My research focuses on person-perception processes and moral judgments within media contexts, particularly narratives. Findings from my studies demonstrate that moral judgment processes related to fictional characters reflect the same moral judgment processes that occur with real people. More importantly and relevant to polarization, my findings show that moral evaluations are interdependent and context sensitive: A morally neutral character can appear highly moral or highly immoral depending entirely on the presence and moral evaluations of another character. This finding can be applied to political polarization to understand why perceptions of politically dissimilar others are often perceptually exaggerated. In addition, my research on punishment in narratives and its moderation by moral perceptions and liking can explain why we enjoy and even relish negative consequences befalling individuals we deem to be immoral.

Select Publications

Grizzard, M., Matthews, N. K., Francemone, C. J., & Fitzgerald, K. (2021). Do Audiences Judge the Morality of Characters Relativistically? How Interdependence Affects Perceptions of Characters’ Temporal Moral Descent. Human Communication Research, 47(4), 338–363. DOI. 

Grizzard, M., Fitzgerald, K., Francemone, C. J., Ahn, C., Huang, J., Walton, J., McAllister, C., & Lewis, R. J. (2020). Narrative Retribution and Cognitive Processing. Communication Research, 48(4), 527-549. DOI.  

Grizzard, M., Francemone, C. J., Fitzgerald, K., Huang, J., & Ahn, C. (2020). Interdependence of Narrative Characters: Implications for Media Theories. Journal of Communication, 70(2), 274–301. DOI.