Resonance to Archetypes

Resonance to Archetypes

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

A person's affective response to archetypal characters in popular music, film and art.

What it is

Faber and Mayer built a scale from examples of such characters and found five clusters of archetypes that people resonate with. Resonance predicted personal life themes and media preferences, which the authors took as a route into personality.

In effect

The article on brand archetypes uses it as the audience-side evidence that people respond to recurring characters in different ways.

What it does not say

The studies measured responses to characters in music, film and art. They did not test brands, and the clusters describe people's tastes, not what they buy.


Sources

  1. Faber, M. A., & Mayer, J. D. (2009). Resonance to archetypes in media: There's some accounting for taste. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(3), 307-322.