Fiction reading and the moral shift

In this dissertation, we study literary narratives, especially stories with immoral protagonists, from the perspective of the reader. We are not limiting ourselves to the theoretical notions of reader-response criticism. We included common, untrained readers in our research on reader responses to immoral literary characters and their stories. With empirical methods from empirical literature studies, media psychology and communication studies, we aimed to understand why people empathize with immoral characters and find the stories of immoral characters aesthetically pleasing – a subject currently attracting high attention among literary scholars. The four studies in this dissertation are three experiments and one focus-group study. The stories we shared with the participants of the studies gave them insights into the minds of fictional characters who could be branded as immoral. Results of the first and second studies showed that empathy and aesthetic appreciation depend on individuals’ perceptions of immoral behavior or the willingness to morally disengage. Results of the third and fourth studies have shown that if readers perceive a story as realistic – as close to us – they tend to morally disengage and adjust their moral perceptions. In all, readers can empathize with the characters and have a positive aesthetic experience with the story when they adjust their moral compass to include the immoral actions of the fictional character on the ‘good’ side. This ‘moral shift’ seems to be at the heart of what drives people to empathize with characters displaying immoral conduct and aesthetically appreciate the stories of those characters. Still, literature provides a platform to suspend our moral values and feel things we wouldn’t feel when there would have been real-life consequences. Hence, when we step outside the confines of what is generally considered morally bad, we are more likely to love immoral characters and their stories.