Poster #84 - Truly Good, Truly Bad, or In-Between? An Examination of Heroes’ and Villains’ True Selves

• In Event: Poster Session 01

Abstract

Prior research has shown that adults evaluate others’ true selves, or who someone really is, deep down inside, as positive and morally virtuous by default, in a variety of cultures throughout the world (De Freitas et al., 2018; Newman et al., 2015; Strohminger et al., 2017). Furthermore, research on people’s understanding of the true self has revealed a particular emphasis on moral features (Strohminger et al., 2017); both older children and adults believe that changes in moral beliefs are more consequential to one’s identity than changes to conventional or personal beliefs (Lefebvre & Krettenauer, 2020) and changes to widely shared moral beliefs (e.g., that hitting is wrong) alter one’s identity more than changes to controversial moral beliefs (e.g., that prosocial lying is wrong; Heiphetz et al., 2018). Interestingly, even young children demonstrate a positivity bias when evaluating others: they are predisposed to think well of people, even those who engage in negative behaviors (Boseovski, 2010; Giles & Heyman, 2003). Yet little is known about children’s true-self beliefs of others. The current research seeks to discover how children think about antisocial others, to answer two primary questions: 1) Do children assume that others are necessarily good, or do they understand that some individuals can act in evil ways, and 2) Do children, like adults, believe that individuals who behave in antisocial ways retain some inner moral goodness?

We examined these questions by asking children aged 5-10 years (N = 148) and adults (N = 77) to evaluate the true selves of familiar fictional villains and heroes, such as those in popular films. We focused on these archetypal characters because they are well-known, clear examples of good and evil. In four separate tasks, participants assessed how each character felt inside (good or bad), whether their (im)moral actions (sharing or stealing) reflected their true self, whether their true self could change over time, and how an impartial, omnipotent machine would judge each character’s true self. The data were analyzed using mixed-effects logistic regressions, with fixed effects of character type (hero vs. villain) and age (for children), and a random effect of participant. Results showed a clear pattern across each task: Villains were evaluated as having significantly worse true selves compared to heroes among both children and adults (ps < .01). Children’s age was not a significant predictor of true self evaluations. Additionally, both children and adults were more likely to endorse statements indicating a mismatch between villains’ true selves and how they stereotypically behave than they were for heroes—specifically, participants believed that villains were more likely to have inner goodness than heroes to have inner badness (ps < .05). In other words, children and adults believe that villains’ true selves have some inner goodness. Children’s explanations relied heavily on moral judgments (70%) and on prior knowledge of the characters in question (20%), as can be seen in Table 1. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed in light of our expanding understanding of the development of true self beliefs.

Authors

• Valerie Umscheid, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Felix Warneken, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Susan A Gelman, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Henry M. Wellman, University of Michigan