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This study focuses on smoking prevention using narrative messages. In particular, the role of two narrative attributes that can indirectly influence the intention to quit smoking, self-efficacy expectations and the perceived effectiveness of the preventive response were analysed. An experimental study was carried out (N = 680, 50% women and age ran...
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Threat appeal campaigns have been widely used to induce people to change their bad smoking habits by adopting a better approach in favor of a healthier lifestyle. Social marketers who create this kind of messages tend to believe in the persuasive power of fear arousal. For most people, fear has an important consequence on behavior, leading them to...
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... Green and Brock (2000) have theorized that narratives transport the recipient to the world evoked by the narrative, triggering empathy for the characters, in turn limiting counterarguing and guiding the recipient toward the conclusion favored by the storyteller (Moyer-Gusé, 2008;Slater & Rouner, 2002). Such narrative messages have been successfully used in a variety of public health campaigns (Barbour et al., 2016;Zebregs et al., 2015), including those to encourage women to get mammograms (McQueen et al., 2011) or to help people quit smoking (Igartua et al., 2021). ...
Lack of trust is a key barrier to collaboration in organizations and is exacerbated in contexts when employees subscribe to different ideological beliefs. Across five preregistered experiments, we find that people judge ideological opponents as more trustworthy when opposing opinions are expressed through a self-revealing personal narrative than through either data or stories about third parties—even when the content of the messages is carefully controlled to be consistent. Trust does not suffer when explanations grounded in self-revealing personal narratives are augmented with data, suggesting that our results are not driven by quantitative aversion. Perceptions of trustworthiness are mediated by the speaker’s apparent vulnerability and are greater when the self-revelation is of a more sensitive nature. Consequently, people are more willing to collaborate with ideological opponents who support their views by embedding data in a self-revealing personal narrative, rather than relying on data-only explanations. We discuss the implications of these results for future research on trust as well as for organizational practice.
... It is believed that a similar character can heighten the involvement with the story world, which should yield story-consistent perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors (Murphy et al., 2011(Murphy et al., , 2013. A number of studies have compared the effects of similar versus dissimilar characters on these outcomes across health (e.g., Igartua et al., 2020), social (e.g., Ooms et al., 2019), and environmental contexts (e.g., Kirby-Straker, 2014). The results yielded mixed results. ...
This meta-analysis synthesized 19 empirical articles reporting 123 effect sizes of character-recipient similarity on narrative processing and persuasion outcomes across different contexts, including health, environmental, and social issues. We also aimed to investigate whether the effect magnitude varies depending on how the similarity is operationalized, which perspective is adopted, and what context the narrative persuasion is placed in. The results indicated that, compared to a dissimilar counterpart, a similar character leads to stronger identification (k = 34, d = 0.14, p < .01) and self-referencing (k = 12, d = 0.16, p < .01). The effects on transportation (k = 22, d = 0.13, p = .05) and resistance (k = 12, d = −0.16, p = .05) were marginally significant. It was also found that the similarity manipulated on chosen demographic and biographic variables like occupation and living place yields the strongest impact among other variables (i.e., innate demographic and biographic variables like age and sex, psychological and behavioral variables like beliefs and behaviors). Furthermore, the similarity effect in narrative persuasion becomes intensified when combined with a first-person perspective and placed in a social issue context. By presenting a synthesis of the existing research, this meta-analytical study sought to identify areas in need of further refinement and outline future investigation directions for narrative persuasion.
... For example, Frank et al. (2015) showed that identification with a character in a video who contracted HPV predicted talking to a doctor about taking an HPV vaccination 6 months after watching the video. In addition, Igartua et al. (2020) investigated the role of similarity to protagonist and narrative voice on encouraging smoking cessation via a narrative intervention and found that the effects of both on smoking cessation were mediated by increased identification with the protagonist. We further examined the relationship between identification with VM and intention to conduct BSE by running two mediation analyses to see whether the effect was driven by either pre-existing experience of friends or relatives having breast cancer or by the amount of presence that participants experienced while watching the VR documentary. ...
This experiment examined the feasibility of 360° video as a tool for public health messaging by investigating the effect that viewing the 360° documentary The Waiting Room VR had on female viewers’ sense of identification, attitudes to breast cancer screening and mortality salience. A key part of the documentary places participants in a viewpoint ambiguously aligned to that of the film’s director and subject, Victoria Mapplebeck (VM), in a scene that recreates her radiotherapy treatment for breast cancer. Eighty female participants watched the documentary either sitting upright with the chair back set at a 90° angle or reclining with the chair back set at a 140° angle (consistent with VMs posture) under conditions of either high or low cognitive load. The effect of posture type was measured explicitly using questionnaires on presence, identification and breast self-examination (BSE) intention as well as implicitly using a lexical decision task to measure death-thought awareness (DTA). Reclined posture led to a higher sense of spatial presence but no increase in identification with VM. Significantly increased identification with VM led to greater intention to conduct BSE. There were no effects of posture, cognitive load or identification on DTA. The implications of these results for using 360° video as a behaviour change tool, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the terror management manipulation and the relevance of spatial viewpoint in 360° video are discussed.
... Third, we revised widely used closed-ended assessments of counterarguing (Moyer-Gusé & Nabi, 2010) by distinguishing, consistent with the ELM (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), actual counterarguments (i.e., responses opposed to the persuasive content of the message) from negative responses concerning message presentation and source. It should be noted that Igartua and colleagues (e.g., Igartua & Cachón-Ramón, 2023;Igartua et al., 2021) apparently have recognized this problem as they select only the Moyer-Gusé and Nabi (2010) items that align more closely with ELM definitions of counterarguing. However, they did not pursue refining this distinction as we have done. ...
Overtly persuasive narratives such as testimonials pose significant challenges for theories of narrative persuasion. Such theories argue that overt persuasive intent diminishes entertainment and entertaining narratives reduce counterarguing. We propose that testimonial narratives instead have persuasive advantages through their ability to arouse message-consistent emotions and reduce affective reactance to the messages. Participants (n = 1478) were randomly assigned to read a testimonial narrative or a non-narrative article about physician-assisted suicide. Articles were perceived as highly persuasive and low in entertainment intent; the testimonial was higher than the non-narrative in perceived eudaimonic intent. As predicted, testimonials reduced counterarguing via increased meaningful affect and decreased affective reactance to the message. Interaction tests showed that these effects were stronger in counterattitudinal participants. Theoretical implications for understanding the effects of testimonial narratives, particularly when the narratives are eudaimonic, are discussed, as are innovations for measuring counterarguing and perceived message intent.
Identification, the experience of a psychological merging between the self and a character, is a key mechanism underlying the power of narratives to influence attitudes, beliefs, intentions, and behaviors in story-consistent ways. Similarity between audience members and characters has been intuitively thought to be an antecedent of identification, but experimental studies have yielded inconsistent findings regarding the effectiveness of manipulating similarity on eliciting identification. The current meta-analysis synthesized and quantified the evidence from 39 studies (k = 50, N = 11,077) and investigated several potential causes of heterogeneity at both the narrative and study levels. The data revealed a small but significant and robust overall effect of similarity on identification (g = 0.19, 95% CI [0.10, 0.28], p < .001), with little evidence of publication bias. A notable narrative-level moderator was type of similarity, with manipulations of psychological similarity yielding larger effects than manipulations of objective similarity. In addition, study design emerged as a significant study-level moderator, with the similarity–identification effect being stronger in studies that manipulated similarity using a within-subjects design than those that used a between-subjects design. Insights gained from this meta-analysis can help to address some ill-defined aspects of the similarity–identification hypothesis, contributing to a better understanding of involvement with narrative characters. Practically, the results can inform the design of more effective targeted and tailored narrative messages that are intended to engage and persuade audiences using the tactic of incorporating similar characters.
Background:
Many people deny science and reject health recommendations despite widely distributed facts and statistics. Didactic science and health communication is often dry, and relies on the false assumption that people make purely evidence-based decisions. Stories can be a powerful teaching tool by capturing attention and evoking emotion.
Objective:
We explore the impact and appeal of, and describe best practices for, using narrative (storytelling) versus didactic methods in science and health communication.
Patient involvement:
No patients were involved in the review process.
Methods:
We searched PubMed and Web of Science for articles either: assessing effectiveness of narrative science/health communication; assessing acceptability of (or preference for) narrative science/health communication; giving advice on how best to use narrative; and/or providing science-based explanations for how/why narrative succeeds.
Results:
Narrative science/health communication is effective and appealing for audiences across a variety of topics and mediums, with supporting evidence across fields such as epidemiology, neuroscience, and psychology. Whether narrative or didactic messaging is most effective depends on the topic, audience, and objective, as well as message quality. However, combining narrative with didactic methods is likely to be more effective than using either strategy alone.
Discussion:
Narrative science/health communication merits wider implementation and further research. Narrative communication creates openness to information by delaying the formulation of counterarguments.
Practical value:
Science and health communicators should collaborate with cultural and storytelling experts, work directly with their target audiences throughout the message development and testing processes, and rely on popular story elements (e.g., first-person point of view, relatable protagonists) to improve the comprehension, engagement, and thoughtful consideration of their intended audience.
Funding:
This work was funded by Thirty Meter Telescope, with which two authors (GKS and SD) were affiliated. Otherwise, the funding organization had no role in the study and/or submission.
Objective:
To synthesize experimental research on the impact of narrative point of view (POV) on message processing and persuasion outcomes in health promotion. Moderators examined included characteristics of study design, participants, and experimental stimuli.
Design and main outcome measures:
Random effects model meta-analysis of 16 health promotion experiments, using the metafor package in R. Studies included compared the effects of first- and third-person POV on risk perceptions, attitudes, behavioral intention, identification and transportation.
Results:
There was no evidence of publication bias. Narratives told in the first-person POV led to higher levels of perceived susceptibility (d = 0.10, 95% CI [0.01, 0.20]) and identification feelings (d = 0.10, 95% CI [0.10, 0.21]) than third-person narratives. The effects of first-person POV narratives were significantly stronger for stories that were written in the past-tense and that depicted the protagonist as being similar to message recipients.
Conclusion:
Findings support a theoretical model of POV impact in which a first-person perspective increases identification with the character, thereby leading to higher levels of perceived susceptibility to the health threat. The practical implication is that the effectiveness of narrative persuasion is enhanced by using the first-person point of view, emphasizing target audience-protagonist similarities, and telling stories in the past tense.
