How We Enjoy and Why We Seek Out Morally Complex Characters in Media Entertainment

Parents, politicians, pedagogists, priests, and parishioners have for centuries considered and debated the morality of entertainment. Most of these discussions have centered on fears of moral corruption and erosion resulting from participating in or witnessing certain leisure activities: theatre, festivals, sports, gambling, music, and, more recently, television, film, and digital games. In fact, one could argue that the past eight decades or so of empirical media effects research reflect these concerns and seek to alleviate (or validate) the fears. But entertainment’s impact on individually held moral values is not the only question of importance for media psychologists. An important line of research also considers the way that those values influence the reception and interpretation of entertainment content. This chapter falls within that tradition. In the following pages, we will explore the ways that morality serves (or does not serve) as a lens through which media content is viewed, with an ultimate desire to better understand the appeal of characters and narratives that highlight and seemingly celebrate moral violations by protagonists.