Whether cheering the demise of a ruthless villain or crying in despair as a romantic
couple is torn apart, ‘viewers seem to take inherent pleasure in strongly desiring various
outcomes for the central characters of a narrative’ (Plantinga 2009, p. 31). Despite film
practitioners striving to incite this desire and film theorists often fretting about its ability to
bypass our moral compass, the origin of these passionate preferences has rarely been
subjected to sustained investigation. In challenging folk accounts of our ‘predilections for
narrative outcomes’ (Rapp & Gerrig, 2006), this thesis counters conventional wisdom of
‘rooting’ for narrative outcomes.