Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Communication

Enjoyment of narratives is a central element of most narrative processing and narrative persuasion frameworks. Affective disposition theory (ADT; Zillmann, 2000) is one such theory that predicts how audiences experience narrative enjoyment. ADT posits that one of the most central components of narrative enjoyment is character dispositions, or how audiences develop feelings towards narrative characters. Current conceptualizations of ADT suggest that two factors, namely moral approbation and character schema (Zillmann, 2000; Raney, 2004), account for how audiences develop character dispositions. However, recent work has suggested that an additional factor, namely character interdependence, or the types of relationships that characters have within a story, also contributes to the disposition formation process (Grizzard, Francemone et al., 2020). The purpose of the current study is to develop a framework that empirically tests character interdependence and assesses how influential character networks are toward an audience's formed dispositions. In seven studies, I examine how the moral perceptions of a single character spread throughout a character network and influence how audiences perceive additional characters within a story. Results suggest that character interdependence indeed explains substantial variance in the disposition formation process and demonstrates that characters that are relationally at odds are perceptually contrasted with one another, and characters that are relationally aligned are perceptually assimilated iii with one another. With these results in mind, I highlight the importance of considering character interdependence as a narrative structural element and suggest that future work integrate additional social network perspectives into this body of research to more fully explicate how character interdependence functions within narrative perception.

Committee: Matthew Grizzard (Advisor); Nicholas Matthews (Committee Member); Emily Moyer-Gusé (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Communication

Perceived character depth is a concept relevant for understanding and predicting audience responses to narrative media, yet it has been largely unexplored in the field of media psychology. Through a careful review of diverse literatures, the current work offers a formal conceptualization of character depth as the extent to which a character's textual exposition evokes a detailed and multi-faceted mental conception of a character's psyche, behavior, and experience. After devising a series of items to measure character depth, this work then presents a series of experimental studies designed to test various aspects of validity of the proposed measurement scale and to test a causal path model of the relationship between character depth and processes specified by affective disposition theory (see Zillmann, 2000). Study 1 uses a known-groups approach and confirmatory factor analysis to test the predictive validity and measurement model of a 20-item proposed perceived character depth scale. Selective item retention results in a 6-item scale with excellent model fit. Studies 2 and 3 lend additional support to the validity of this 6-item scale's measurement model through tests of the scale in two different narrative contexts, both of which result in excellent model fit. Across Studies 1-3, evidence emerges of the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale in relation to other character perception variables. Study 4 applies this new measure in a 2 X 3 between-subjects experimental design that manipulates both character depth and character moral behavior independently. Results show that character depth impacts disposition formation and anticipatory responses above and beyond audience reactions to moral behavior. This finding has important theoretical implications for affective disposition theory (Zillmann, 2000), indicating that perceived character depth may serve as an additional predictor of disposition formation not specified in the original theory. Future research d (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Matthew Grizzard (Advisor); Emily Moyer-Guse (Advisor); Nicholas Matthews (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Communication

According to affective disposition theory, our enjoyment of narratives is a function of our feelings toward characters and perceived justness of the outcomes they encounter. Research on suspense has demonstrated that liking characters leads to greater suspense, and that morally just outcomes are associated with greater enjoyment of the narrative. However, additional factors may be relevant in this context. More specifically, perceived threat may act as a complement to character liking, and timing of narrative events may alter the impact of morality. Two studies were conducted in an effort to both complement and challenge affective disposition theory. Study 1 revealed that greater character liking, self-threat, and character-threat are all associated with more suspense and, through excitation transfer, more enjoyment. The first study also found threat to be positively associated with identification, liking, and transportation. Study 2 demonstrated that valence of a midpoint narrative outcome does not necessarily matter for suspense, in that a protagonist's extreme success and extreme failure in the middle of the narrative were associated with roughly the same amount of suspense. Implications for affective disposition theory are discussed.

Committee: Emily Moyer-Guse (Advisor); David Ewoldsen (Committee Member); Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick (Committee Member); Daniel McDonald (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Mass Media