The Art of Growing Up: Media and Morality in the Lives of Late Adolescents and Emerging Adults

The Art of Growing Up:

Media and Morality in the Lives of Late Adolescents and Emerging Adults

Master’s Thesis Selamawit Habtemariam

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Graduate School of Communication

Research Master’s Program Communication Science Supervisor: Dr. Jessica Taylor Piotrowski

Abstract

According to theModel of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME) salience of moral intuition can be influenced through the exposure to entertainment content featuring moral lessons.

However, previous research on the MIME focused mainly on adults. This study expands the research on the MIME by including individuals that can be characterized by moral sensitivity (e.g. late adolescents and emerging adults). Further, this study aimed to advance the

understanding of boundary conditions of media effects. For this reason, this study investigated how the response (salience of moral intuition) to media varied depending on individual

differences (here: need for cognition) as well as the characteristic of the medium (here: genre preference) itself. The study design was set up as a between-subject design. 179 participants aged 16-21 years (Mage=19.45, 81.6% female) were exposed to a comic highlighting a specific moral intuition (authority, care, fairness, loyalty or purity) or a control condition featuring egoistic motivations. Unlike expected, the experimental condition did not heighten the accessibly of moral intuitions compared to the control condition. Furthermore, findings did not show a moderating effect of need for cognition. On the other hand, there was significant evidence to suggest that – although limited to the care intuition – genre preference may have a moderating effect in increasing the salience of the moral intuition.

Keywords: Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars, MIME, media effects, morality,

The Art of Growing Up:

Media and Morality in the Lives of Late Adolescents and Emerging Adults And shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive in their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those

which we should wish them to have when they are grown up? – Plato, The Republic, Book II For better and for worse, media in its many forms has become an influential part of socialization. Although there is no generation that is unaffected by media, young people are considered a particularly potent subgroup likely to experience entertainment media effects – in part due to their developing cognitive and socio-emotional skills and in part due to their increased media use (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). On average adolescents and emerging adults alone spend more than 10 hours per day using media (Coyne, Padilla-Walker, & Howard, 2013) with nearly 61% of 16-24 year-olds in Europe watching TV daily (n.A., 2019b). Young people’s media use is a constant, at home or on the move. In comparison, all other age groups report considerably less media exposure (Eurostat, 2017; Smith & Anderson, 2018). It is no wonder that parents, physicians, and researchers are interested in and even concerned about young people’s media use and how it influences their development and ultimately their behavior.

And indeed, a number of negative effects, such as increased levels of violence, anti-social behavior, body dissatisfaction, and sedentary behavior have been linked to media consumption (Piotrowski, Vossen, & Valkenburg, 2015; Ward, Seabrook, Giaccardi, & Zuo, 2016). These negative effects are a popular narrative that news stories pick up frequently. They tend to suggest a clearly negative image of entertainment media’s influence. However, the truth is far more complicated. Less discussed are the positive effects of media exposure that have been found in children and young adults (e.g. pro-social behavior) (Cingel & Krcmar, 2017; Grizzard, Lewis, Prabhu, Eden, & Tamborini, 2016; Mares & Pan, 2013).

Instead of jumping to quick one-for-all diagnosis (as to see in Chalmers, 2019) it is important to understand negative and positive media effects on young people, alongside the boundary conditions. A growing body of research has made strides to show that the extent to which effects are present is dependent not only on the content itself but also on individual differences (e.g. trait aggression, empathy, sensation seeking) (Fikkers & Piotrowski, 2019; Oliver & Krakowiak, 2008; Piotrowski & Valkenburg, 2015; Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). The call for stringent and robust efforts to better understand the boundary conditions of media effects is still ongoing. This work contributes to this aim by investigating whether and in what contexts entertainment media, namely its messages of moral dilemmas and associated morality, might support young people’s development of their moral self.

Theoretical Conceptualization of Media and Morality

Research interest on media’s potential influence on morality has grown in the last decade (Cingel & Krcmar, 2017; Mares & Braun, 2013). A key point in the field has been Tamborini’s (2013) development of the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME). Compared to other earlier work, the MIME focuses on the underlying reasons and mechanisms that explain the effects of media content, especially entertainment media, on audiences’ moral judgment. Moral judgment is understood as the intuitive and unconscious evaluation of right or wrong, good or bad. (Bilandzic, 2011; Haidt, 2001; Tamborini, Bowman, et al., 2018; Tamborini et al., 2013). Importantly, the MIME is less concerned with the development of morality per se (Tamborini, Prabhu, Lewis, Grizzard, & Eden, 2018) but rather on how entertainment media may influence the audience’s sense of morality and thus their moral judgments.

The MIME builds its logic on the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) which postulates that morality reflects a set of virtues, norms, and practices that provide a pattern for behavior and social living (Graham et al., 2011). These virtues are thought to be fixed, consisting of five moral foundations (referred to as moral intuitions in the MIME) that represent distinct domains

responsible for moral judgment (Bilandzic, 2011; Haidt & Joseph, 2006): Care/Harm, Fairness/Reciprocity, Loyalty/Ingroup, Authority/Respect, and Purity/ Sanctity. Care/harm is

focused on empathy and thinking of others’ wellbeing, fairness/reciprocity is concerned with justice and equality, loyalty/ingroup presents a bias towards own people, possibly on the cost of outgroups, authority/respect is based on hierarchical structures that define leaders and followers, and finally the intuition purity/sanctity is occupied with contamination, disgust and purity on a physical and spiritual level (Haidt & Joseph, 2008; Tamborini et al., 2013, 2018). Not only are these moral intuitions fixed, they are innate, meaning humans are in a way prewired (Haidt & Joseph, 2004). The extent to which the intuitions are developed differs between individuals, and they are nourished and strengthened only through exposure. Ultimately, these intuitions guide decision-making processes, form social skills and determine behavior. For instance, moral lessons that speak to the care/harm intuition, allow an understanding of and sensitivity towards others’ well-being, leading to more thoughtful behavior (Haidt & Joseph, 2006). With age, the situations individuals are exposed to become more complex, and in turn, the evaluation of the moral lessons becomes harder. Young people have to decide which lessons to remember, which behavior to (potentially) emulate, and which information to disregard (Haidt & Joseph, 2006).

This is where the MIME comes into play. The MIME proposes that exposure to media content has the ability to make moral intuitions more salient and thus more accessible. These intuitions are most likely to be evoked when content appeals to altruistic motivations, leading to

a specific moral intuition to be triggered (Tamborini et al., 2016; Tamborini, Prabhu, et al., 2018). When moral intuitions are triggered, the MIME posits that moral judgments will be affected – both short and long-term. Specifically, in the short-term, entertainment media which focuses on moral intuitions may cause a temporary increase in specific moral intuition. This state subsequently affects decision making by increasing the importance of the heightened foundation (vis a vis moral judgments; Tamborini, Prabhu, et al., 2016). With repeated exposure, this temporary accessibility may shift to chronic accessibility leading to long-term effects

(Tamborini, Prabhu, et al., 2018). For example, following the main characters on the TV series Friends on their journey and seeing their friendship deepen could increase the loyalty foundation

by signifying the importance of ingroup values. Evidence for Media Effects on Moral Judgement

The MIME’s strength lies in the fact that it disregards normative labels (e.g. helpful, violent) and instead concentrates on underlying mechanisms to explain reactions to media content. By formulating a more structured way of understanding moral media effects, the MIME offers a more sophisticated approach to understanding and predicting moral judgment (Hahn et al., 2017).

Thus far, numerous studies have found evidence for both the short-term and long-term process of the MIME. Indeed, a case can be made that media does prime moral intuitions and, dependent upon the prime and length of exposure, influences subsequent moral judgment (e.g. Eden et al., 2014; Tamborini, Lewis, et al., 2016). The challenge, however, is that the majority of this knowledge base is built with undergraduate populations (e.g. Eden & Tamborini, 2017; Tamborini et al., 2018, 2012). This audience is not necessarily problematic for theory-testing, yet

it does leave open the question as to whether particular considerations should be discussed within the findings.

In the context of lifespan research, it is particularly important to consider the extent to which these effects might be similarly experienced by late adolescents and emerging adults. While the MIME presently makes no age distinction, there is a clear difference between

adulthood (when one’s moral self is generally considered ‘fully developed’) and younger people who only recently gained the capability of processing moral messages and thus may be

particularly sensitive to moral inputs (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). Indeed, it is only in late adolescence (starting around 16 years old) that individuals have achieved the cognitive and social-emotional capabilities to fully interpret moral messages. With these newly acquired skills, late adolescents may be highly impressionable to moral lessons and – as such – may richly experience the effects of morally-valanced media (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). Emerging adults are similarly a unique population for consideration. Despite being more in tune with their moral self, they are still in search of their identity and frequently exposed to moral dilemmas that push the bounds of their moral selves (Arnett, Sugimura, & Žukauskienė, 2014). For both

groups, it seems reasonable to expect that the MIME’s predictions would be supported – in that exposure to media content which primes moral intuitions will affect the salience of set moral intuition and subsequently (short-term) moral judgments. Lindsay Hahn and colleagues (2017) have previously introduced a study testing the MIME in children (10-13-year old’s). Their findings indicate that accessibility of moral intuition can be manipulated in young children. To that end, this study offers an extension of existing MIME scholarship by testing this prediction with a population of late adolescents and emerging adults:

Hypothesis 1: The accessibility of young people’s (a) care, (b) fairness, (c) loyalty, (d)

authority, or (e) purity intuitions will be greater after exposure to narrative content that highlights these intuitions than after exposure to content highlighting other motivations.

Boundary Conditions

Although entertainment media which highlights moral intuitions is expected to heighten the accessibility of young’s people intuitions, there is reason to believe that there are likely many individual differences that affect the strength of this relationship. Focusing on conditional effects will allow a deeper understanding of media effects and can correct the tendencies to

over-generalize the strength of media effects (Piotrowski & Valkenburg, 2015). To this regard, need for cognition and genre preference are considered as moderators that could explain the boundary conditions of moral media messages on morality outcomes.

Need for Cognition. Cacioppo and Petty (1984) defined need for cognition (NFC) as “individual’s tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavors” (p. 306). People that are high in NFC like to engage in thinking and reflection, they actively seek out information to get a deeper understanding of situations, relationships, and behavior. Contrastingly, people that have a low NFC, rely on the evaluation of others or social comparison (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996). Moreover, people with low NFC have to be motivated to think further (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). NFC is not to be confused with intellectual ability. As an individual difference variable, NFC is not about capability but about willingness and interest (Cacioppo et al., 1996).

Most research on NFC concentrates on information processing and attitude change, revealing that high NFC can lead to stronger attitudes (Barbaro, Pickett, & Parkhill, 2015; Liu & Eveland, 2005). A different take on NFC was provided by Dai and Wang (2007). Their research

on the role of NFC regarding text comprehension showed that high NFC lead to greater comprehension independent of the type of text, provided texts were intellectually engaging. Further, people with a high NFC were better at decoding metaphorical messages. They also showed a higher recall of information and arguments in expository texts (Dai & Wang, 2007). In line with this research, it may be the case that individuals with a higher NFC are able to decode moral lessons easier and more enthusiastically compared to individuals with lower NFC. This richer content experience can be expected, to lead to a greater effect in terms of salience of moral intuition for people with a higher NFC compared to individuals with a lower NFC. Accordingly, the following hypothesis was derived:

Hypothesis 2: The accessibility of the (a) care, (b) fairness, (c) loyalty, (d) authority, or

(e) purity intuitions will be moderated by need for cognition such that young people with higher need for cognition will experience greater accessibility after exposure to narrative content that highlights that intuition compared to young adults with lower need for cognition.

Genre Preference. Besides individual’s characteristics, the characteristics of media itself play a distinct role when we are considering the extent of media effects. Attributes of media content, such as the format, color schemes and characters have long been identified as

moderators and in some cases mediators of media effects (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013). Dubow, Huesmann & Greenwood (2007) show that advertisers have made (and are still making) use of this trope by instrumentalizing popular media formats and characters to sell their products. The belief is that the more favored the specific media variable, the greater the media effect. Recently, it has been argued that genre should also be considered an important factor in audience research. For example, Redker, Gibson and Zimmerman (2013) investigated the effectiveness of product placement and genre liking. Their findings showed that brand attitudes improved when

participants liked the used movie genre. These findings could be explained with the

transportation theory which assumes that enjoyment is supported through immersion into the plot (Green, Brock, & Kaufman, 2004). Enjoyment here is understood as the experience of pleasure and appreciation (Tamborini et al., 2011). Enjoyment of the content can be supported by the plot, genre and style of the content. When enjoyment is a given, individuals are able to get lost in the story, the characters their decision-making (Green et al., 2004). In much the same way, it seems reasonable to suggest that genre preference will influence the extent to which audiences extract moral lessons from media content such that a preferred genre will lead to greater moral lesson extraction. Therefore, the following hypothesis was derived:

Hypothesis 3: The accessibility of the (a) care, (b) fairness, (c) loyalty, (d) authority, or

(e) purity intuitions will be moderated by genre preference such that young people with higher genre preference will experience greater accessibility after exposure to narrative content that highlights that intuition compared to young adults with lower genre preference.

Method

Participants and Design

346 participants were recruited for this study, with 69% of the sample participating in English (N = 239) and 31% in German (N = 107). Participants were recruited via snowball sampling per means of social media. Recruitment posts and flyers were shared on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn (Appendix B). Individuals were also recruited via the LAB, the participants tool of the University of Amsterdam. For their participation, subjects received half a research credit or had the chance to win a voucher for an online store. Only individuals between the age of 16 and 21 (adolescence and emerging adulthood) were eligible to participate. Of the 346 participants who began the study, only 260 participants completed the survey. Out of these 260 participants, 31.15% of participants failed an attention check and/or were not within the age range. Thus, 179 participants provided complete data for all study variables of interest – and formed the final sample for analysis (Mage = 19.45, SDage = 1.40; 81.6% female; 72.1% held high school diploma or equivalent). To check for equal distribution across conditions a

randomization check for the variables age, gender, education, religion, nationality, residency and age was performed using a one-way ANOVA for age and a chi-square test for the remaining variables of interest. There were no significant differences by condition on any demographic variable, meaning equal distribution can be assumed (Appendix A, table 1).

To test the hypotheses, a between-subjects experiment was conducted (six conditions; five moral intuitions vs control). All participants were randomly assigned to one condition, priming either one of the moral intuition or the control condition which focused on egoistic motivations via the stimulus material (Nauthority = 29; Ncare = 36; Nfairness = 22; Nloyalty = 30; Npurity = 34; Ncontrol = 28).

Stimulus

The stimulus material used is based on the Cleopatra in Space comic book series

(Maihack, n.d.). The storyline was originally created for Hahn et. al’s study (2017) with children aged 10-13. Hahn and colleagues focused on four out of the five intuitions, namely authority, care, fairness, and loyalty. They created five different versions of the comic, each focusing on one specific altruistic intuition and the fifth version, considered a control, focused on egoistic motivations. All study versions were provided by Hahn and colleagues with permission for re-use and modifications. Modifications were minimal. In addition to translating content (to ensure both an English and German version given the available study population), sentence structure was increased somewhat in complexity to ensure the content would be developmentally

appropriate for the target audience of this study. Moreover, to cover all aspects of the MIME an addition was made by designing a sixth comic to include the moral intuition purity. During the design of the purity condition comic, Hahn et al.’s (2017) initial concerns about conceptual ambiguity (see also Eden, 2011) were considered. However, the plot was created to take these concerns into account and ensure that other moral intuitions were not triggered.

Basic Story. All versions of the comic consisted of the same base plot. Cleopatra, the main character attends school, alongside her friend Akila. During class, she receives a mission from the Grand Council to retrieve a key to unlock a precious treasure on a different planet. On the planet, she is caught by creatures called Nebulans who demand the key. She then is left with a choice to make: to keep the key and, therefore the treasure or leave it with the Nebulans.

Conditions. As in the original study (Hahn et al., 2017), the comic book versions vary at four points in the story. For example, in the loyalty condition, Cleopatra’s internal struggle on what to do with the treasure is ultimately determined by her wanting to side with her group. Yet,

participants exposed to the fairness condition see Cleopatra being swayed by the Nebulans revealing that the treasure belonged to their ancestors thus leading Cleopatra to promise to find the treasure and share it evenly with the Nebulans. In the control condition, Cleopatra is

motivated by selfish reasons to keep the treasure for herself. The variations of all conditions and their highlighted segments can be found in Appendix C.

Measures

Moral Intuitions – Dependent Variable. Moral intuitions were measured using the short version of the moral foundation questionnaire (MFQ20). The questionnaire consisted of 22 items, including two attention checkers. The first ten items assessed moral relevance.

Participants answered the question ‘When you decide whether something is right or wrong, to what extent are the following considerations relevant to your thinking’ on a 6-point scale from ‘not at all relevant’ to ‘extremely relevant’, with two items representing the five moral intuitions each (e.g. ‘Whether or not someone cared for someone weak or vulnerable’, ‘Whether or not someone violated standards of purity and decency’). The second half of the MFQ focused on moral judgments, with two items representing each moral intuition (‘One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal’, ‘Justice is the most important requirement for a

society’). Participants answered questions about moral judgment on a 6-point scale from ‘strongly disagree to ‘strongly agree’.

In each section, one item to check the attention of the participants was implemented. These attention checker items allow the insurance of the participants’ understanding of the topic of moral relevance and moral judgment. Participants were asked for example ‘Whether or not someone was good at math’, ‘It is better to do good than to do bad’. Participants who answered

math (i.e. scored higher than three on the relevance scale) were excluded from the analysis. Further, if participants disagreed with the statement that it is better to be good than to be bad (i.e. scored three or lower) were excluded from the analysis (Eden et al., 2014). The order within both sections was randomized, keeping the attention checker placed after the fifth item. The resulting four sub-scales consisted of four items each with Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities ranging below the accepted scores: αauthority = .51, αcare = .54, αfairness = .42, αloyalty = .40, αpurity = .48.

Need for Cognition - Moderator. The 6-item short form version of the NFC scale was used for this study (NCS-6). This version has been shown to have adequate construct validity and reliability (Lins de Holanda Coelho, Hanel, & Wolf 2018). Participants rated the six items on a 5-point scale from 1 ‘strongly disagree’ to 5 ‘strongly agree’. Four items were positively stated (‘I would prefer complex to simple problems’) and two items were negatively stated (‘Thinking is not my idea of fun’). The order of the six items was randomized. After three items the third attention checker was displayed (‘If you are reading this statement, please select extremely uncharacteristic of me’). Subjects who did not follow the instructions of this statement correctly

were removed from the analysis. The negatively stated items were reverse coded, subsequently, an average over all items was formed to create an NFC score. With a Cronbach’s alpha of .76, the scale measured NFC reliably (M = 3.60, SD = .66).

Genre Preference - Moderator. Given the use of a comic book series as the

entertainment media in this study, the genre preference measure focused on preference towards fantasy, science-fiction, and animation genres. This researcher-developed measure relied on feature-length movies that were an international box office success in 2018 as indicators of preference (n.A., 2019a; Tartaglione, 2019). The movies were either part of the fantasy genre (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald), the science-fiction genre (Jurassic World:

Fallen Kingdom) or animation genre (Incredibles 2). For each movie, participants were asked if

and how often they had seen the movie. If viewed, subjects were asked to rate how much they liked the movie using an emoji scale (Appendix D) which ranged from ‘super bad’ to ‘super good’. An emoji scale was used instead of a more commonly used Likert scale as emoji scales have been found to be useful to measure emotional responses (Swaney-Stueve, Jepsen, & Deubler, 2018). For the first question subjects scored between 0 for ‘never’ having seen the movie and 2 for having seen the movie ‘twice or more’. For the second question subjects received a score from 1 (‘super bad’) to 7 (‘super good’) and 0 points if the question was skipped. The points were averaged to create the genre preference score. Depending on their preferences, participants scored from 0 for ‘low genre preference’ to 4 for ‘high genre

preference’. With a Cronbach’s alpha of .71 the scale measured genre preference reliably (M = 1.09, SD = .93).

Procedure

After receiving ethical approval from the sponsoring institution, participants were invited to complete the online experiment. Participants were free to choose the language of their

preference (English or German). The data was collected using Qualtrics. Once consent was secured, participants were randomly assigned to one of six comic book conditions and asked to read the comic book thoroughly. Afterward, participants completed the experiment in the following order: moral intuition, manipulation check, genre preference, NFC, and basic demographics. The order of the variables was chosen to replicate procedures of previous morality studies (Hahn et al., 2017). Moreover, as trait characteristics, both moderators (genre preference and NFC) should not be influenced by previous questions. Finally, they were

research points). An experimental session took around 25-30 minutes. Overall the data was collected over a six-week period from April 8 until May 22.

Results

Results were analyzed in a three-step manner. First, we checked for equal distribution of demographic variables among the conditions, the results have been noted above. In a second step, the success of the manipulation was investigated. Lastly, the main and interaction effects were tested for each moral intuition separately.

Manipulation Check

To check whether the manipulation between experimental conditions and control condition succeeded, participants were asked to rate the extent to which they agreed to the following statements: ‘In the comic book you just read, Cleopatra did the right thing.’ and ‘In the comic book you just read, Cleopatra made the wrong choice.’ on a scale from 1 ‘Disagree a lot’ to 10 ‘Agree a lot’. These questions work as direct measurement of moral judgment. When manipulation worked, participants should receive Cleopatra’s decision as right if they were in the experimental condition and perceived her choice as wrong if they were part of the control

condition. Descriptive data are shown in table 2 (Appendix A). Results from both items, Cleopatra did the right thing F (5, 178) = 16.59, p < .001, η² = .32, and Cleopatra made the wrong choice F (5, 178) = 20.13, p < .001, η² = .37, support a successful manipulation. As expected, the Bonferroni’s post hoc test showed participants of the control condition differed significantly from those in each experimental condition. There were no significant differences between participants of the experimental conditions. On average, participants in the experimental

conditions perceived Cleopatra’s choice to be righter and less wrong then participants in the control condition.

Testing the MIME

To understand the relationship between the moral intuitions overall, a one-way MANOVA was performed using the five moral intuitions as dependent variables and the conditions as independent variables. A MANOVA revealed no significant differences between conditions, F (5, 25) = 1.12, p = .314; Wilk's Λ = .85. A first look at each intuition subscale revealed that the average was, as intended, highest for the primed conditions of the intuition’s authority, fairness, and care. However, the same cannot be said for moral intuitions’ loyalty and purity. In fact, the intuitions’ fairness, care, and authority scored higher for the conditions where purity and loyalty were primed (Appendix A, table 3). To further test the influence of media on moral intuitions, five regression analyses were performed using SPSS and the PROCESS

extension by Andrew Hayes (2018). The predictor was dummy coded with the control condition being the reference group (‘0’). To test the moderating influence of NFC (H2) and genre

preference (H3), the variables were added to the five regression analyses. NFC was entered as continuous moderator and genre preference as dichotomous moderator distinguishing between low genre preference (‘0’) and average to high genre preference (‘1’). The variables were mean centered prior to the analysis for all regression models. An overview of all model scores can be found in Appendix A. Given the small sample size, predictive power might be limited. For this reason, not only traditional significant levels but patterns and trends are discussed as well. These patterns and trends of estimations could reveal important insights within this study as well as future research but should be regarded with caution.

Authority Intuition. The complete model while not significant, explained about 10% of the variance F (5, 51) = 1.09, p = .377, R2 = .10. There was no significant relationship between exposure to narrative content highlighting the authority intuition and the accessibility of set intuition. Therefore, the first hypothesis has to be rejected. That said, trends were in line with hypothesized direction, in that when authority was primed, the salience of the moral intuition authority increased by .36 compared to the control group (non-significant; t (51) = 1.58, p = .120, 95% CI [-0.10, 0.82]). The interaction of NFC did not add to the model F (1, 51) = .0003, p =.986, R2_{-change = .0. The addition of genre preference yielded to no valuable addition either (F} (1 ,51) = .28, p =.599, a R2-change of .0). Thus, the assumption that NFC (hypothesis 2) and genre preference (hypothesis 3) will moderate the effect of moral media on the accessibility of the moral intuition authority has to be rejected.

Care Intuition. The complete model while not significant, explained about 12% of the variance in the salience in the moral intuition care F (5, 58) = 1.55, p = .188, R2 _{= .12. There was} no significant relationship between exposure to narrative content highlighting the care intuition and the accessibility of set intuition. Following, the first hypothesis has to be rejected for the care intuition. A tendency, however, could be observed that showed when care was primed, the salience of the moral intuition care increased by .14 compared to the control group (non-significant t (58) = .78, p = .437, 95% CI [-0.22, 0.50]). The model was not improved with the introduction of the NFC moderator: F (1, 58) = .04, p =.836, R2-change = .0. Therefore, hypothesis 2 has to be rejected. A small significant effect was observed by adding the genre preference interaction to the model F (1, 58) = 6.52, p = .013, R2-change = .10. Consistent with the third hypothesis, salience of moral intuition was expected to be affected more strongly for young people with higher genre preference. A closer look revealed support for the third

hypothesis. In that, the effect was indeed stronger for the average to high genre preference group compared to the low preference group. For the low genre preference group, the salience of the care intuition increased by 0.65 compared to the control group. In the high preference group, the salience increased by 1.62 in the experimental group compared to the control group. The NFC variable was held constant during testing.

Fairness Intuition. The fairness model explained about 15% of the variance of the accessibility of the moral intuition fairness, however not significantly, F (5, 44) = 1.60, p = .181, R2 _{= .15. Thus, the first hypothesis has to be rejected. That said, patterns were in the expected} direction and an increase of .18 in accessibility could be observed when fairness was primed compared to the control condition, t (44) = 1.02, p = .313, 95% CI [-0.17, 0.52]. Unexpectedly, neither NFC nor genre preference affected the model, providing no support to hypothesis 2 or 3 in the context of the moral intuition fairness (NFC, F (1, 44) = .74, p =.395, R2-change = .01; genre preference, F (1, 44) = .91, p =.345, R2_{-change = .02).}

Loyalty Intuition. Only 1% of the variance could be explained by the model for loyalty. Overall, the model was not significant (F (5, 52) = .11, p = .989, R2 = .01). Unlike assumed, the first hypothesis has to be rejected as no significant difference could be observed between the loyalty and the control condition. Yet again, patterns were consistent with hypothesis 1, with a slight increase of salience of the moral intuition loyalty by .14 when the intuition was primed compared to the control condition, t (52) = .56, p = .577, 95% CI [-0.36, 0.63]. There was no evidence to support moderating factor of NFC (hypothesis 2), F (1, 52) = .0, p =.977, R2-change = .0 ) or genre preference (hypothesis 3), F (1, 52) = .06, p =.804, R2-change = .0, within the context of the loyalty intuition.

Purity Intuition. Only 4% of the variance could be explained by the purity model. Overall, the model was not significant (F (5, 56) = .52, p = .760, R2 = .04). There was no significant difference in the accessibility of the purity intuitions between the experimental and the control group, meaning the first hypothesis has to be rejected. In this case, the trends did not map onto expectations with no notable increase in salience (t (56) = .06, p = .954, 95% CI [-0.45, 0.48]). By adding the interaction effect of NFC and genre, there was a small change in the

model. However, this change was not significant for either: NFC, F (1, 56) = .71, p =.403, R2 -change = .01; genre preference F (1, 56) = .37, p =.544, R2_{-change = .01. Thus, there is no} evidence to support hypotheses 1, 2, or 3 for the purity intuition.

Overall, the findings did not substantiate the hypotheses made. A total of five regression analysis were conducted, one for each moral intuition that included the variables for main and interaction effects. Opposing expectations, there was no support to the claim that the

accessibility of the moral intuitions could be enhanced through exposure to narrative content highlighting a moral intuition compared to content highlighting an egoistic motivation. Therefore, hypothesis 1 was not supported. Boundary conditions examined in form of

moderators were NFC and genre preference. Within this study, it became clear that NFC does not seem to play a moderating role when it comes to the salience of moral intuitions. Thus, the second hypothesis has to be rejected. We could, however, find partial support for the third hypothesis with a significant interaction in the care-control comparison.

To test for eventual suppression of significance, for each moral intuition, two separate models were run. One model that included the main effect and the NFC moderator only, and secondly, a genre preference moderation only model. However, no suppression of significance can be noted (Appendix A, table 5;6)

Discussion

This study investigated the relationship between media and morality. The specific focus of this paper laid on the underlying reasons that could explain the shift in morality – moral intuitions per se – triggered by entertainment media. The study considered the accessibility of the five moral intuitions – authority, care, fairness, loyalty and purity – and the change in

accessibility after exposure to content highlighting the respective intuition. Additionally, the study was designed to look at need for cognition (NFC) and genre preference as boundary conditions. Therefore, an online experiment with 16 to 21-year old’s was conducted. Six

conditions were created using a comic that focused on one of the altruistic moral intuitions (or on egoistic motivations for the control group). The analysis resulted in null findings for the first and second hypotheses. Accordingly, this study revealed no significant difference in the accessibility of moral intuition between any of the experimental and the control condition. Further, NFC did not reveal to have a significant moderating effect on the accessibility of moral intuition. The study provided partial support for the third hypothesis, with a significant moderating effect of genre preference for the moral intuition care only – indicating that liking the genre may indeed have the power to increase the accessibility of the moral intuition.

Despite a high number of initial participants, the final sample yielded a relatively small sample size for a 6-condition study – thus resulting in limited power to detect effects. This could in parts explain the null findings observed. Additionally, the comic used, might not have been suitable for this particular age group. Tamborini, Prabu and colleagues (2018) point out that for short-term effects of the MIME to be observable the medium and its content have to be

appealing. In this study only 10.1% of the sample (N = 18) found the comic ‘really interesting’ (60.9% (N = 109) ‘somewhat interesting’; 29.1% (N = 52) ‘not at all interesting’). This could

have resulted in disengagement with the plot and thus no affective response to the content (i.e. salience in moral intuition). Of course, this circumstance could have also suppressed the moderating effect of genre preference and NFC. In as much, that even for participants with average to high genre preference this comic was not appealing nor challenging enough to trigger NFC.

In fact, prior research on NFC has found mixed results that support or oppose the claim that higher NFC leads to a richer media content experience (Fikkers & Piotrowski, 2019), this paper strengthens the latter. However, the use of the NFC short-version could have also resulted in a dimension reduction, despite the authors claim of construct validity (Lins de Holanda Coelho et al., 2018), thus leading to a rough distinction of low and high NFC individuals that could have led to no support for the hypothesis. Moreover, the moderating effect of NFC could have been suppressed by the study set-up. Under normal circumstances, individuals seek out media actively, usually, their decisions are driven by individual differences. Ultimately this seeking out leads to different responses to the content. In this particular case, individuals were not freely selecting the content but were forced to engage with a particular content which could have resulted in a less heterogeneous response to the content and therefore impact on the salience of moral intuition (Fikkers & Piotrowski, 2019; Knobloch-Westerwick, 2015). Further, the unequal group size between the low genre liking group and the average to high genre liking group could explain why interaction effect of genre preference did not appear more frequently and nor with stronger effect size.

With the caveat of statistical power in mind, analyses of this paper were conducted with attention not only to traditional levels of statistical significance but also to trends – providing a starting point to inspire follow-up work with greater statistical power. Data trends observed, may

indicate that priming the intuitions of authority, care, or fairness did move the needle in terms of moral intuition accessibility. Notably, moral intuitions which focus on the individual-level (i.e. care and fairness) revealed tendencies aligned with the MIME, while moral intuitions on the group-level (loyalty and purity) with the exception of authority failed to do so. The focal points of the individual-level intuitions are interpersonal connections and protection of the individual (e.g. empathy). However, group-level foundations are related to moral concerns on a collective level (e.g. national security) (Giammarco, 2016; Mooijman et al., 2018). These patterns may demonstrate that moral lessons focusing on the individual’s evoke a stronger response based on developmental stages of the age groups. Specifically, both late adolescents and emerging adults are in a self-involved phase and intimate relationships (e.g. first love) become increasingly important (Valkenburg & Piotrowski, 2017). Despite being defined as a group-level intuition, results of the intuition authority were similar to individual-level moralities. Considering that late adolescents and emerging adults are usually still in school, university or maybe even in their first job, hierarchical structures (i.e. student-lecturer or boss-employee relationship) could be more familiar to them as for instance collective bonds based on spiritual or religious beliefs. Thus, the moral intuition authority could be more readily accessed than the moral intuitions purity and loyalty, possibly making a shift in salience more likely.

Theoretical Implications

The current study was one of the first Eurocentric projects researching the MIME and one of the only ones researching the MIME in late adolescents and emerging adults (for research on interactive media see Joeckel, Bowman, & Dogruel, 2013). Originally the MIME did not account for age and developmental stages. It was this paper’s attempt to contribute to this research gap by investigating the MIME in individuals that are highly susceptible to morally-valanced content

due to their developmental stage. Despite the null findings, the trends observed in this study show that specific consideration regarding morality and young people should be made. In this regard, future research is needed to account for possible predisposition and to garner an understanding if moral lessons should be strengthened for certain, weaker moral intuitions in comparison to more pronounced moral intuitions.

Second, this paper was the first to account for individual differences levels in relation to the MIME. The MIME’s strength lies in the fact to not only explain but to predict response states to media content. However, this ability is limited when individual differences are disregarded. Most research focuses on the average response to media instead of investigating and

understanding which individuals are more sensitive towards media content. This habit prevents the field of media effects from growing a more nuanced understanding of the contribution of individual differences (Fikkers & Piotrowski, 2019). In this regard, the current study serves as a pilot and will hopefully inspire more research to further understand how the salience of moral intuitions is not only moderated by content but also by individual differences.

Methodological Implications

The efforts of the study yielded in crucial methodological considerations. First, the reliability scores of the moral foundation questionnaire fell far below the acceptable threshold of .6. Factor analysis for three sub-scales (authority, fairness, and care) revealed item deletion would result in a better reliability score but it would have led to dimension reduction of the spectrum of moral intuition. Therefore, it was decided to keep the lower reliability score in favor of the theoretical foundation. Previous research using the MFQ reported quite the low

reliabilities as well (Eden et al., 2014; Graham et al., 2011; Joeckel, Bowman, & Dogruel, 2013a; Tamborini et al., 2013). Although this fact has been accepted as results were still found to be in

line with research hypotheses, scholars in this field need to consider a revision of the MFQ. Morality is highly intertwined with socialization and cultural values (Graham et al., 2011) and as these changes, so should the MFQ. For instance, the statement ‘Men and women each have different roles to play in society.’ seems to be a highly questionable statement considering the

recent political climate (e.g. Times Up). Especially for young people this rigid gender definition might be an issue.

Second, the set-up and duration of the study made it essential to include attention checks throughout the online experiment. This study contained a total of three attention checks,

including one instructional manipulation check. Recent studies have shown the importance of attention checks as quality measurements for online studies (Kees, Berry, Burton, & Sheehan, 2017). This paper offers clear support in this matter. Not only the number of participants that had to be excluded calls for concern, but also the consideration of who was excluded. The potential exclusion bias resulting from failed attention checks should be more systematically investigated. In this case, the gap between female and male participants became even wider with the

employment of attention checks. To account for this gender bias, an additional analysis was run with gender as a control variable. The inclusion did not change the overall patterns of the results1 albeit makes generalizability of theresults to a wider audience hardly possible. The number of failed attention checks highlights the reality of data collection, especially for online experiments. A study set-up of 30 minutes for an online experiment should be carefully considered. as it could possibly result in a lack of motivation. The same concerns should also hold for the stimuli

material used. So could have a more vivid medium (e.g. video, adult version of the comic) led to a higher attention span.

Practical Implications

Under the spectrum of cultivation theory entertainment media, in particular, TV is believed to be able to create a common understanding of values and beliefs (Potter, 2014). Morality in form of moral lessons might be cultivated as well if the exposure happens more frequently. This might be possible through serial media outlets such as TV shows, radio podcasts or comic book series. In order to do so successfully, not only a deeper understanding of the MIME but also more interdisciplinary work is needed. It is in everyone’s interest to see academics and practitioners work together to wrap moral lessons in appealing content – potentially leading to the cultivation of morality.

Limitations and Future Research

Although some limitations and aspects of future research have been mentioned above, there are some more noteworthy points to discuss. For one, changes in the study set-up could account for the possible lack of engagement and motivation. Such as, providing multiple options of narrative content for the participants to choose from. Moreover, follow up studies should include a pre-measure of the accessibility of moral intuitions as well as multiple exposures to media content highlighting moral intuitions (longitudinal studies). This would not only allow to record possible pre-dispositions but put young people’s developmental stage and the accessibility of the moral intuitions in a clearer perspective. While lab experiments are predominantly used, more field experiments are needed, to see if academic understanding of moral lessons in

entertainment media content actually align with interpretations of media content by the audience (Lewis & Mitchell, 2014; Tamborini, Hahn, Prabhu, Klebig, & Grall, 2017). Lastly, future research should focus on building stronger ties to institutions that can give access to younger

audiences, as onsite data collection could lead to a decrease in the dropout and exclusion rate of participants.

Conclusion

In sum, the expectations of this study, while grounded in strong theory and empirical research, could not be met with support for the MIME in young people. However, the findings should not discourage further research of the MIME with late adolescents and emerging adults or even younger audiences. Instead, this paper should be regarded as a blueprint for studies on the MIME considering the uniqueness of late adolescents and emerging adults and the patterns observed, that calls for replication and extension with a larger sample. Understanding the impact of entertainment media on morality could mean paving a way to create media content

encouraging moral lessons and supporting the development of young people effectively. And while Plato is speaking of children, we should not forget that adolescent and emerging adults are still growing and learning who they are and what life lessons are important to them.

Entertainment media’s role should not be underestimated in this regard. It is the task of

researchers and practitioners alike to bring about a more nuanced understanding of media effects and its boundary conditions. Especially by accounting for individual differences and

understanding which individuals are affected more strongly or weakly by moral lessons in media content.

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Notes

1_{The regression models were run controlling for gender in the analysis. The variables} were mean centred prior to the analysis. Gender was included as a control variable as more than two third of the sample was female. This did not impact the results greatly. The overall model estimations are as follows: Authority F (6, 50) = 1.83, p = .112, R2 = .18 (18% of variance

explained): Care F (6, 57) = 1.86, p = .103, R2 _{= .16 (16% of variance explained); Fairness F (6,} 51) = .31, p = .927, R2 = .04 (4 % of variance explained); Loyalty F (5, 51) = 1.09, p = .377, R2 = .10 (10% of variance explained); and Purity F (6, 55) = 1.02, p = .423, R2 _{= .10 (10% of variance} explained) (see Table 7 in Appendix).

Appendices Appendix A

Table 1. Composition of the Sample per Condition. Autho -rity Care Fair-ness Loyal-ty Purity Con-trol Total Randomi-zation check Age (M) 19.83 (1.26) 19.33 (1.33) 19.45 (1.44) 19.47 (1.41) 19.24 (1.52) 19.43 (1.50) 19.45 (1.40) F (5, 178) = .63 Gender (N) male female 6 23 5 31 5 17 7 23 7 27 3 25 33 146 χ 2 (5) = 2.56 Education (%) High school degree Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree 65.5 24.1 3.4 75.0 5.6 16.7 81.8 9.1 9.1 66.7 20.0 10.0 73.5 8.8 11.8 71.4 10.7 10.7 72.1 12.8 10.6 χ 2 (25) = 22.41 Not religious (%)^ 62.1 63.9 63.6 56.7 73.5 67.9 64.8 χ 2 (15) = 6.78 Confession (N) Christian Muslim 7 2 7 2 5 1 12 - 9 - 5 2 45 7 χ 2 (25) = _23.68 Nationality (%) German Dutch Italian 31.0 10.3 10.3 22.2 25.0 11.1 18.2 27.3 33.3 20.0 6.7 35.3 23.5 8.8 35.7 28.6 29.6 22.3 6.7 χ 2 (195) = 199.24 Residency (%) Netherlands Germany 65.5 27.6 80.6 16.7 81.8 13.6 66.7 30.0 73.5 23.5 75.0 21.4 73.7 22.3 χ 2 (35) = 33.84 N 29 36 22 30 34 28 179

Note. Standard deviations are in parentheses. * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001.

^ 60 participants described themselves as religious or at least somewhat religious. Their religious belief is

Table 2 – Mean Difference between Experimental and Control Condition for the Manipulation Check. Control Condition Q1 Q2 N Authority -3.21*** (.51) 3.40*** (.47) 57 Care -3.93*** (.49) 4.16*** (.45) 64 Fairness -2.58*** (.55) 2.98*** (.51) 50 Loyalty -3.80*** (.51) 3.61*** (.47) 58 Purity -3.33*** (.49) 3.33*** (.45) 62

Note. * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001. Standard error in parentheses.

Q1: In the comic book you just read, Cleopatra did the right thing.

Q2: In the comic book you just read, Cleopatra made the wrong choice. Both measured on a 10-point scale from 1 ‘Disagree a lot’ to 10 ‘Agree a lot’.

Table 3. Means and Standard Deviations for Salience of Intuition. Authority condition Care condition Fairness condition Loyalty condition Purity condition Avg. when not primed Authority index 3.60 (.85) 3.53 (.85) 3.45 (.96) 3.46 (.89) 3.50 (.77) 3.21 (.81) Care index 4.66 (.78) 4.83 (.66) 4.55 (.95) 4.36 (.76) 4.60 (.74) 4.73 (.72) Fairness index 4.89 (.68) 4.98 (.50) 5.00 (.72) 4.89 (.74) 4.78 (.57) 4.85 (.50) Loyalty index 3.72 (.75) 3.92 (.64) 3.86 (.83) 3.64 (.99) 3.46 (.83) 3.50 (.75) Purity index 3.69 (.80) 3.63 (.79) 3.75 (.81) 3.55 (.80) 3.38 (.86) 3.42 (.87)

Note. * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001. Primed conditions are in bold. Standard deviations are in

Table 4 - Regression Models to Predict Salience of Moral Intuitions Including Need for Cognition and Genre Preference as Moderators (H1, H2, H3).

Salience of moral intuition

Authority b* Care b* Fairness b* Loyalty b* Purity b* Constant 3.42 4.79 4.89 3.58 3.37

Moral intuition (MI) 0.36 0.14 0.18 0.14 0.01 Need for Cognition

(NFC) -0.26 0.12 0.22 0.05 -0.06 Genre Preference (GP) -0.03 -0.12 0.37 0.12 -0.27 MI*NFC -0.01 -0.07 -0.25 -0.01 -0.38 MI*GP -0.26 -0.97* -0.36 -0.14 0.30 R2 _{0.10 0.12 0.15 0.01 0.04} F 1.09 1.55 1.60 0.11 0.52 N 57 64 50 58 62 Note. * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001.

For the predictor ‘Moral intuition’, the control group served as the reference group. For genre preference, low genre preference served as the reference group.

Table 5 - Regression Models to Predict Salience of Moral Intuitions Including only Need for Cognition as Moderator (H1, H2).

Salience of moral intuition

Authority b* Care b* Fairness b* Loyalty b* Purity b* Constant 3.41 4.78 4.90 3.57 3.38

Moral intuition (MI) 0.35 0.12 0.20 0.14 -0.03 Need for Cognition (NFC) -0.27 0.08 0.22 0.03 -0.03

MI*NFC -0.01 -0.03 -0.20 0.01 -0.45

R2 _{0.09 0.01 0.06 0.01 0.02}

F 1.77 0.18 0.90 0.11 0.37

N 57 64 50 58 62

Note. * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001.

For the predictor ‘Moral intuition’, the control group served as the reference group. For genre preference, low genre preference served as the reference group.

Table 6 - Regression Models to Predict Salience of Moral Intuitions Including only Genre Preference as Moderator (H1, H3).

Salience of moral intuition

Authority b* Care b* Fairness b* Loyalty b* Purity b* Constant 3.18 4.63 4.80 3.46 3.54

Moral intuition (MI) 0.50 0.36 0.01 0.17 -0.09 Genre Preference (GP) 0.14 0.40 0.15 0.18 -0.46 MI*GP -0.35 -0.94* 0.42 -0.14 0.32 R2 _{0.06 0.11 0.11 0.01 0.03} F 1,19 2,44 1.92 .018 0.58 N 57 64 50 58 62 Note. * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001.

For the predictor ‘Moral intuition’, the control group served as the reference group. For genre preference, low genre preference served as the reference group.

Table 7 - Regression Models to Predict Salience of Moral Intuition Including Gender as Control Variable (H1, H2, H3).

Salience of moral intuitions

Authority Care Fairness Loyalty Purity

b* b* b* b* b*

Constant 4.68 5.63 4.95 4.27 2.28

Condition .30 .12 .17 .09 -.06

Need for Cognition (NFC) -.29 .10 .22 .04 -.10

Genre Preference (GP) -.09 -.15 .36 .08 -.21 Condition*NFC .10 .01 -.25 .06 -.59 Condition*GP -.29 -.97* .35 -.16 .34 Gender -.68* -.44 -.03 -.37 .58 R2 _{.18 .16 .15 .04 .10} F 1.83 1.86 1.31 -.37 1.02 N 57 64 50 58 62 Note. * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001.

For the predictor ‘Condition’, the control group was coded ‘0’ and the experimental group was coded as ‘1’. For genre preference, low genre preference group served as the reference group. For gender, male participants served as the reference group.

Appendix B