TY - JOUR PY - 2005// TI - Punishing Media Criminals and Moral Judgment: The Impact on Enjoyment JO - Media psychology A1 - Raney, Arthur A. SP - 145 EP - 163 VL - 7 IS - 2 N2 - In this study, I investigated the relation between moral judgment and the enjoyment of crime dramas by varying the relative severity of punishment levied for a crime. One hundred fifty-one participants rated their enjoyment of a video clip depicting a crime with the perpetrator being punished either excessively or not at all. In keeping with previous literature, I predicted that the different punishments would elicit different levels of moral judgment, which would then impact enjoyment. The results indicate that crime drama enjoyment was consistently predicted by certain social justice attitudes and resulting moral judgments about the content. The findings lend support to moral sanction theory and the integrated model of crime drama enjoyment and shed further insight into how viewer cognitions impact dispositional affiliations formed toward characters in media entertainment. In this study, I investigated the relation between moral judgment and the enjoyment of crime dramas by varying the relative severity of punishment levied for a crime. One hundred fifty-one participants rated their enjoyment of a video clip depicting a crime with the perpetrator being punished either excessively or not at all. In keeping with previous literature, I predicted that the different punishments would elicit different levels of moral judgment, which would then impact enjoyment. The results indicate that crime drama enjoyment was consistently predicted by certain social justice attitudes and resulting moral judgments about the content. The findings lend support to moral sanction theory and the integrated model of crime drama enjoyment and shed further insight into how viewer cognitions impact dispositional affiliations formed toward characters in media entertainment.

LA - SN - 1521-3269 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0702_2 ID - ref1 ER -