Are Narratives Persuasive Because of Transportation?

Narrative transportation theory posits that narratives are experienced in a fundamentally different way that non-narratives. Narratives “transport” their audiences into the narrative world, and that transportation causes them to be susceptible to accepting the beliefs and values narratives present. As such, narrative messages change attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour in narratively consistent ways. Prior research has found that narratives do cause such changes and that such changes are associated with transportation into a narrative; however, there is limited evidence that these changes are because of narrative transportation. The proposed research aims to test whether there is a causal effect of narrative messages that is mediated by transportation. Testing causal mediation requires manipulating both message type (narrative vs. non-narrative) and transportation. This proposed study aims to test whether transportation can be independently manipulated using perspective instructions and to test whether the persuasive effects of narratives are causally-mediated by narrative transportation. Participants will be assigned to one of four experimental conditions in a 2 (message type: non-narrative or narrative) by 2 (instructions: none, objective perspective) design. After reading a message, they will respond to measures of transportation, message-consistent beliefs, and intentions. In a two-week follow-up survey, participants will identify actions they took that were motivated by the text they read. It is anticipated that narrative transportation will mediate the persuasive effects narrativity.