Ethics versus emotion in Chinese family films: Associations with filial piety, family obligation, and trait emotion regulation

In this cross-sectional, survey study, the generalized appraisals of recent Chinese family films were examined in relation with participants' general levels of filial piety, family obligation, and emotion-regulation tendencies. The study was not designed to test the association of viewing or of objective coded film content, but rather, it used perceived ethical narrative emphasis and perceived emotional narrative intensity as retrospective appraisals at the viewer level of the amount of family-film viewing in the last 12 months. Adult viewers ( N = 452) from Xi'an, Wuhan, Nanjing, and Kunming, China were recruited to gather data and a PLS-SEM analysis was used to analyze the data. The direct-path results indicated a positive association between perceived ethical narrative emphasis and authoritarian filial piety (β = 0.31, p < .001), family obligation (β = 0.27, p < .001), and expressive suppression (β = 0.19, p = .001). Reciprocal filial piety (β = 0.34, p < .001) and cognitive reappraisal (β = 0.22, p < .001) were significantly and positively related to perceived emotional narrative intensity. The explained variance of each model was R 2 = 0.29 for the authoritarian filial piety model, R 2 = 0.22 for the family obligation model, R 2 = 0.31 for the reciprocal filial piety model, R 2 = 0.18 for the cognitive reappraisal model, and R 2 = 0.15 for the expressive suppression model. Moral elevation, transportation, and character identification were selected indirect associations that were small but significant. The ethical-emphasis-to-moral-elevation association was moderated by the need to think, the emotional-intensity-to-character-identification association was moderated by the need to feel, and interdependent self-construal was associated with selected links between the narrative-processing states and the filial outcomes. Reliability and validity diagnostics were acceptable (Cronbach's α = 0.82–0.91; CR = 0.87–0.94; AVE = 0.55–0.67; SRMR = 0.062). The results provide support for a moderately dual-pathway account in which perceived ethical and emotional narrative appraisals are differentially linked to the hierarchical and gratitude-oriented versions of filiality and to family obligations and to habitual emotion regulation tendencies. The results are to be considered as patterned associations and not as proof of narrative processing change, since the design is cross-sectional, retrospective and the content of the films cannot be generalized, nor can the film stimuli be set aside.