Evidence of balance theory as a predictive framework for character interdependence

Across three studies, we examined how balance theory can be used to predict interdependent character evaluations. Leveraging the propositions of balance theory as suggested by Grizzard, Francemone et al. (2020), our findings demonstrate that moral information about a single character biases perceptions and judgments of other characters within the same narrative. Beyond replicating binary comparative judgments between characters, similar to past work on character interdependence, we show that the relational information conveyed by a character network can reveal how interdependent effects between several characters will manifest. Specifically, our results demonstrate that characters are either contrasted or assimilated to one another based on the relationship valences communicated by the narrative’s character network. Extrapolating from these findings, we discuss several aspects of character networks that should be considered to further develop the concept of character interdependence.