The death effect in literary evaluation: reverence for the dead?

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Art Economics
• Consumer Behavior

Background:

• The perceived value of creative works, such as art and literature, is often thought to increase after the artist's death.
• This phenomenon, known as the 'death effect,' suggests a potential bias in how consumers value creative output based on the artist's life status.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally investigate the 'death effect' on the perceived value of a literary work.
• To determine if the author's death influences hypothetical purchase prices and subjective evaluations of their work.
• To explore the interaction between author's death, author's gender, and participant's gender on work evaluation.

Main Methods:

• 431 undergraduate students were surveyed about their hypothetical spending on a literary work.
• The study experimentally manipulated two factors: the author's status (deceased vs. moved) and the author's gender.
• Participants were randomly assigned to one of four biographical conditions describing the author.

Main Results:

• Participants offered significantly higher hypothetical purchase prices for the short story when they believed the author was deceased compared to when the author had moved.
• Subjective evaluations of the literary work were also more positive when the author was perceived as deceased.
• Author gender matching participant gender positively influenced story evaluations, indicating a potential 'liking-gap' or affinity effect.

Conclusions:

• The findings support the existence of a 'death effect' in the valuation of creative works, potentially driven by increased reverence for deceased artists.
• The study highlights the influence of author biographical details, including death and gender, on consumer perception and valuation of creative products.
• Future research could explore the underlying psychological mechanisms of the death effect and its generalizability across different creative domains.