The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives

Transportation was proposed as a mechanism whereby narratives can affect beliefs. Defined as absorption into a story, transportation entails imagery, affect, and attentional focus. A transportation scale was developed and validated. Experiment 1 ( N = 97) demonstrated that extent of transportation a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of personality and social psychology 2000-11, Vol.79 (5), p.701-721
Main Authors: Green, Melanie C, Brock, Timothy C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Affect
Anecdotes as Topic
Attention
Attitude
Attitudes
Beliefs
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Cognition. Intelligence
Evaluation
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Imagery
Imagination
Male
Mental imagery. Mental representation
Morals
Narratives
Personality Traits
Persuasion
Persuasive Communication
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Sex Factors
Social psychology
Social Values
Stories
Thinking
Transportation
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0022-3514
1939-1315
DOI:10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701