Good things about movie! Cinematic portrayal of human virtues promotes motivation for virtuous acts

What is it about?

This study suggests that irrespective of the audience’s intrinsic personality traits, the degree of perceived human virtues as demonstrated by the protagonist in the movie is positively associated with the meaningful affective response (elevation) experienced by the audience, which in turn predicts a heightened motivation for prosocial behaviors after watching a meaningful movie.

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Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash

Photo by Krists Luhaers on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Movie (and some other related media platforms) provides abundant powerful and illustrative examples of human virtues through the acts of the characters in it. The use of movies in clinical and educational settings has been discussed for several decades. However, systematic quantitative research and theoretical exploration on the effects of cinematic portrayal of human virtues on the audience is scarce. By using the established psychometric scales in the field of Positive Psychology for measuring human character strengths and virtues, participants in this study were asked to rate the degree of virtues as demonstrated by the protagonist in a movie. The results show the degree of perceived virtues is positively associated with one’s affective response, which in turn predicts one’s increased motivation for virtuous behaviors after movie watching. These results suggest that the impacts of cinematic portrayal of human virtues can be quantitatively examined, and unravel a promising approach to the study of positive psychology in the media.

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