Lost In Stories:What Makes Narrative Transportation Effective

There exists much information in the form of stories around us. From the entertainment, like addictive novels, various biographies, TV drama programs, movies, to the teaching cases, which are full of wisdom, and even to those commercial visual advertisements which are extremely influential, are all trying to tell us what they want to tell. In fact, stories have demonstrated significant effects on attitudes. The rapid development of placement marketing, the rapid rise of micro-movies and emerging homemade drama of the advertisers, all imply there is a huge profits behind the advertisements presented in the form of stories. According to the narrative transportation theory, transportation is the mechanism through which the story changes individual attitudes. Narrative transportation is a unique psychological process, which is a convergent of cognition, imagery and emotions. All mental systems and capacities of the transported individuals are focused on events occurring in the stories. Narrative transportation changes individual attitudes by reducing the negative cognitive responses, building strong emotional contacts between individuals and characters, and providing nearly real experiences. The present results about the effects of the stories on attitudes are consistent. Transported individuals tend to retain attitude consistent with the story, evaluate the product more positively and are more willing to buy the product.However, not all the stories can lead to high degree of transportation for-anyone in any sitiuation. The obvious way to reduce transportation is adopting the stories with poor structure. The stories with weak arguments can easily transfer individuals’ attention to the defect and result in criticism from the individuals and low degree of transportation. Ego depletion reduces the individuals’willingness and abilities to process information further, leading them to process information with little effort, and ignore the weak arguments. The individual characteristic, need for closure, can also affect the motivation to process information. People with high need for closure tend to process information with little effort, while people with low need for closure tend to process information in depth. So we argue that depleted individuals tend to adopt narrative processing which costs little effort and demonstrate high transportation. In addition, we support that individuals with high need for closure cannot identify the weak argument easily and become more transported to the weak stories.Either for the storyteller, or the recipient, it is influential to explore the factors affecting narrative transportation. However, most of the past studies are always discussing the factors theoretically, without test through empirical research. This paper focuses on the factors, discusses the effects of arguments strength, ego depletion and need for closure on narrative transportation, and test them with three laboratory studies.Study1:Argument strength, ego depletion and narrative transportationThis study adapts laboratory methods, using2(Argument strength) X2(Ego depletion) between-subjects design. Recruited subjects need to complete Stroop task manipulating ego depletion, reading the narrative providing motivation for the individual to be transported, and the tables measuring relevant variables. We have tested the validation of the argument strength manipulation in advance. Finally, the study collects61valid questionnaires. We analyze the data with ANOVA and independent T test. The result demonstrates that individuals are more transported under strong argument; only under the situation of weak argument, does the effect of ego depletion on narrative transportation become significant. And depleted individuals show higher transportation.Study2:Ego depletion and narrative transportation in imagery materialsBased on study1, study2only adopts narrative with weak argument. It is noted that the motivation material used in this study is the AD stimulating imagery, which is different from the story used in study1. This study aims to testify how ego depletion influences narrative transportation under mental simulation. Similarly, we complete the study in laboratory with between-subject design. First, the subjects should complete the Stroop task, read the narrative material and then complete the relevant forms. We use the method of regression analysis to analyze the data including45samples. The results show that depleted individuals are much more transported than non-depleted individuals under the weak ad simulating imagery.Study3:Need for closure and narrative transportationAlso, in this study, we only choose the weak stories used in study I. This study focuses on testing the effects of need for closure on narrative transportation from the personal difference view. This study not only retests how narrative transportation influence attitudes, but also testifies that narrative transportation plays a partial mediation role in the effect of need for closure on attitude. We adopt experimental study method with all data collected through questionnaires. Subjects need to fill the scale of need for closure, read the stories, fill narrative transportation scale, and the relevant scales about attitudes and background information in order. The regression analysis result of138data shows that individuals with high need for closure are more transported and more willing to buy the product presented in the stories; narrative transportation plays partial mediation role.This study has important theoretical and practical significance. Theoretically, this study has demonstrated the influence of argument strength, ego depletion and need for closure on narrative transportation through systematic review of the past researches and a series of experiments, which makes up for the insufficient research. What’s more, we set up a bridge between ego depletion theory and narrative transportation theory, which broadens their fields. Practically, discussing the factors influencing the narrative transportation not only can help story-tellers organize stories more effectively, select appropriate targets and appropriate situation to represent their stories to increase effectiveness of persuasion.