Content uploaded by Melanie C. Green
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Melanie C. Green
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narrative
Abstract and Figures
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.
Figures - uploaded by Melanie C. Green
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Melanie C. Green
Content may be subject to copyright.
... According to transportation theory, transportation occurs when an individual is cognitively and emotionally engaged in a message, experiences mental imagery, and feels so absorbed in the message that they momentarily disconnect from the real world (Green and Fitzgerald, 2017). In turn, narrative messages that increase transportation can persuade people to change their beliefs and behavioral intentions to become more consistent with what is communicated in the message (Green and Brock, 2000). Specifically, messages that increase transportation persuade readers to change beliefs and behavioral intentions by connecting with the central character, heightening perceptions of realism, prompting story-relevant mental imagery, reducing counterarguing, and increasing emotional engagement (Green and Fitzgerald, 2017). ...
... This might contribute to health disparities because people may be less persuaded by messages that promote the well-being of vulnerable groups. Narrative messages help circumvent such resistance by prompting transportation into the message (Green and Brock, 2000;Dal Cin et al., 2004), which in turn allows the message recipient to gain a better understanding of vulnerable social groups and populations, and highlight their specific needs because it is difficult for readers to counterargue with the lived experiences of people (Dal Cin et al., 2004). A recent study found that people who evaluated the SARS-CoV-2 virus as more severe, and believed their behaviors were more effective in reducing the spread of the virus, were more likely to engage in COVID prevention behaviors recommended by the CDC (Kowalski and Black, 2021). ...
... The Transportation Scale Short Form (TS-SF: Appel et al., 2015) was used to measure the extent to which participants were transported into each message. We used the five-item shortened scale, adapted from the full 15-item transportation scale (Green and Brock, 2000), to minimize participant fatigue. Participants indicated how much they agreed or disagreed with each item on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). ...
Rational
Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic requires large-scale cooperation and behavior change on an unprecedented scale. Individuals can help reduce the burden of the pandemic by participating in behaviors that benefit people whose life circumstances make them especially vulnerable.
Objective
We tested the effect of reading narrative (i.e., story-like) as opposed to expository (i.e., factual recounting) messages on beliefs about protecting others in groups vulnerable during the pandemic through increased message transportation (i.e. immersing the reader into the story). Additionally, we examined if reading narratives, as opposed to expository messages, increased intentions to engage in prosocial behaviors that benefit these groups through increased transportation.
Methods
The study used a between-subjects design where participants either read narrative or expository messages about the experiences of people who were at greater exposure to SARS-CoV-2 due to social and political factors, namely people who were incarcerated or working in healthcare during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Results
In line with pre-registered hypotheses, participants in the narrative (vs. expository) condition reported greater transportation into the message. We also observed indirect effects of narrative (vs. expository) messages, through increased message transportation, on: (1) beliefs that by physical distancing, one can protect vulnerable people (2) beliefs that members of the target groups (i.e., healthcare workers and people who are incarcerated), were vulnerable during the pandemic, (3) intentions to engage in prosocial behaviors that help family and friends, and (4) intentions to engage in prosocial behaviors that help members of vulnerable groups.
Conclusion
Together these results suggest that narratives can be used to motivate prosocial action during the COVID-19 pandemic to the extent that the narratives elicit transportation.
... The current study examines health narratives as a potential intervention. Narratives are defined as a story containing an identifiable beginning, middle, and end that illustrates how characters overcome unresolved questions, conflicts, or crisis (Green & Brock, 2000). The accumulated empirical evidence has demonstrated the efficacy of narrative messages in health communication in general (Shen et al., 2015) and vaccine promotion in particular (Lazić & Žeželj, 2021). ...
... A substantial body of research suggests that narratives can affect health related beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (de Graaf et al., 2016;Shen et al., 2015). Storytelling is a fundamental means of human communication, and narrative exposure is engaging and affect-laden (Green & Brock, 2000). By transporting individuals into the story world, narratives enable individuals to put themselves in the shoes of a character, experience their life events, and identify with their emotions (Cohen, 2001). ...
... It may be challenging to successfully implement these tasks via public campaigns among a broader audience. In contrast, narrative processing may effectively engage audiences through its vivid portrayal of the character and story events (Green & Brock, 2000). Moreover, sufficient involvement in the self-persuasion task may demand a relatively high level of knowledge on the topic (Bernritter et al., 2017), which may not necessarily be the case in reality. ...
This research examines the efficacy of self-persuasion narratives (i.e., narratives that describe how a character has changed their mind) in encouraging vaccine uptake among unvaccinated African Americans. A five-condition experiment (N = 394) was conducted in June 2021. Participants viewed one of the three pro-vaccine messages (a self-persuasion narrative, a narrative without self-persuasion, or a non-narrative message) or an irrelevant message or completed a self-persuasion task. Findings supported the persuasive benefits of the self-persuasion narrative compared to the narrative without self-persuasion, actual self-persuasion, and the irrelevant message. Its advantage over the narrative without self-persuasion was mediated by increased self-referencing, affective empathy, and perceived similarity with the character. Moreover, its psychological effects were moderated by participants’ trust in science. Unexpectedly, the non-narrative showed persuasive benefits compared to other intervention strategies. The theoretical implications for narrative persuasion and practical implications for vaccine promotion were discussed.
... pro-vaccine content in this relation. Additionally, since previous research suggests that narratives can result in less critical message processing and more story-consistent beliefs (e.g., Green and Brock, 2000), we included various exploratory variables, including resistance toward the message, attitudes toward vaccination, and attitude certainty. ...
... All versions were based on often-consulted sources on the internet (including official information from the vaccine-promoting website CDC.org and testimonials from the vaccine-critical website vaxtruth.org). The texts were relatively long (1,652-1,697 words) to increase the probability of participants experiencing narrative transportation (Green and Brock, 2000) and allowing differences between the texts to manifest. All texts contained general information about vaccines, as well as 12 elements describing measles symptoms and 12 elements describing vaccine side effects, each mentioned once. ...
... To check whether the format manipulation worked as intended, participants were asked "to what extent did the text provide information in a narrative (personal, experience-based, storylike) manner?" and "to what extent did the text provide information in an expository (general, explanation-based, business-like) manner?" Also, transportation (α = 0.81, M = 5.18, SD = 1.09) was assessed with six items adapted from Green and Brock (2000), including "I had a vivid image of what the text was about" and "the text affected me emotionally." ...
Online vaccine-critical sentiments are often expressed in appealing personal narratives, whereas vaccine-supporting information is often presented in a non-narrative, expository mode describing scientific facts. In two experiments, we empirically test whether and how these different formats impact the way in which readers process and retrieve information about childhood vaccination, and how this may impact their perceptions regarding vaccination. We assess two psychological mechanisms that are hypothesized to underlie the persuasive nature of vaccination narratives: the availability heuristic (experiment 1, N = 418) and cognitive resistance (experiment 2, N = 403). The results of experiment 1 showed no empirical evidence for the availability heuristic, but exploratory analyses did indicate that an anti-vaccination narrative (vs. expository) might reduce cognitive resistance, decrease vaccination attitudes and reduce attitude certainty in a generally pro-vaccination sample, especially for those who were more vaccine hesitant. Preregistered experiment 2 formally tested this and showed that not narrative format, but prior vaccine hesitancy predicts cognitive resistance and post-reading attitudes. Hesitant participants showed less resistance toward an anti-vaccine text than vaccine-supporting participants, as well as less positive post-reading attitudes and attitude certainty. These findings demonstrate belief consistency effects rather than narrative persuasion, which has implications for scientific research as well as public health policy.
... Several measures of deeply engaged literary reading have been the focus of research in recent years (for reviews see Hakemulder et al., 2017;Kuijpers et al., 2021;van Laer et al., 2014). Following seminal studies of becoming "lost" in a book (Nell, 1988) and being "transported" into the world of a text (Gerrig, 1993), investigators have variously assessed "transportation" (Green & Brock, 2000), "flow" (Thissen et al., 2020), "narrative engagement" (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009), and "story world absorption" (Kuijpers et al., 2014). It has been tempting to proceed as though each of these measures imperfectly assesses the same underlying construct (cf. ...
... A few studies have documented convergence between separate measures of absorptionlike states, as though each assesses slightly different aspects of a single construct. Kuijpers et al. (2014, Study 3) reported that story world absorption was positively correlated with the transportation scale (Green & Brock, 2000) and with the narrative engagement scale (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009). They also found that story world absorption was a "better" predictor of two ad hoc measures of enjoyment and narrative impact (p. ...
Although several measures of reading engagement (e.g., absorption, immersion) have been developed in recent years, the possibility that they reflect different constructs has not been systematically examined. The present study investigated two factorially independent forms of reading engagement measured by the Absorption-Like States Questionnaire (ASQ; Kuiken & Douglas, 2017 , 2018 ). We examined whether (a) expressive enactment (ASQ-EE) and integrative comprehension (ASQ-IC) differentially predict aesthetic, explanatory, and pragmatic reading outcomes; (b) whether the components and outcomes of ASQ-EE and ASQ-IC differ from those of another measure of reading engagement (the Story World Absorption Scale, SWAS; Kuijpers et al., 2014 ), and (c) whether ASQ-EE and ASQ-IC are differentially related to two measures of trait openness to experience: the Tellegen Absorption Scale ( Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974 ) and the Big Five Aspects Scale for Openness/Intellect; DeYoung et al., 2007 ).
... And the Concept of Transportation designates the reception process in which campaign stories as narratives are transported by the target groups into their own narrative world [46]. In 2021 the Federal Health Department BAG in Switzerland used posters displaying male and female physicians of a hospital as credible experts with the message: "I will let vaccinate me." ...
Public communication campaigns are the focus of this contribution, especially in the field of health, that fulfill an important function in today’s civic society by informing the public about risky behaviors like AIDS, tobacco, alcohol, drug abuse, obesity or currently in the field of COVID-19. In addition they are stimulating preventive behavior in domains like increasing physical activity, healthier nutrition or keeping distance because of COVID-19, but also in areas like traffic safety or environmental protection. But they also try to alter non-healthy risk behaviors like smoking or too much drinking. Especially the COVID-19 pandemic since early 2020 hit the health systems of all countries hard and almost all health ministries or departments of public health started to develop and implement COVID-19 communication campaigns together with technical and legal interventions like vaccination. Based on a system model with focus on problem analysis, definition of goals, selection of target groups, development of campaign messages, and empirical campaign evaluation, it is the goal of this contribution to focus on public health campaigns and its underlying theoretical perspectives like information seeking, cognitive dissonance theory, activation and entertainment-education, social cognitive theory, persuasion research or approaches from health sciences. Based on this background of relevant communication theories, the contribution is asking: What have we learned from theory to optimize health campaigns and especially COVID-19 campaigns?
... al, 2014;Barraza et al., 2015). Narrative transportation can be experienced by listeners, viewers or any recipient of narrative information containing the dramatic arc (Green and Brock, 2000). ...
Purpose
Retailers are increasingly considering the introduction of service robots in their stores to support or even replace service staff. Service robots can execute service scripts during the service encounter that can influence customer interactions and the overall experience. While the role of service agents is well documented, more research is needed to understand customer responses to a technology-infused servicescape and to investigate the value of service robots as interaction partners. The purpose of this study is to examine the degree of customer immersion in human-human or human-robot interactions across different stages of the service experience and to understand how immersion affects store visit duration under each condition.
Design/methodology/approach
An experimental field study was developed to test the research hypotheses. The study was conducted in a retail store selling premium Italian leather goods with 50 respondents randomly allocated to one of two experimental conditions, interaction with a service robot or interaction with a human sales associate. Participants’ biometrics were collected to measure their immersion in the service encounter and to assess its impact on store visit duration.
Findings
The interaction with a service robot increases the level of customer immersion during the service encounter’s welcome and surprise moments. Immersion positively affects visit duration. However, participants exposed to a robot sales associate reported a shorter visit duration as compared to those who interacted with a human sales associate.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the emerging service and retail marketing literature on service robot applications applying a neuroscientific approach to the study of human–robot interactions across different moments of the service encounter. For managers, this study shows the conditions under which service robots can be successfully implemented in retail stores in accordance with the type of task performed and the degree of immersion generated in customers.
... Thirdly, the expressiveness supports the narrativity of the message and makes the story more interesting (van Laer and Ruyter, 2010). The more interesting a story is, the deeper the reader delves into it and the less he is inclined to oppose it (Green and Brock, 2000). Therefore we hypothesise: ...
Nowadays, most consumers consult review platforms or engage in word-of-mouth communication be- fore making a purchase decision. If negative statements concerning a firm or its products occur, the main question is how to adequately react to such negative messages that can be characterised by a rational and emotional dimension. This paper investigates how these dimensions interact between a negative message and the firm’s response which acts as its counterpart. In addition, the sender of the reply to the negative message was considered as a factor influencing the purchase intention. Results show that arguments play an important role when responding to negative messages. While good argu- ments enhance the probability that the purchase intention increases, bad arguments reduce this proba- bility significantly. Furthermore, the strategy of how to respond to negative statements depends on the preceding message itself and its composition. Only in the case of a very expressive initial message, the expressiveness of the firm’s message has a higher impact on the purchase intention than argument qual- ity. In this case it is also advisable to use a brand advocate as the sender of the reply. In general, a lower expressiveness is better for the purchase intention than a higher one.
In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Current debates in literary criticism and reading theory focus on the relative importance of the fixed language of a text and the reader's disposition as factors influencing commonality and variation in reader response. The authors used both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the convergence and divergence of several aspects of reader response to selected short stories read in a classroom setting. Thirty-nine college students read three short stories with similar plot structures and rated each story by paragraph according to one of three criteria: the degree of mental imagery evoked, the degree of emotion evoked, or the degree of importance to the story as a whole. Paragraphs that received high ratings on all three scales were identified, and students were subsequently asked to explain the reasons for their high ratings (on the respective scale) for these paragraphs, using a free-response reporting format. Significant convergence was found in both the quantitative ratings and the qualitative reports, but interesting divergence was also found, particularly in the imagery reports. The relationships found between imagery, affect, and importance are related to current literary theories and to theories of basic psychological processes in reading. /// [French] Les débats actuels sur la critique littéraire et la théorie de la lecture sont axés sur l'importance relative de la langue fixe du texte et l'aptitude du lecteur en tant que facteurs affectant la similitude et la variation dans les réactions du lecteur. Les auteurs ont utilisé des méthodes quantitatives et qualitatives afin d'examiner la convergence et la divergence de plusieurs aspects de la réaction du lecteur à certaines petites histoires qu'on lit dans les écoles. Trente-neuf étudiants de niveau collégial ont lu trois courtes histoires avec des structures d'intrigue semblables et ont classé chaque histoire par paragraphe selon l'une de trois échelles: le degré d'images mentales évoquées, le degré d'émotion évoquée, ou le degré d'importance que ça présente pour l'ensemble de l'histoire. Les auteurs ont identifié les paragraphes classés très forts dans les trois catégories, et on a ensuite demandé aux étudiants d'expliquer, sous forme de rapport-essai, les raisons pour lesquelles ils ont classé ces paragraphes si forts dans chacune des échelles respectives. On a remarqué une convergence importante tant dans les classements quantitatifs que dans les rapports qualitatifs, mais on a également trouvé une divergence intéressante, particulièrement au niveau des rapports portant sur les images mentales. On peut associer aux théories littéraires actuelles et aux théories des processus psychologiques essentiels en lecture, les relations établies entre les images, l'émotion et l'importance structurale. /// [Spanish] Los debates actuales en la crítica literaria y la teoría de lectura se enfocan a la importancia relativa del lenguaje fijo de un texto y la disposición del lector como factores que tienen influencia en la respuesta común y variada del lector. Los autores usaron tanto métodos cualitativos como cuantitativos para investigar la convergencia y divergencia de varios aspectos de la reacción del lector a cuentos cortos seleccionados que se leen en las escuelas. Treinta y nueve estudiantes de universidad leyeron tres cuentos cortos con la trama estructurada de forma similar y calificaron cada historia por párrafo en una de tres escalas: el grado de ideación mental evocada, el grado de emoción evocado, o el grado de importancia a la historia como un todo. Los párrafos que recibieron calificaciones altas en las tres escalas fueron identificados, y se preguntó después a los estudiantes que explicaran las razones de sus altas calificaciones (en la escala respectiva) para estos párrafos, usando un formato de respuesta libre en su reporte. Se encontró una convergencia significativa tanto en las medidas cuantitativas como en los reportes cualitativos, pero también se encontró una divergencia interesante, particularmente en los reportes de ideación. Las relaciones encontradas entre ideación, afecto e importancia están relacionados con las teorías literarias de actualidad y con las teorías de procesos sicológicos básicos en la lectura. /// [German] Tagesdebatten über literarische Kritik und Lesetheorie befassen sich mit der relativen Wichtigkeit der fixierten Sprache eines Textes und der Veranlagung des Lesers als Faktoren, die Allgemeinheit und die Verschiedenartigkeit in Leser-Reaktion beeinflussen. Die Autoren benutzten quantitative wie auch qualitative Methoden, um die Konvergenz und die Divergenz verschiedener Aspekte von Leserreaktionen auf ausgewählte, in der Schule gelesene Kurzgeschichten zu prüfen. Neununddreißig Studenten lasen drei Kurzgeschichten mit ähnlichen Handlungsstrukturen und bewerteten die Abschnitte jeder Geschichte nach einer von drei Einstufungen: nach dem Grad hervorgerufener geistiger Bildhaftigkeit, dem Grad von Gefühlen und dem Wichtigkeitsgrad der Geschichte als ganzes. Abschnitte, die eine hohe Einstufung auf allen drei Stufen erhielten, wurden festgelegt, und die Studenten gebeten, ihre Gründe für die hohe Einstufung (in der entsprechenden Gradierung) dieser Abschnitte anzugeben, wobei ein Freie-Antwort-Format angewandt wurde. Bedeutende Konvergenz wurde festgestellt in quantitativen wie auch in qualitativen Berichten, jedoch wurde auch eine interessante Divergenz gefunden, vor allem in der Bildhaftigkeits-Reaktion. Das Verhältnis zwischen Bildhaftigkeit, Einfluß und Wichtigkeit ist mit Tagesliteratur-Theorien und Theorien von grundpsychologischen Prozessen während des Lesens verwandt.
Many experiments have shown that people use their world knowledge to aid in comprehension. The present paper addresses the issue of how this use of world knowledge is related to the equally important question of how and when newly learned information is incorporated into, and thereby alters, a person's world knowledge. The distinction between compartmentalized and incorporated information is characterized in terms of an associative network model, and this characterization is used to develop a measure of the degree of incorporation. This measure involves an examination of the ease with which subjects can recognize a newly learned concept as a function of the test context. Two experiments present evidence that the use of world knowledge in comprehension is correlated with this measure of the degree to which new information is incorporated into world knowledge.
This study examined whether accounts about individuals in concrete situations—read as news or fiction—influenced judgments about society at large. Participants (N = 95) read either no story or one of two anecdotal accounts about a teenager who was planning to drop out of high school. Whereas one account focused on problems stemming from the student’s inner-city high school, the other account emphasized the boy’s emotional and motivational problems. Results showed that both news and fictional stories influenced participants’ judgments about the causes of and solutions to the dropout problem in the United States (causal generalization) and about the urgency with which policy makers should attend to educational and health care reform (agenda setting). Among the mechanisms shown to facilitate causal generalization was the extent to which the accounts cued remindings from the readers’ stores of personal or mediabased experience. The role of stories in the judgment of social issues is discussed.