confidence.     

Female Adolescents, Sexual Empowerment and Desire: A Missing Discourse of Gender Inequity

In this commentary, I offer a response to Lamb & Peterson (2011). I base these comments on the feminist scholarship on adolescent girls’ healthy sexuality that Lamb (2010a) critiqued in the first of this series. I address and redress several of her concerns by providing the context and history of my own research and recovering the meanings of desire, pleasure and subjectivity as they appeared in this body of work. I then engage Lamb and Peterson’s points of consensus about the role of sexual empowerment in adolescent girls’ healthy sexuality by 1) positioning sexualization as more than a context; 2) identifying a missing discourse of gender inequity as a central issue in their discussion; and 3) explaining how the use of theory and interpretation in feminist research methods is necessary for and distinct from a surface reading of narratives of lived experience. Finally, I will provide examples of some alternative paths for supporting healthy adolescent women’s sexuality that extend beyond school-based sex education and media literacy into alternative engagements with girls through technology, media activism and participatory practices.     

Understanding concussion in socio-cultural context: A media analysis of a National Hockey League star's concussion

ObjectivesSport psychology researchers have yet to explore the socio-cultural context of concussion. The aim with this study was to explore the contribution of one socio-cultural context (i.e., sport media) toward understanding the construction of meaning(s) of a sport celebrity's concussion and the implications for sport psychology.DesignA qualitative approach was used to explore concussion as a socio-cultural issue shaped by cultural narratives (i.e., news media). The meanings and implications for how sport concussion is understood and “constructed” through a key media incident were of interest.MethodAn ethnographic content analysis (see Altheide, 1996) of the mediation of the National Hockey League's (NHL) star player Sidney Crosby's concussion from January 1, 2011 (when the concussion occurred) to June 30, 2011 (end of the NHL season) was undertaken on North American news data.ResultsThe ethnographic content analysis of 68 articles revealed that Crosby's concussion and its associated meanings were constructed within a central narrative: a culture of risk and its impact on athletes. Multiple meanings of concussion within the risk narrative emerged depending on three sub-narratives: (a) Crosby's concussion as a cautionary tale, (b) Crosby's concussion as a political platform, and (c) concussion as ambiguous.ConclusionsThe culture of risk narrative raises awareness of the physical risks, physiological effects and the politics of concussion. These cultural meanings do not acknowledge/include the psychological implications/effects of concussion. This study furthers understandings of sport concussion within a socio-cultural context.     

Comprehension Models of Audiovisual Discourse Processing

Comprehension is integral to enjoyment of media narratives, yet our understanding of how viewers create the situation models that underlie comprehension is limited. This study utilizes two models of comprehension that had previously been tested with factual texts/videos to predict viewers' recall of entertainment media. Across five television/film clips, the landscape model explained at least 29% of the variance in recall. A dual coding version that assumed separate verbal and visual representations of the story significantly improved the model fit in four of the clips, accounting for an additional 15–29% of the variance. The dimensions of the event‐indexing model (time, space, protagonist, causality, and intentionality) significantly moderated the relationship between the dual coding model and participant recall in all clips.     

Cognition in moral space: A minimal model

We describe moral cognition as a process occurring in a distinctive cognitive space, wherein moral relationships are defined along several morally relevant dimensions. After identifying candidate dimensions, we show how moral judgments can emerge in this space directly from object perception, without any appeal to moral rules or abstract values. Our reductive “minimal model” (Batterman & Rice, 2014) elaborates Beal’s (2020) claim that moral cognition is determined, at the most basic level, by “ontological frames” defining subjects, objects, and the proper relation between them. We expand this claim into a set of formal hypotheses that predict moral judgments based on how objects are “framed” in the relevant dimensions of “moral space.”     

Inhibition of return spreads across 3-D space

Focusing attention to a location in 3–D space operates much the same as in 2–D space. Attending a location in 2–D space is followed by a selective inhibitory aftereffect known as inhibition of return (IOR). Here, we report the results of two 3–D reflexive cuing studies in which depth was defined by binocular disparity. As has been shown before, attentional cuing was specific for x–y–z locations. However, the present results show that IOR is not depth specific. After a specific location in x–y–z is cued, IOR occurs for the depth plane in front of and behind the cued location. The finding that IOR spreads across depth planes may be related to how inhibited locations are encoded in the superior colliculus. We argue that the functional role of a depth–blind IOR is to bias attention against going back to any part of a previously attended object.     

What is space? A media ecology approach

We will explore the nature of space from a media ecology/Marshall McLuhan point of view. We will examine both space and time as the origin or etymology of the term ‘space’ includes both the notion of 3-space and time. We show how various media of communication influence how we perceive space and time from the origin of language to today’s digital revolution.     

The Role of Social Context During Television Viewing on Children’s Moral Judgments About Social Exclusion and Stigmatization of Others

Research has considered how exposure to prosocial television narratives influences children’s social inclusion behaviors (e.g., Mares & Acosta, 2010). In these experiments, children typically view a stimulus episode alone; however, we know that children often watch with others at home (Chandler, 1997). Thus, in this study we examined how children’s proximal social context during viewing influenced effects. Using data collected from a 3-condition experiment (control, view-alone, coview with close friend) with Dutch children ages 5 and 6 (N = 80), we found that exposure largely did not influence children’s inclusion judgments or stigmatization beliefs. There was, however, an age × condition interaction, such that 6-year-old children in the coview condition demonstrated greater stigmatization beliefs toward other children, compared to 5-year-olds in the same condition, or all children in the other conditions. We discuss the implications of these findings while considering previous work on learning inclusion from prosocial television shows, reality judgments, and the bystander effect.     

Can television help to decrease stigmatization among young children? The role of Theory of Mind and general and explicit inserts

ABSTRACT

Past research has considered how exposure to certain media content affects children’s Theory of Mind (ToM). It is possible, however, that ToM also moderates the effects of exposure to televised narratives on children’s behavior. Previous work found that special inserts, designed to help children understand an inclusion message, were somewhat effective in promoting children’s comprehension of the moral lesson. Such inserts, however, may be most effective in promoting inclusion among children lowest in ToM, who would theoretically be least likely to engage in prosocial behaviors. To test this possibility, we use data collected from four- to six-year-old children in the Netherlands (N = 66). We randomly assigned children to one of three conditions: a control, a treatment condition with general information inserts, and a treatment condition with explicit moral lesson inserts. Results indicate that children’s prosocial intentions mediate the relationship between condition and stigmatization, but only among children in the explicit condition lowest in ToM. This suggests that explicit inserts can help children low in ToM to learn from inclusion narratives. Comprehension of the moral lesson did not mediate this relationship. We integrate these findings with existing research, discussing overall conclusions in the context of child development.     

Exploring the construct validity of the social cognition and object relations scale in a clinical sample

The Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Global rating method (SCORS-G; Stein, Hilsenroth, Slavin-Mulford, & Pinsker, 2011; Westen, 1995) measures the quality of object relations in narrative material. This study employed a multimethod approach to explore the structure and construct validity of the SCORS-G. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1943) was administered to 59 patients referred for psychological assessment at a large Northeastern U.S. hospital. The resulting 301 TAT narratives were rated using the SCORS-G method. The 8 SCORS variables were found to have high interrater reliability and good internal consistency. Principal components analysis revealed a 3-component solution with components tapping emotions/affect regulation in relationships, self-image, and aspects of cognition. Next, the construct validity of the SCORS-G components was explored using measures of intellectual and executive functioning, psychopathology, and normal personality. The 3 SCORS-G components showed unique and theoretically meaningful relationships across these broad and diverse psychological measures. This study demonstrates the value of using a standardized scoring method, like the SCORS-G, to reveal the rich and complex nature of narrative material.     

Constructivist Analytics: Using Data to Enable Deeper Museum Experiences for More Visitors—Lessons from the Learning Sciences

This article defines and outlines constructivist analytics, a framework for understanding how, where, and when the narratives we construct with advanced data analysis can affect positive social change in informal learning environments (such as museums). I ask three core questions based on this framework: How can researchers use analytics to understand what different visitors find valuable? How can we use analytics to help more visitors find value and to improve visitors' experiences when they find value? How can we present and structure analytics in ways that many different stakeholders find valuable? I then suggest possible avenues for both expanding current work in constructivist analytics and developing new angles on positive, effective, and data-rich narratives.