Character Gender and Disposition Formation in Narratives: The Role of Competing Schema

How viewers form dispositions toward narrative characters is a central question of affective disposition theory. Two routes are explained by current models: Schema activation, whereby viewers’ based on perceived role, and behavioral approbation, moral approval/disapproval behavior. What remains unclear how competing character schemas function: Do they exert their influence in the same location serial process? Or, does impact formation depend schema? The paper builds past work that experimentally manipulated schema activation approbation with experimental inductions. We extend crossing its hero/villain-schema induction another: gender. After validating stimuli pilot study, our main experiment demonstrated gender did not moderate activation; however, was more extreme for female characters. Theoretical implications suggest various may have distinct roles to play formation, these distinctions being unaccounted Practical elicit stronger positive/negative and, through outcome evaluation processes, enjoyment. Thus, Hollywood’s lack representation likely hurting bottom line.