Differential effects of reader preferences on comprehension of and memory for text

People’s investments in stories and preferences for how narratives should unfold are important aspects of their comprehension activities. Previous work has indeed indicated that reader preferences influence narrative experiences. The current project interrogated this influence, with attention to whether positive and negative preferential investments exert differential effects on comprehension and memory. In two experiments, participants read stories that encouraged preferences for event successes or failures, ending with outcomes consistent, inconsistent, or neutral with respect to those preferences. Participants exhibited difficulty reading stories that encouraged failure as compared to success preferences, but once failure preferences were encoded, they showed difficulty assimilating outcomes inconsistent with them. Participants also had difficulty recognizing outcomes from these stories 2 days later. The results support accounts that foreground negative preferences as non-normative and help to identify when and why differential effects of success and failure preferences might be obtained. They also highlight the need to integrate participatory responses like preferences into contemporary models and accounts of text processing.