Observed consequences of modeled behavior drive viewers to adopt it

Evidence

Unless people see the modeled lifestyle as improving the serial drama characters’ welfare, they have little incentive to adopt it themselves or to stick with it in the face of difficulties. Contrast modeling vividly portrays the personal and social benefits of the favorable practices and the costs of the detrimental ones. Seeing beneficial outcomes instills positive outcome expectations that become incentives for change, whereas observed detrimental outcomes result in negative outcome expectations that become disincentives. Observing modeled outcomes increases motivation when observers see similarities to themselves in the inspiring models’ sociodemographic characteristics and judge the modeled behavior as having functional value (Bandura, 1986). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2830

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Fits the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article’s interest in narrative-as-technology and transformative story mechanics: contrast modeling is literally a story design tool for changing behavior.
• SEED: Angle: how ‘contrast modeling’ in TV serials (and modern prestige drama) is engineered persuasion — a blueprint for what a propagandist or an educator can build with narrative.
• XREF: connects to: Seriality makes people model behavior on an imagined other that never actually exists. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 498; Observing others’ supportive behaviour predicted one’s own supportive behaviour. — John Drury, The role of social identity processes…, 128; State labeling of performances enables force and creates models for future action. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 296