The Effects of Fictional Narrative Type and Mental Imagery Ability on Empathy and Transportatio

The present study explored the effects of narrative media types (literature versus film) and mental imagery processing on transportation into a narrative and generalized empathy. A total of 60 college students were randomly assigned to either a literature or film condition, completed the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (Marks, 1999), the Transportation Scale (Green & Brock, 2000), and the Fantasy Empathy Scale (Davis, 1980; Davis, 1983). Two 2x2 Multiple Regression ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The results revealed a significant interaction between narrative type and mental imagery ability for transportation, but not for empathy. In the film condition, participants with higher mental imagery ability were more transported into the narrative than those with lower mental imagery ability. Mental imagery ability was also found to significantly affect transportation and empathy. Participants with higher mental imagery ability were more transported and empathic in the narrative than those with lower mental imagery ability.