Friday 15 May 2009

Research Bulletin: Resonance to Media Archetypes

Following on the heels of an extensive discussion on narrative universals on this site (posts here and here), today we bring to your attention a very interesting article on archetypes recently published by Michael A. Faber and John D. Mayer (2009). It describes two quite expansive studies, examining presence, recognition, and resonance related to prototypical characters in music, art, and film. The neo-archetypal theory put forth by Faber and Mayer proposes that archetypes are “story characters—prototypes of culturally important figures—that are learned and recognized implicitly, and whose historical and personal significance evoke emotional reactions.” Their research found that people can readily categorize examples from music, movies, and art into one of thirteen different archetypes (e.g., Hero, Creator, Lover, Jester), with a fascinating degree of agreement across raters. These thirteen archetypes were also found to cluster into five different groups: Knower (Creator, Magician, Sage), Carer (Caregiver, Innocent, Lover), Striver (Hero, Ruler), Conflictor (Outlaw, Shadow), and Everyperson (Everyman/Everywoman, Explorer, Jester). Interestingly, people varied quite widely in their emotional reactions to these different archetypes, and their individual patterns of resonance helped to explain their media preferences. This was true even after taking into account their individual personality traits. Faber and Mayer’s research takes a unique approach toward describing and explaining our emotional reactions to art, drawing heavily upon ideas from Carl Jung (1968) while employing a rigourous empirical method. Their synthetic work certainly deserves to be read closely and read widely; I would be happy to provide anyone interested with a copy of the article. (Please see my profile for e-mail address.)

Jung, C. G. (1968). The archetypes and the collective unconscious (R. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Faber, M. A., & Mayer, J. D. (2009). Resonance to archetypes in media: There’s some accounting for taste. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 307–322.

5 comments:

blog nerd said...

Are you familiar with Lakoff and Johnson's concepts of empathic and advisory projection? It sounds identical to the idea of forward chaining (advisory projection) and backward chaining (empathic projection). If you are familiar with those terms are there differenes? Or are they slightly different descriptions of the same phenomenon?

Keith Oatley said...

Thank you very much, Blog Nerd, for this ... I have read two of Lakoff and Johnson's books, but have not come across this notion, which I have now briefly looked up. Advisory and empathetic projection do seem to bear interesting similarities to the cognitive science idea of forward and backward chaining. The chaining idea is a general one about reasoning, whereas, from what I can see (from a very quick view), the Lakoff and Johnson idea is about two kinds of identification in theatre. I am very grateful to you, and will pursue this further.

blog nerd said...

KO: thanks for this. I'm thrilled to discover your site as I've been working in this area academically for some time. I actually link to a much earlier work over in the comments box at The Valve in which I explore the phenomenon of emoting for fictions. I'd be pleased if you were able to take a look at it. It was published some four years ago or so now and my thinking has advanced from there quite a bit but it may prove interesting to you and provide some further resources on the issues in Philosophy of Mind and how we process fictional accounts/portrayals of characters.

http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/users/dmeyerdinkgrafe/archive/pierce.html

I added the link here--this particular article is being included in a book that's being published next year.

Keith Oatley said...

Thank you very much indeed Blog Nerd, I am very pleased to hear that you are working in this area, and I am glad you are interested in our research and our site. I also keep an eye on "The Valve," where there is often interesting material. I have looked up the article entitled "The actor problem" to which you give a link. I have a Transatlantic flight tomorrow, and I look forward to reading it then. If I have any thoughts on the article that might be of general interest I will post them on this site, if that would be all right with you.

blog nerd said...

Certainly! Thank you for reading it. Enjoy your flight!

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