Resonance to archetypes in media: There’s some accounting for taste

Modern mass media typically employ archetypes—prototypical characters—in their narratives. This research proposes that people’s affective reactions to and preferences for these characters in rich cultural media—their “resonance” to archetypes—may be an indicator of their own personality and life themes. In the first of two studies, a Rich Culture Archetype Scale (RCAS) was constructed based on media examples from popular music, movies, and classic art representing certain archetypes. In the second study, the RCAS was compared with other scales of personality and of archetypes. Results indicated that there exist five clusters of archetypes to which people resonate, and that people’s resonance predicts their personal life themes and media preferences.