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The virtues and vices of social comparisons: examining assimilative and contrastive emotional reactions to characters in a narrative

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Abstract

Based on social comparison theory, this study investigates how awareness of one’s morality and exposure to a character in a narrative affect emotions associated with four types of social comparisons—upward assimilative, downward contrastive, upward contrastive, and downward assimilative. A 2 (Morality Salience: virtue, vice) X 2 (Character: moral, immoral) experiment (N = 106) revealed that those whose vices were made salient elicited stronger: (1) contempt (a downward contrastive emotion) toward an immoral character than a moral character, and (2) envy (an upward contrastive emotion) toward a moral character than an immoral character. Whereas envy decreased positive affect, contempt increased it. Implications for assimilative and contrastive social comparisons with media characters that lead to distinct affective outcomes are discussed.

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Correspondence to Mina Tsay-Vogel.

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Appendix A

Appendix A

Items assessing perceptions of the character’s moral nature

The main character does some immoral thingsa

The main character makes some right decisions

The main character has some moral attributes

The main character does mean things at timesa

The main character has some negative attributesa

The main character does some nice things

The main character has some immoral attributesa

The main character makes some wrong decisionsa

The main character has some positive attributes

The main character behaves in a moral way some of the time

The main character is an ethical person

  1. aReverse-coded items

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Tsay-Vogel, M., Krakowiak, K.M. The virtues and vices of social comparisons: examining assimilative and contrastive emotional reactions to characters in a narrative. Motiv Emot 43, 636–647 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-019-09756-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-019-09756-y

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