CMBS Faculty Talk ft. Dr. Janet Bourne | October 27, 2026

Thursday, Oct 27, 2026 | 11:00 AM – 12 PM University of Southern California | Cammilleri Hall | Brain and Creativity Institute A lecture-style event featuring single guest faculty giving a 45 min talk followed by 15 min of Q+A at Cammilleri Hall in the Brain and Creativity Institute on Thursday, April 16th. Hybrid event, guests can join on Zoom. Hearing Heroes and Villains: Music Activates Character-Schemas and Influences Perception of Character Morality in Film For many audience members, the musical themes for film characters such as Superman and Darth Vader all “fit” – they sound “heroic” and “villainous” respectively. Music scholars have frequently discussed conventional musical patterns that evoke these images of heroes and villains (e.g. Halfyard, 2013), and there’s empirical support for these semantic associations (e.g. Bourne, 2025). Of course, heroes and villains are character-schemas according to media psychologists, which also influence perceptions of character morality (Raney, 2004). These character-schemas can be activated by visuals alone (e.g., character looks, Grizzard et al. 2018; Francemone et al., 2022). However, media psychologists have ignored whether music can activate character-schemas, even though film music theorists/musicologists suggest that conventional musical features accompany heroes (dotted rhythms, major-mode, fanfare-like, etc.) and villains (dotted rhythms, minor-mode, low range, etc.) (Halfyard, 2013; Chattah, 2023). In study 1, we used a between-subjects design where participants watched the same 17-second film clip featuring a “super”-looking character with either villainous or heroic music. Perceptions of character morality were assessed using the Extended Character Morality Questionnaire (Grizzard et al., 2020), where participants rated statements about the character on a 7-point likert-scale according to moral factors (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, purity) as well as person-perception variables (warmth, duplicity, competence; Eden et al., 2015). We found that watching the film excerpt with heroic music activated a hero character-schema which elicited higher levels of perceived morality, more warmth, and less duplicity compared to villainous music. Study 2 examined whether music-activated schema-based moral judgements could influence behavior approbation; essentially, if the music could influence listeners to be more accepting of immoral behavior. These studies demonstrate that music alone can activate character-schemas as described in media psychology as well as empirically test music theory/musicology assumptions about conventional music for character-schemas. Bio Janet Bourne is an Associate Professor of Music Theory and Cognitive Science affiliate faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara and founder of the UC Santa Barbara Music Cognition Lab. She has publications in Music Theory Online, Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening, Film Music Analysis: Studying the Score, Frontiers in Neuroscience, Norton Guide to Teaching Music Theory, among others. Her monograph Who Listens? Experience, Cognition, and Musical Meaning published in 2025 by Oxford University Press describes a cognitively-based framework for analyzing music from the perspective of different listeners and various modes of listening, including a cinematic mode of listening.