The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives.
Transportation was proposed as a mechanism whereby narratives can affect beliefs. Defined as absorption into a story, transportation entails imagery, affect, and attentional focus. A transportation scale was developed and validated. Experiment 1 (N = 97) demonstrated that extent of transportation augmented story-consistent beliefs and favorable evaluations of protagonists. Experiment 2 (N = 69) showed that highly transported readers found fewer false notes in a story than less-transported readers. Experiments 3 (N = 274) and 4 (N = 258) again replicated the effects of transportation on beliefs and evaluations; in the latter study, transportation was directly manipulated by using processing instructions. Reduced transportation led to reduced story-consistent beliefs and evaluations. The studies also showed that transportation and corresponding beliefs were generally unaffected by labeling a story as fact or as fiction.
Green
M C
MC
Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus 43210, USA. mcgreen@psych.upenn.edu
Brock
T C
TC
D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000739:Anecdotes as Topic; D001288:Attention; D001290:Attitude; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D009014:Morals; D012737:Sex Factors; D012945:Social Values; D013850:Thinking