The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives.

TLDR

Transportation, defined as absorption into a story involving imagery, affect, and attentional focus, was proposed as a mechanism by which narratives can influence beliefs. The authors developed and validated a transportation scale and manipulated transportation levels via processing instructions in Experiments 3 and 4. Across four experiments, higher transportation increased story‑consistent beliefs, favorable evaluations, and reduced false note detection, while reduced transportation decreased beliefs and evaluations, and labeling stories as fact or fiction had little effect.

Abstract

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.