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Fiction increases trust in Democracy: Indirect effect of security institutions effectiveness’ audiovisual representation in their perceived performance through just-world belief
Abstract
This study focuses on the impact of audiovisual fiction on trust in institutions, drawing on cultivation theory and narrative persuasion research. We test the effects of audiovisual representation of security institutions’ effectiveness in fighting crime on perceived performance of security institutions, trust in democracy, political interest, and political optimism, mediated by just-world beliefs and narrative transportation. 130 students from Universidad de Salamanca (Spain) and Escuela Superior de Economía y Negocios (El Salvador) participated in the online experiment and were randomly assigned to two experimental conditions and exposed to one of two sequences from the series La Casa de Papel that differed in the degree of effectiveness (high versus low) with which security institutions acted to solve a criminal event. The results of the proposed parallel mediation model showed that there is a significant and positive indirect effect of this representation on trust in democracy only through the just-world belief. The main contribution of our study is the confirmation that cultivation and narrative persuasion work together to explain how audiovisual fiction shapes attitudes toward public institutions in two different countries. Finally, we found that further research is needed to test alternative models that include other variables to establish and better understand this psychological process.
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Introducción:
Se presentan los resultados de un estudio experimental para contrastar el efecto de la modalidad de presentación de un mensaje de educación-entretenimiento (escrito versus audiovisual) en los procesos cognitivos de recepción, en función de la necesidad de cognición.
Método:
Participaron 109 hombres que tienen sexo con hombres (HSH), distribuidos aleatoriamente en dos condiciones experimentales (mensaje escrito versus mensaje audiovisual).
Resultados:
Se encontró que la necesidad de cognición moderó el efecto de la modalidad del mensaje sobre la elaboración cognitiva (el mensaje escrito incrementaba la elaboración cognitiva en participantes con baja necesidad de cognición) y sobre la contraargumentación (el formato escrito generó menor contraargumentación en participantes con alta necesidad de cognición), pero no sobre la reactancia.
Conclusiones:
La efectividad de un mensaje de educación-entretenimiento está determinada tanto por las características del mensaje (la modalidad de presentación) como por las diferencias individuales de las personas (la necesidad de cognición). De manera particular, la necesidad de cognición es una variable relevante para comprender los procesos cognitivos de recepción (la elaboración cognitiva y la contraargumentación) que desempeñan un papel fundamental en el estudio de la persuasión narrativa.
This article analyses the state of democracy around the world in 2021. The level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2021 was down to 1989 levels. In 2021, autocracies were on the rise, harbouring 70% of the world population, or 5.4 billion people. There was also a record number of countries autocratizing in 2021: 33 countries, home to 36% of the global population. In recent years, the EU seems to be facing its own wave of autocratization, with 20% of its members autocratizing over the last decade. In addition to the continued downturn in global democracy, this article documents several signs that autocratization is changing in nature. Polarization increased substantially and significantly in 40 countries between 2011 and 2021, and our analysis indicates that polarization increasingly damages democracy especially recently and under anti-pluralist governments. Over the past decade, the data also shows that autocratic governments more frequently used misinformation to shape domestic and international opinion. Finally, with five military coups and one self-coup, 2021 featured an unprecedented increase in coups for this century. These coups contributed to the uptick in the number of closed autocracies in 2021 and seem to signal a shift toward emboldened autocratic actors.
The design of campaigns for the improvement of intergroup attitudes requires innovative approaches that consider both the characteristics of the messages and the psychological processes they evoke. This work addresses the study of factors that increase the persuasive effectiveness of testimonial messages aimed at improving attitudes towards stigmatized immigrants. An experiment was conducted using a representative sample of 443 participants of Spanish origin on the effect of similarity to the protagonist and the narrative voice. Two mediating mechanisms (identification with the protagonist and cognitive elaboration) were evaluated, and the indirect effect of the two independent variables was studied with respect to two dependent variables: the attitude towards immigration and the intention to collaborate with NGOs to support immigrants. Similarity to the protagonist of the narrative message increased identification only when the participants read the version written in the first person. In addition, a conditional process model was tested, revealing that identification increased cognitive elaboration, which, in turn, was associated with a more favorable attitude towards immigration and a greater intention to collaborate with immigrant support organizations. This study highlights the relevance of the characteristics of narrative messages to increase affective (identification) and cognitive (elaboration) processes that explain their persuasive impact. The results are discussed in the context of research on narrative persuasion and the design of campaigns for the prevention of racism and xenophobia.
En el presente capítulo se presenta una propuesta teórica acerca del papel de las narraciones sobre la inmigración como herramientas de intervención para reducir el prejuicio hacia las personas inmigrantes. La propuesta está directamente relacionada con la investigación sobre las técnicas para reducir el prejuicio, en particular, a través del contacto intergrupal mediático y la investigación sobre persuasión narrativa. En esta propuesta teórica, se toma como analogía procedente del campo de la medicina el concepto de vacuna narrativa, concibiéndose el racismo y la xenofobia como una especie de toxina social. En este contexto, se presentan los resultados de una investigación experimental en donde se analizó el impacto de dos factores narrativos que buscaban incrementar la eficacia persuasiva de los mensajes testimoniales destinados a la mejora de las actitudes hacia la inmigración.
Stigmatization of one or more discredited attributes has a profoundly negative social impact on stigmatized individuals. Researchers have applied narratives as a persuasion device to reduce stigma. However, the overall effect of narratives on stigma is yet known. This research synthesized and quantified the effect of narratives in reducing stigma and identifies moderating factors. Forty-six effect sizes were extracted from 40 articles investigating the effect of narratives on stigmatization in various stigmatized conditions. A small effect of narratives on reducing stigma was yielded, which indicated that narratives were effective in reducing stigma. Narratives constructed with the first-person point of view were to be superior in reducing stigma. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Smartphones are a preferred platform to access audiovisual stories. Prior theory and research suggest that using smaller screens could lead to a shallower narrative experience. In three experiments we examined the influence of screen size (smartphone vs. computer screen) on the experience of being transported into the world of the story (narrative transportation). We further examined interaction effects with manipulations meant to change transportation by means of reviews (Experiment 1, N = 120), consistency of main character information (Experiment 2, N = 139), and prior information meant to facilitate comprehension (Experiment 3, N = 129). Because our series of studies involved theoretically and practically relevant null hypotheses (i.e., screen size does not influence transportation), we added Bayes factor analyses to standard frequentist statistics. A mini meta-analysis was conducted to summarize the results. Taken together, the three experiments indicate that smaller screen size does not impair narrative transportation. Implications and future research are discussed.
Scholars have increasingly explored the ways that media content can touch, move, and inspire audiences, leading to numerous beneficial outcomes including increased feelings of connectedness to and heightened motivations for doing good for others. Although this line of inquiry is relatively new, sufficient evidence and patterns of results have emerged such that a clearer picture of the inspiring media experience is coming into focus. This article has two primary goals. First, we seek to synthesize the existing research into a working and evolving model of inspiring media experiences reflecting five interrelated and symbiotic elements: exposure, message factors, responses, outcomes, and personal/situational factors. The model also identifies theoretical mechanisms underlying the previously observed positive effects. Secondly, the article explores situations in which, and precipitating factors present, when these hoped-for outcomes either fail to materialize or result in negative or maladaptive responses and outcomes. Ultimately, the model is proposed as a heuristic roadmap for future scholarship and as an invitation for critique and collaboration in the emerging field of positive media psychology.
This work addresses the study of factors that increase the persuasive efficacy of testimonial messages aimed at improving intergroup attitudes. The results of two online experiments ( N = 840) on the effect of empathy with, and similarity to, the protagonist in personal stories designed to improve attitudes towards immigrants are presented. In both studies, participants were given instructions to induce a certain exposure condition (empathy vs. an objective or distanced perspective) immediately before reading a narrative whose protagonist was an immigrant with high or low similarity to the audience. The results of mediation analysis show that both empathy and similarity increased identification and narrative transportation, which in turn reduced counterarguing, thus resulting in a more positive attitude towards the outgroup and lower threat perception. The results are discussed in the context of research on narrative persuasion and the design of campaigns to reduce racism and xenophobia.
Researchers in conservation fields have recently highlighted the potential for visual storytelling to convey environmental messages to large audiences. However, an effective model for how such narratives can produce environmental outcomes, such as human–nature connection and pro‐environmental behaviour (PEB), has not yet been developed.
Substantial evidence now suggests that narrative is an effective means of changing beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. This effect is demonstrated in diverse disciplines and understood within the theoretical frameworks of narrative persuasion.
We propose a conceptual framework for understanding the impacts of environmental films on environmental behaviours, and connection with nature. Linking insights from the narrative persuasion field with those of conservation psychology, we identify three promising pathways through which environmental films might influence their audiences: (a) reduced resistance to environmental messages, (b) interactions with audience identity and (c) meaningful media experiences.
This analysis raises key questions and illuminates priority areas for future research, with an aim to complement and extend existing calls to better appreciate the role of film in addressing environmental problems. Research moving forward should focus on understanding the role environmental films can play in connecting people with nature, promoting PEB and the relationship between the two. Specifically, more attention should be paid to the role of deictic shift in encouraging environmental outcomes, the relation between audiences and characters and the power for film to support self‐expansion.
A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.
The current study examines the persuasiveness of narrative richness in messages about acts of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Specifically, we apply theory about narrative persuasion to the domain of corporate communication. Focusing on Coca-Cola’s clean water project, a cross-national experiment (n = 659) was conducted in which the narrative richness and the source cue of a CSR message were manipulated, and the effects on (a) message processing (specifically via character identification, transportation, and credibility), (b) attitude towards the company, and subsequent (c) behavioral intention were measured. Considering the global nature of Coca-Cola, the experiment was simultaneously fielded in the United States and the Netherlands to verify the generalizability of our findings. Robust results in both countries suggest that narratively rich CSR messages can indirectly improve the attitude towards the company and thereby encourage behavioral intentions via character identification and transportation, irrespective of the source cue (company vs. news media). Importantly, message credibility was not compromised by the narrative richness, while being the strongest predictor of company attitude.
One of the pillars of legal socialization theory is how non‐legal contexts shape the legitimacy of and compliance with laws. Yet there is little longitudinal evidence establishing the interface mechanism between these spheres. The purpose of this research was to demonstrate how youths’ beliefs in a just world (BJW) can help explain the transmission between the justice of non‐legal authorities (parents and schools) and law legitimacy and rule violating behavior (RVB). We utilized two waves of longitudinal data from adolescents at ages 13 and 14 (N = 680) in the São Paulo Legal Socialization Study. Structural equation modeling revealed a good fit to the tested model that parental procedural justice and school justice predict both personal and general BJW, and these predict law legitimacy evaluations 1 year later. General and personal BJW also had an indirect effect on RVB over the following year via law legitimacy. The results suggest that non‐legal authorities may influence law legitimacy not through a direct projection (which was not significant), but through an indirect process of worldview construction. Legal socialization and just world belief research can converge to help explain the interface between non‐legal and legal spheres of authority.
What might participatory deliberative democracy look like in complex, mass societies? Cristina Lafont’s Democracy Without Shortcuts (2019) challenges us to revisit this question by taking contemporary democratic theory to task for recommending a variety of shortcuts that would seem to reconcile democratic self-government with complex, mass societies, but do so by requiring ‘blind deference’ of citizens to decisions made by others. Here I make three general points. First, democracy is possible in mass, complex societies just because democratic societies and governments are full of shortcuts, through representation, political, epistemic and advocacy divisions of labour, differentiated institutions, multi-level governance, and trust relationships both among citizens and between citizens and governments. Few of these shortcuts require ‘blind deference’ of citizens. Second, because complex societies are highly differentiated in their structures, they also multiply opportunities for participation in ways that Lafont does not theorise owing to a statist focus on constitutional, rights-based politics. But, third, in arguing against shortcuts, Lafont underscores the importance of assessing the many kinds of principal–agent relationships in complex mass societies to ensure they advance rather than undermine the norms of participatory deliberative democracy.
Given the continued revelation of police abuses of racial-ethnic minorities in America, it is of the utmost importance for scholars to focus on questions of how police conduct is related to minority political behavior, in particular their trust in local government. In this paper, we find evidence that both egotropic and sociotropic insecurity and experiences with police have a significant correlation with confidence in local government. The effects of both victimization and negative interactions with police have a substantive association with the ways that communities of color perceive their local government. Combining data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) and contextual data from the U.S. Census Bureau, FBI crime statistics, and "Mapping Police Violence" project, we use maximum likelihood to examine how police conduct, personal experiences with the police, and neighborhood conditions correlate with individuals' trust in local government. ARTICLE HISTORY
Gamification uses game design elements to create gameful real-work experiences that promise to make boring and repetitive jobs become rejuvenating and engaging. The conventional gamification approach, however, provided hedonic gaming experiences or enforced worker’s productive behaviors, which has not been a great success. In this context, three different gamified systems (No vs. Conventional vs. Narrative Gamification) were employed for real manufacturing workers from the Hyundai Motors Company, and their productivity, emotional reactions, and behavioral items were compared. We found three Goldilocks conditions for workplace gamification: i) “be effective not only physically but also psychologically,” ii) “have the right amount of affective reactions,” and iii) “create self-directed goals in relation to personal and organizational values.” In particular, the extrinsic rewards of the conventional gamification approach suffered from the hedonic adaptation effect, which induced the give-and-take mindset for the manufacturing workers. In contrast, the narrative persuasion introduced in this study established self-directed (personal and organizational) moral goals, by which the interaction cycle ‘action – feedback – motivate – re-engage’ was positively reinforced. Our findings contribute to the research on workplace gamification by shifting scholarly attention from extrinsic rewards to narrative persuasion.
Police violence has increasingly been recognized as a public health concern in the United States, and accumulating evidence has shown police violence exposure to be linked to a broad range of health and mental health outcomes. These associations appear to extend beyond the typical associations between violence and mental health, and to be independent of the effects of co-occurring forms of trauma and violence exposure. However, there is no existing theoretical framework within which we may understand the unique contributions of police violence to mental health and illness.
This article aims to identify potential factors that may distinguish police violence from other forms of violence and trauma exposure, and to explore the possibility that this unique combination of factors distinguishes police violence from related risk exposures. We identify 8 factors that may alter this relationship, including those that increase the likelihood of overall exposure, increase the psychological impact of police violence, and impede the possibility of coping or recovery from such exposures.
On the basis of these factors, we propose a theoretical framework for the further study of police violence from a public mental health perspective.
The COVID-19 pandemic created social upheaval and altered norms for all members of society, but its effects on first responders have been particularly profound. Law enforcement officers have been expected to coordinate local shutdowns, encourage social distancing, and enforce stay-at-home mandates all while completing the responsibilities for which they are already understaffed and underfunded. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on officer stress, mental health, resiliency, and misconduct is explored drawing insight from reactions to the HIV epidemic over two decades earlier and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. COVID-19 policing is hypothesized to serve as a significant stressor for officers and compound the general and organizational stress associated with the occupation. Avenues for providing officer support are discussed and recommendations for research into the phenomenon presented.
This study examines the interaction effect of message format (narrative vs. nonnarrative) and message framing (gain vs. loss) in e‐cigarette prevention targeting young adults. Results of a two‐way experiment (N = 439) revealed that transportation and discrete emotions mediated message effect on risk perception and behavioral intention. Compared to the gain‐framed nonnarrative, the gain‐framed narrative reduced feelings of guilt, and guilt was negatively related to risk perception and positively related to behavioral intention. Thus, the gain‐framed narrative achieved desirable persuasive outcome through guilt—increasing risk perception and decreasing intention to use e‐cigarette. Similarly, the loss‐framed narrative evoked greater sadness, which also led to increased risk perception and decreased behavioral intention. Transportation and discrete emotions mediated message effect in a serial order. This research not only contributes to the literature on narrative persuasion and emotion, but also provides insight for health communication designed for e‐cigarette prevention.
Scholars in a number of disciplines have sought to assess the power of reading or viewing a personal story to modify people's beliefs. However, the research, which has been pursued under diverse programs, has produced conflicting findings. We focus on the persuasiveness of personal stories about problems that are structural (rather than individual) and whose solution requires government action. Overall, the research suggests that although personal stories can overcome people's tendency to resist new information, they often do not do so. People's preexisting beliefs, assumptions, and stereotypes affect their willingness to be absorbed by a story, to empathize with the stories' protagonists, and to endorse the message communicated by the story. We argue also for a sociological perspective on narrative persuasion, one which, unlike the mostly experimental research conducted so far, pays attention to the context in which people encounter stories and to the norms shaping people's assessment of a story as credible, relevant, and important.
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 range 18-55 years) with a 2 (narrative voice: first- vs. third-person message) x 2 (audience-protagonist similarity: low vs. high) between-subjects factorial design. Results showed that the optimal reception condition (first-person narrative with a highly similar protagonist to the audience) induced the highest levels of identification with the protagonist (a former smoker who described the process of quitting smoking and subsequent the improvements he has experienced). Mediational analyses showed that the optimal reception condition exerted significant indirect effects on the dependent variables, due to the increase in identification and reactance reduction. In addition, the optimal reception condition also exerted a significant indirect effect on the perceived effectiveness of the preventive response that was explained by stronger identification and weaker counterarguing. The present study opens an innovative line of research on the construction of narrative messages for smoking prevention. The relevance of the characteristics of these messages is highlighted in order to activate mediating processes that facilitate persuasion.
Recent research suggests that social networks have replaced traditional media as the main channel by which beauty ideals are conveyed—often resulting in body dissatisfaction and reduced self-esteem among users. Although social comparison theory provides an empirically sound approach to these effects, we argue that additional insight may be offered by cultivation theory and its structured exploration of cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral outcome variables. Thus, the present study scrutinizes the social network Instagram as a potential cultivation system for young adults’ body image. Recruiting 228 participants aged 18 to 34 years, we systematically explore 3 orders of cultivation, that is, changes in weight-related knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported dietary restraint. As we differentiate between Instagram use quantity and quality, we observe that mere usage time cannot predict the assumed outcomes; instead, only participants’ tendency to browse Instagram’s public content emerges as a relevant predictor, connecting to biased views on the physical appearance of strangers as well as more disordered eating behavior. Considering the fact that Instagram use relates more to other-focused than to self-focused perceptions in our study, we argue that cultivation theory can indeed complement social comparison theory in the current understanding of media-transmitted body images.
This book articulates a participatory conception of deliberative democracy that takes the democratic ideal of self-government seriously. It aims to improve citizens’ democratic control and vindicate the value of citizens’ participation against conceptions that threaten to undermine it. The book critically analyzes deep pluralist, epistocratic, and lottocratic conceptions of democracy. Their defenders propose various institutional “shortcuts” to help solve problems of democratic governance such as overcoming disagreements, citizens’ political ignorance, or poor-quality deliberation. However, it turns out that these shortcut proposals all require citizens to blindly defer to actors over whose decisions they cannot exercise control. Implementing such proposals would therefore undermine democracy. Moreover, it seems naïve to assume that a community can reach better outcomes “faster” if it bypasses the beliefs and attitudes of its citizens. Unfortunately, there are no “shortcuts” to making a community better than its members. The only road to better outcomes is the long, participatory road that is taken when citizens forge a collective will by changing one another’s hearts and minds. However difficult the process of justifying political decisions to one another may be, skipping it cannot get us any closer to the democratic ideal. Starting from this conviction, the author defends a conception of democracy “without shortcuts.” This conception sheds new light on long-standing debates about the proper scope of public reason, the role of religion in politics, and the democratic legitimacy of judicial review. It also proposes new ways to unleash the democratic potential of institutional innovations such as deliberative minipublics.
Listening to, reading, or watching a story is often a highly emotional experience. The current experiment was designed to gain insight into the role of emotions as part of the persuasive influence of stories. Our focus was on emotions that correspond to a storyline (event-congruent emotions). A short movie was presented that depicts the struggles of a limbless man who ultimately performs a successful circus act. Recipients’ mindsets regarding human potential to improve (growth mindset and fixed mindset) served as the dependent variables. Six emotional scenes over the course of the movie were pre-selected to examine the occurrence and effect of event-congruent emotions. Transportation into the story-world was manipulated via reviews of the movie. Participants’ emotional experience was assessed with a software that measures and classifies emotional facial expressions in the moment they occur. After reading a positive review, participants reported to be more transported into the short film. This was related to more intense event-congruent emotions during the key-scene of the film, which, in turn, was positively related to recipients’ growth mindset. Implications regarding the importance of event-congruent-emotions for narrative persuasion are discussed.
Research has shown that Arab portrayals on television have an effect on viewers’ beliefs about Arabs in general. Based on questionnaire responses from 429 undergraduate students, this study sought to examine perceptions of Arabs on television. Results revealed that college students have predominantly antagonistic views about Arabs in general and on television. These findings suggest that television can affect the way college students view reality regarding Arabs and how these perceptions can perpetuate negative stereotypes.
Stories are often used in health communication because of accumulating evidence of their potential to affect people’s attitudes and health behavioral intentions. Similarity between the reader and the story’s protagonist appears to positively influence narrative persuasion, but the exact role of similarity on persuasive outcomes is debated, as some research finds clear effects of similarity manipulations whereas others do not. Possibly, these mixed results were found because the similarity manipulations were not always relevant to the topic of the story. We conducted an experiment (N = 582) in which we varied the age and gender of the protagonist, features that were of central relevance to the story’s topic, namely breast cancer versus testicular cancer. There were two groups of participants: 324 students (mean age: 21.46 years) and 258 older adults (mean age: 56.83 years). Age similarity (but not gender similarity) had an effect on identification with the protagonist, transportation (i.e. the experience of being absorbed into a story), and the intention to donate, but only for students. For older adults, age or gender of the protagonist did not seem to matter, as nearly no differences in persuasive measures were found. As far as the underlying mechanism is concerned, the results of structural equation modeling showed that the concept of ‘perceived similarity’ would be a relevant addition to models of narrative persuasion, as it was significantly related to the narrative processes of transportation and identification, which, in turn, predicted attitudes and behavioral intentions, both directly—in the case of transportation—or indirectly, via the emotion of compassion. We conclude that both manipulated and perceived similarity are important for narrative persuasion, and that it should be kept on the research agenda of health communication.
Researchers and practitioners have proposed numerous methods to reduce prejudice and create more positive attitudes toward members of other groups. However, empirical support for the effectiveness of these methods is mixed at best. Here, we propose that intergroup attitudes tend to be highly resistant to change, and thus, any method aiming to change these attitudes will be effective only if it successfully overcomes this resistance. First, we argue that traditional methods used to promote positive intergroup attitudes are inadequate in this regard. Next, we suggest that narratives are a unique way of overcoming resistance because they create less reactance, transport individuals into a story world, and provide them with social models. We then describe empirical evidence suggesting that narratives are likely to be particularly useful for creating more positive attitudes toward members of other social groups. Finally, we propose a number of empirical and theoretical questions that present challenges for research on narratives and intergroup attitudes.
The aim of this article is to further our knowledge of the explanatory processes of narrative persuasion in the field of health communication, using data obtained in a research study of entertainment-education based on audiovisual fiction. Participating in the study were 208 young persons between the ages of 14 and 20, randomly distributed to three different groups, and each of the groups exposed to a different episode of the television series "Revelados, desde todas las posiciones". The results showed that greater identification with the main character of the episode transmitting the prevention message was associated with greater cognitive elaboration, which in turn led to more favorable attitudes toward the topics addressed. However, counterarguing was not observed to play a significant mediating role. The findings of this study allow us to conclude that getting people to think and reflect can help persuade them, which suggests that the narrative persuasion models and the dual models of rhetorical persuasion can be compatible in certain contexts, such as when the messages are designed in such a way that the characters make explicit arguments that endorse the prosocial message through dialogues.
One popular concept to capture the experience of being immersed into the world of a story is the concept of transportation. This paper examines the factorial validity of the Transportation Scale (TS) and introduces a short and psychometrically sound alternative for the assessment of transportation. Exploratory bifactor modeling in Study 1 (N = 179) provided support for the hypothesized factor structure of the original TS with three facets and a general transportation factor. Based on these analyses, a six-item short version of the scale, the Transportation Scale- Short Form (TS-SF), was developed. Study 2 (N = 131 and N = 246) as well as Study 3 (N = 301) corroborated the short form’s factorial structure, reliability, and validity.
This article presents three studies examining the importance of identifica-tion with characters in research on media entertainment. In Study 1 it was found that identification with characters was associated with spectators' degree of enjoyment of feature films of different genres. Study 2 showed that identification with characters predicts the affective impact of a dra-matic film and, also, it was associated with greater cognitive elaboration and a more complex reflexive process during the viewing of the dramatic film. In Study 3 it was observed that identification with characters pre-dicted the incidental impact of a full length fictional film on attitudes and beliefs. These results support the centrality of the construct of identification with characters in narrative persuasion research.
Considering that human rights seem increasingly threatened in Brazil, this research aimed to investigate the mediating effect of morality (individualizing and binding moral foundations) and the moderating effect of belief in a just world on the relationship between political orientation and human rights attitudes. Two hundred four participants answered the human rights questionnaire, the moral foundations questionnaire, the global beliefs in a just-world scale, and the sociodemographic questionnaire and indicated the political orientation. The data showed that political orientation tends to explain the endorsement of morality foundations in Brazil. Also, political orientation was a strong predictor of human rights’ defense, independent of a “conservative morality” and the belief in a just world. However, the individualizing moral foundation mediated the relationship between political orientation and human rights’ defense. This study shows that human right seems part of a political-polarized agenda in Brazil.
This work provides a conceptual introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis in psychological research. We discuss the concepts of direct effect, indirect effect, total effect, conditional effect, conditional direct effect, conditional indirect effect, and the index of moderated mediation index, while providing our perspective on certain analysis and interpretation confusions that sometimes arise in practice in this journal and elsewhere, such as reliance on the causal steps approach and the Sobel test in mediation analysis, misinterpreting the regression coefficients in a model that includes a product of variables, and subgroups mediation analysis rather than conditional process analysis when exploring whether an indirect effect depends on a moderator. We also illustrate how to conduct various analyses that are the focus of this paper with the freely-available PROCESS procedure available for SPSS, SAS, and R, using data from an experimental investigation on the effectiveness of personal or testimonial narrative messages in improving intergroup attitudes.
Given the high number of individuals with mental illness, and the prevalence of stigmatizing portrayals of mental illness in the media, it is important to investigate how media messages can – in contrast – be harnessed to reduce mental health stigma. Extending previous research on the destigmatizing effects of empathy, we investigated the effects of three content factors (mental illness portrayed: autism vs. schizophrenia; background music: emotional vs. neutral; veracity: actual vs. enacted portrayals) on empathy, reflective thoughts, and attitudes toward persons with mental illness. Structural equation modeling revealed effects of these content factors on empathy, reflective thoughts, and indirectly (via empathy and reflective thoughts) on mental health attitudes. These results draw attention to the role of reflectiveness in mediating empathy-attitude effects, but also shed light on the effect of authentic testimonials’ self-disclosure. Limitations regarding the specific message format and mental illness depicted are discussed.
This study is a meta-analysis of cultivation research from the 1970s to the present, based on three-level analyses of 3842 effect sizes from 406 independent samples. We found an overall effect size of .107 that varies only within a fairly narrow range across many potential moderators. Cultivation effects remain stable over the decades, implying an enduring relationship between television’s message system and viewers’ conceptions of social reality, despite immense changes in the institutional structure and technology of television. That bolsters a “traditional” perspective on cultivation, which is further corroborated by a stronger positive effect of overall viewing compared with genre viewing. However, this (stronger) effect weakens over time, which provides at least partial support for a “reformist” perspective on cultivation. Moreover, sample size and mode of data collection also moderate cultivation effects, with larger effects in smaller samples and in data collected via questionnaires compared with other methods.
The current article tests the metacognitive proposition that the relative ease or difficulty with which narrative messages are processed can affect subsequent judgment. Challenging the assertion that experienced disfluency is mostly negative and undesirable, it is argued that disfluent (difficult-to-process) narratives are well-positioned to facilitate narrative persuasion when people hold value-laden beliefs. Using the controversial context of physician-assisted suicide, two experiments (N1 = 204, N2 = 558) demonstrate that a metacognitive experience of difficulty is used to infer positions regarding the narrative message. The article then proceeds to test a theoretical model, showing that fluent narratives gain their strength by facilitating the experience of flow among ambivalent individuals, whereas disfluent narratives can challenge value-laden beliefs by attenuating attitude certainty. Implications are discussed and future directions for a metacognitive approach to narrative persuasion are offered.
Purpose
Citizen trust in police is important in terms of citizen consent to government policies and of police achieving their organizational goals. In the previous study, improvements in police policy, organizational operation and policing activities were developed to clarify which factors influence trust in police and how trust can be improved. This research raises the question, would changes in trust in police have an impact on trust in government? In this paper, this research question is discussed theoretically and the causal relationship analyzed empirically by applying OLS, ordered logistic, 2SLS and logistic regressions.
Design/methodology/approach
The basic analysis methods are to apply the OLS and the ordered logistic regression. OLS regression analysis is an analytical method that minimizes an error range of a regression line. The assumptions for OLS are: linearity, independence, equilibrium, extrapolation and multicollinearity issues. These problems were statistically verified and analyzed, in order to confirm the robustness of the analysis results by comparing the results of the ordered logistic regression because of the sequence characteristic of the dependent variable. The data to be used in this study is the Asia Barometer Survey in 2013.
Findings
Trust in police and citizen perception of safety are analyzed as important factors to increase trust in the government. The effects of trust in police are more significant than the effects of control variables, and the direction and strength of the results are stable. The effect of trust in police on trust in government is strengthened by the perception of safety (IV). In addition, OLS, ordered logistic regression analysis, which analyzed trust in central government and local government, and logistic regression analysis categorized by trust and distrust show the stability.
Research limitations/implications
This paper has implications in terms of theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship between trust in police and trust in government. In addition, the impact of perception of safety on trust in police can be provided to police officers, policymakers and governors who are seeking to increase trust in government. This paper is also meaningful in that it is the microscopic research based on the citizens' survey. One of the limitations of macroscopic research is that it does not consider the individual perceptions of citizens.
Practical implications
The results of this paper can confirm the relationship of the virtuous cycle, which is perception of safety – trust in police – trust in government. The police will need to provide security services to improve citizens' perception of safety and make great efforts to create safer communities and society. Trust in police formed through this process can be an important component of trust in government. By making citizens feel safer and achieving trust in police, ultimately, trust in government will be improved.
Originality/value
The police perform one of the essential roles of government and are one of the major components of trust in government, but the police sector has been neglected compared to the roles of the economic and political sectors. These influences of macro factors are too abstract to allow specific policy directions to be suggested. If we consider trust in police, and factors that can improve trust in government, we can suggest practical policy alternatives.
The purpose of this study is to test the effects of narratives in crisis communication. This research assesses how organizations benefit from using stories in their media responses, relative to sharing nonnarrative information. The theory of crisis response narratives (Heath, 2004) holds that ethical narratives are effective because they enhance trustworthiness, attitudes toward the spokesperson, and identification with the spokesperson. Normative crisis communication theory exhorts disclosing truthful information rather than spinning. In an online experiment, participants (N = 365) watched a news interview in which a scandalized company’s spokesperson responded to a journalist’s questions with (a) ethical narratives, (b) unethical (spin) narratives, or (c) nonnarrative information. Multiple mediator modeling assessed identification with the spokesperson, attitudes toward the spokesperson, and perceived trustworthiness of the spokesperson. Results indicate ethical narratives are more effective than unethical narratives. However, nonnarrative information most effectively enhances trustworthiness and bolsters identification.
This study examines the use of narrative persuasion in promoting human papillomavirus vaccination. Compared to non-narrative message, the narrative message increased perceived severity of human papillomavirus, which influenced vaccination intention through heightened fear. The narrative message also dampened hope and subsequently decreased vaccination intention. This research attests to the effectiveness of narrative persuasion in vaccination promotion, but also offers important caveat for message design—egocentric efficacy information is crucial in narrative persuasion designed to motivate preventive health behaviors.
This study explores the potential links between crime-related media consumption and confidence in the police based on instrumental and expressive models. Drawing on data from a large sample of South Koreans, direct and indirect effects of crime-related media consumption on perceptions of the police are examined using regression-based multiple mediation analysis. Results showed that although there is no direct effect of media consumption on confidence in the police, crime-related media consumption is significantly and negatively associated with public confidence in the police via perceived incivilities and fear of crime. This study suggests that the police should make a constant effort to develop strategies to enhance communication with the public.
Natural or man-made disasters generate fear among people who experience them directly or indirectly by exposing to disasters related news on media. Based on cultivation theory, our proposed model suggests that exposure to media and the perception of people about the media on which they exposed to disaster related information affect their fear of victimization and altruistic behaviors. To test the proposed model and hypothesis, data were collected through questionnaire from 210 newspaper readers in the rural areas of Pakistan. Findings show that high exposure to disaster related news and individuals' perception about the media contributed more fear of victimization. Moreover, fear of victimization from disaster significantly influences the altruistic behaviors of people. Our study suggests that newspapers still paly critical role in cultivating fear of victimization and motivating people towards altruism. Theoretical implications for future research are also discussed.
This research investigates stories about buyer-seller experiences in B2B advertising. In two studies, the authors explore the impact of stories and narrative transportation in advertising on decision makers’ attitudinal responses. In Study 1, findings from a Fortune 100 company's buyer panel indicate that stories told using narrative advertising were positively related to the decision maker's trust in the supplier, ability to form personal connections with the supplier and the tendency to advocate for the supplier. Moreover, the organizational status of the decision maker (C-suite versus non-C-suite executives) was examined. Results demonstrate that the effect of these relationships were stronger for C-level decision makers than non-C-level decision makers. In Study 2, depth interviews were conducted with C-level decision makers. Findings reinforce results from Study 1 and provide additional insight into C-level decision makers’ perspectives on stories and narrative transportation. Implications for how stories about buyer-seller relationships can benefit organizational decision making are discussed.
In the digital era, marketers increasingly use storytelling techniques to narratively transport and persuade their customers. This paper pursues three primary objectives: (1) to integrate three digitally relevant moderators of the narrative transportation effect into the marketing literature, (2) to empirically assess the integrated model with a quantitative meta-analysis of extant research, and (3) to provide directions for marketing managers to enhance the narrative transportation effect in an evolving technological environment. The paper contributes to the field by means of a meta-analysis of 64 articles featuring 138 narrative transportation effect sizes. The research shows that the narrative transportation effect is stronger when the story falls in a commercial (vs. non-commercial) domain, is user (vs. professional) generated, and is received by one story-receiver at a time. The study concludes with implications for research and practice and directions for future research.
Purpose:
Decades of research have examined the impact of exposure to nonexplicit portrayals of sexual content in media. There is only one meta-analysis on this topic, which suggests that exposure to "sexy media" has little to no effect on sexual behavior. There are a number of limitations to the existing meta-analysis, and the purpose of this updated meta-analysis was to examine associations between exposure to sexual media and users' attitudes and sexual behavior.
Methods:
A thorough literature search was conducted to find relevant articles. Each study was coded for associations between exposure to sexual media and one of six outcomes including sexual attitudes (permissive attitudes, peer norms, and rape myths) and sexual behaviors (general sexual behavior, age of sexual initiation, and risky sexual behavior).
Results:
Results from 59 studies, involving 394 effect sizes, revealed that exposure to sexual media had a small but significant effect on both sexual attitudes and behaviors; the effect size was comparable to other media effects meta-analyses. Effects were stronger for adolescents than emerging adults. In addition, effects were stronger for boys than girls and for white participants compared with black participants.
Conclusion:
This study suggests that exposure to nonexplicit sexual media is associated with both sexual attitudes and behavior, particularly during adolescence. Implications for parents, media producers, and researchers are discussed.
Examinations of the relationship between attitudes about police and news media have regularly been undertaken since the Rodney King incident in 1991. Although cultivation theory, which argues greater news consumption will result in adoption of views of policing provided in the news, offers an appropriate theoretical framework for media studies of this kind, this body of research has largely lacked theoretical grounding. This study tests underlying premises of cultivation regarding the roles of overall news consumption, consumption of different types of news mediums, and exposure to negative news coverage in determining public perceptions of common policing outcomes. It also tests the mostly neglected area of how audiences perceive news they are consuming by considering how fair they deem the news portrayal of police to be. Using a sample of residents from a mid-sized city in California, results indicate consumption of Internet news is related to negative attitudes about police and exposure to negative news about police impacts perceptions, but only if the coverage is seen as fair. Implications for future research and advancement of cultivation as a theoretical framework in this area are discussed.
This article explores the continued applicability of cultivation theory in a new media environment. Previous theoretical and empirical work on media that were “new” at the time (such as cable TV and VCRs) is reviewed as context. Changes in the social and media conditions on which cultivation were premised are also discussed. Some ideas for new methodological approaches to cultivation measurement and study design are offered. Gerbner's thoughts on television as a “new state religion” are used as a framework for our analysis of the current relevance of cultivation theory more than four decades after its introduction, in a vastly different media context. Copyright © 2015 Mass Communication & Society Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
This article addresses the conceptualization and definition of message variables in persuasion effects research. Two central claims are advanced. First, effect- based message variable definitions (in which a message variation is defined in terms of effects on psychological states, as when fear appeal variations are defined on the basis of differences in aroused fear) impede progress in understanding persuasion processes and effects and hence should be avoided in favor of defini- tions expressed in terms of intrinsic message features. Second, when message variations are defined in terms of intrinsic features, message manipulation checks, under that description, are unnecessary but similar measures may usefully be understood and analyzed as assessments of potential mediating states. One enduring question in communication research is how and why persuasive messages have the effects they do. But some important con- ceptual aspects of this subject seem to have suffered from inattention, with resulting needless confusion and impaired research progress. The particular focus of concern in this paper is the set of complex relation- ships among experimental message variations, message manipulation checks, persuasive outcomes, and mediating states. The purpose is to point to some systematically different sorts of research claims that arise in the context of studying persuasion effects, with an eye to clarifying the different burdens of proof—and corresponding data-analytic treat- ments—appropriate for each and thereby to untangling some of the complexities and confusions that have arisen in this research domain. Two central claims will emerge from this analysis: First, effect-based message variable definitions impede progress in understanding persua- sion processes and effects and hence should be avoided in favor of defi- nitions expressed in terms of intrinsic message features. Second, when message variations are defined in terms of intrinsic features, message
Cultivation theory research exploring the links between television viewing and attitudes about the natural environment has found evidence that heavier viewers of television are more apathetic about environmental issues than their lighter viewing counterparts. Why this relationship occurs has not, however, been explored. The current research, based on a mail survey sent to a 1,000-person national random sample and a 1,000-person random sample of a national environmental organization, finds that the explanation for the relationship between television and a lack of concern for the natural environmental may be explained by materialism. Materialism is found to mediate the relationship between television viewing and attitudes about the natural environment. This finding offers important insights not only into our understanding of cultivation theory but also into our understanding of our relationship with the natural environment at a time when such information has perhaps never been more essential.
If future historians wanted to know about the common cultural environment of stories and images into which a child was born in the second half of the 20th century, where would they turn? How would they describe its action structure, thematic content, and representation of people? How would they trace the ebb and flow of its currents? Pathetic to say, they would find no other source than our own Cultural Indicators database and reports.