Media’s influence on the accessibility of altruistic and egoistic motivations

Previous research suggests that media featuring exemplars of specific altruistic motivations can make those motivations more accessible in viewers’ minds. The present study extends this research to also examine egoistic motivations. We (a) developed a coding scheme to examine how frequently exemplars of altruistic and egoistic motivations appear in media content, (b) developed an intuitive motivation-affect misattribution procedure to measure the accessibility of altruistic and egoistic motivations, and (c) examined whether exposure to media content portraying specific motivations makes those motivations more accessible in audiences. The findings are discussed in terms of the model of intuitive morality and exemplars.