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