Emily Moyer-Guse

• The Ohio State University

Persuasive testimonials are common in commercial, nonprofit, and public health contexts. They pose challenges to existing theories of narrative persuasion because they are typically both narrative and overtly persuasive. Prior research has suggested testimonials may be effective with counter-attitudinal recipients by decreasing negative affective r...

A growing body of research reveals that entertainment narratives are persuasive across a variety of topics. Models of narrative persuasion highlight key mechanisms, but one limitation of this theorizing is that it has not directly considered the full range of entertainment narratives that exist. Viewers select media content to fulfill various needs...

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 me...

Guided by the entertainment overcoming resistance model (EORM), participants (N = 334) were exposed to narrative correction strategies designed to reduce reliance on a character that portrayed misinformation about HPV within a narrative. In a 2 × 2 experiment, participants were randomly assigned to either read a warning about an untrustworthy chara...

The current study considers how an entertainment narrative about childhood vaccination influences related attitudes. We consider the role of counterarguing in narrative persuasion by integrating extant research and theory to test cognitive mechanisms of narrative persuasion, namely self-referencing and positive issue-related thoughts. Results of th...

This study explores the effects of exposure to a reality television narrative depicting genetic testing on attitudes and intentions, looking particularly at the effects of narratives containing elements of misinformation on genetics-related knowledge accuracy. In an experiment, participants completed a baseline survey, viewed a high versus low-accu...

The role of moral disengagement in evaluating narrative character behaviors has been a source of scholarly investigation for some time. Despite a theoretical interest in the process, little work has experimentally manipulated content features related to the mechanisms proposed by Bandura in his selective moral disengagement model. This paper presen...

This study examines the effectiveness of evoking other-oriented emotions in vaccine messages to promote vaccine advocacy behaviors. A between-subject experiment with a parent sample was conducted, in which portrayals of a victim exemplar (someone who is suffering from the consequence of vaccine hesitancy) and a moral exemplar (someone who is selfle...

This work investigates what factors prompt audience members to engage with morally complex antagonists and examines potential real-world attitudinal outcomes of such engagement. A two-part experimental study (n = 140) examines whether the revelation timing of a character’s immoral behavior in a fictional narrative (late reveal versus early reveal)...

It has been established that narrative entertainment messages have the power to produce persuasive outcomes in audiences, but the specific message components that influence audience responses are not well understood. The current study uses focus groups to explore audience interpretations of meaning, perceptions of persuasive intent, and perceptions...

Recent work on self-affirmation, or buffering against self-threats by affirming a separate domain of the self, has investigated the use of manipulations via narrative messages to increase self-appraisal (i.e., positive thoughts toward the self) and reduce message derogation. This study furthers this initial work by investigating the dual roles of i...

Mediated intergroup contact and extended contact hypothesis research shows that observing a positive intergroup interaction can result in improved attitudes toward the outgroup. This experiment tested the common ingroup identity model and how the creation of a superordinate identity among characters in a television narrative influences viewers’ wil...

This study examined whether watching science-related entertainment narratives can influence science learning, interest in science, and information-seeking intentions. Based on the capacity model (Fisch, 2000), a more precise processing variable called engagement with the science content was proposed as an additional mechanism that can account for v...

Entertainment narratives commonly feature explicit appeals to underscore important content therein. This strategy may also undermine the subtle approach that characterizes narrative persuasion. This experiment examined the effects of a pro-environmental public service announcement (PSA) combined with an entertainment narrative on environmental inte...

Narratives can bring about related discussions, which can influence narrative comprehension and future conversations - though little is known about how these processes interact. This study considers the interplay of exposure to a teen pregnancy narrative and subsequent mother-daughter discussion in an experiment with mothers and their teenage daugh...

Recent extensions to the contact hypothesis reveal that different forms of contact, such as mediated intergroup contact, can reduce intergroup anxiety and improve attitudes toward the outgroup. This study draws on existing research to further consider the role of identification with an ingroup character within a narrative depicting intergroup conta...

Outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases have increased due, in part, to misconceptions about vaccine safety (Kennedy et al., 2011). Extant literature has examined various messages designed to correct false beliefs about vaccination risks and to urge parents to vaccinate their children. The present study is designed to contribute to this literatur...

Media-based narratives represent a unique form of persuasion. This is due, in part, to the distinct way in which individuals select and comprehend entertainment media narratives. Narratives foster a unique type of involvement that is characterized by getting swept up into a storyworld and engaging with the characters therein. This narrative engagem...

Previous research has demonstrated a positive influence of cooperative video game play on participants’ cooperative strategies (tit-for-tat behaviors) in a modified Prisoner’s Dilemma task (Ewoldsen et al., 2012). The current study tested whether these positive effects are applicable to ingroup and outgroup conflict. Eighty participants were assign...

The Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology explores facets of human behavior, thoughts, and feelings experienced in the context of media use and creation. Divided into six sections, chapters in this volume trace the history of media psychology; address content areas for media research, including children's media use, media violence and desensitization...

This article investigated children's fear responses to everyday exposure to the news in the absence of a recent crisis or major event. From March to May 2006, a survey was conducted of 218 kindergarten through 6th-grade children regarding their fright reactions to the news. Results showed that 35.3% of children reported being frightened by the news...

Past research has examined the effects of entertainment narratives on story-related behaviors, but most has focused primarily on dramatic genres rather than comedy. The present study examines how the presence or absence of pregnancy-related humor influences viewers' counterarguing, perceived severity, and intentions to engage in unprotected sexual...

Individuals often avoid discussing sexual history and safer sex with sexual partners, increasing the likelihood of negative health consequences. Research and theorizing on narrative influence suggest that television programs in which characters model conversations about safer sex may provide social scripts to viewers and influence behavior. This ex...

This study examined reactions to a temporary parasocial breakup situation during the television writers’ strike of 2007–2008 when many television shows stopped airing new episodes. Past research on parasocial breakups and uses and gratifications theory was used to predict emotional and behavioral reactions. Questionnaire results revealed that parti...

Entertainment-education (E-E) may offer an effective way to reduce risky behavior by modeling healthy behaviors. Although there is some empirical evidence to support the effectiveness of the E-E strategy, much of this research has been conducted in countries with different media landscapes than that of the United States and controlled experiments i...

Entertainment-education television programming may offer an effective way to reach audiences by embedding health and social issues into television shows people already choose to watch. Although research has examined the effects of these narrative-based messages on viewers, little is known about the ways in which different types of programs might mo...

Grade-school children (N = 219, M age = 8.5 years) reported their experiences of media-induced fear in their own words and using forced-choice items. Seventy-six per cent reported a specific instance of media-induced fright; most were responding to movies (seen in theaters or homes) and media content they had not chosen to view. The most commonly m...

Aggression and conflict are communicated across and within societies in numerous and complex ways. This article examines the ways in which violence and conflict have been studied in two of the major areas of communication research: interpersonal and mass media. In particular, the article will review how everyday conflicts are managed and the ways i...

Research has examined the ability of entertainment-education (E-E) programs to influence behavior across a variety of health and social issues. However, less is known about the underlying mechanisms that account for these effects. In keeping with the extended elaboration likelihood model (E-ELM) and the entertainment overcoming resistance model (EO...

Content PatternsExposure to the NewsTheories Relevant to News Processing and EffectsEffects of Exposure to the NewsReality-Based ProgrammingFuture ResearchConclusion References

A growing body of research indicates that entertainment-education programming can be an effective way to deliver prosocial and health messages. Some have even speculated that entertainment-education may be more effective than overtly persuasive messages in certain circumstances. Despite empirical advances in this area, more work is needed to unders...

This research was designed to assess the effects of contemporary political humor on information processing and persuasion, focusing specifically on two competing processes: processing motivation/counterargument distraction and message discounting. In Study 1, 212 undergraduates read one of four monologues by political comedian Bill Maher. Correlati...

The purpose of this study was to examine age-related differences in children's responses to news coverage of the War on Iraq. To this end, a random sample of 161 parents of 5- to 17-year-olds in Ingham County, Michigan was surveyed about their child's fear responses to the war and patterns of exposure. Using developmental theory and research, age-r...