Doing bad things can be justified?

Morally ambiguous protagonists represent a relatively new, but highly popular trend in television content. It was already explored that such characters might influence viewer’s perception of harmful behaviors. Viewers are able to develop strong feelings towards morally ambiguous characters, and to create thorough evaluations of the character’s attributes and behaviors, such as character’s moral compass. In the light of above, it is important to investigate how these processes operate and what factors contribute in initiating positive attitudes towards morally ambiguous behaviors. The present study herby examines the importance of different influential factors in the evaluation of morally ambiguous characters and their behaviors. Specifically, it addresses the role of tendency to morally disengage, identification, involvement, enjoyment, justified violence, perceived attractiveness, and perceived successfulness in creating moral judgments. Moreover, in addition to explicit measurements, this study employs implicit measurements of attitudes towards justice and morality. The research question is: to what extent does the content presented in television series influence audience’s attitude towards morally ambiguous behavior? Participants (N = 72) took part in the experiment in which they viewed either attractive and successful character or unattractive and unsuccessful character of drama series. The experiment was divided into two phases. Phase One: Introducing explicit measurements of the attitudes toward morally ambiguous character and his behavior. Phase Two: Change in perception of morality was verified by implicit measure, a reaction time task. The findings of this study enhance understanding of how viewers process morally ambiguous characters that violate moral standards. It was revealed that evaluation of morally ambiguous characters is complex and depends not only on representations of a character and the content itself, but also on the context. Moreover, moral judgment was revealed to be a multidimensional construct, as audience’s judgment of morally ambiguous character can contrast with a judgment of his behavior. Findings also demonstrate that different character’s types are evaluated differently based on different reasons. However, although cognitive responses towards morally ambiguous characters were evaluated differently, automatic responses towards self-justice did not differ among both of the groups. Therefore, present study sheds light not only on the importance of multiple measures of moral judgment, but also indicates that implicit measurements are needed when examining attitudes. The paper concludes with limitations of this study and proposes avenues for future research