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Affective Feeling for a Film Character and Evaluation of an Anti‐Social Act
Author(s) -
HOWITT DENNIS,
CUMBERBATCH GUY
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
british journal of social and clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0007-1293
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1972.tb00789.x
Subject(s) - character (mathematics) , feeling , psychology , affect (linguistics) , social psychology , variance (accounting) , developmental psychology , communication , geometry , mathematics , accounting , business
The hypothesis that liking for a film‐mediated character results in a more favourable evaluation of that character's actions was tested. A group of adolescent boys and girls was shown the film Chick's Day and their affective feeling for the central character, Chick, was measured by self‐report. The subjects were then randomly assigned to either the experimental group which was led to believe that Chick had performed a violent act, or to the control group which was led to believe that another character, John Davies, had performed the act. The results were analysed by analysis of variance and by comparing the sizes of correlation between affect and evaluation for both groups. It is concluded that positive affect for a mass‐media character does not influence a child to be more favourably disposed towards the violent behaviour of that character.