The effect of a protagonist’s emotional shift on situation model construction

Abstract

We examined whether readers monitored protagonists' emotional shifts and whether reader engagement influenced situation model construction. Participants read narratives that included an emotional shift in the middle of the story. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to read stories appreciatively and to empathize with the protagonists. In Experiment 2, readers were instructed to read the stories normally, as if they were reading novels. The results from the two experiments suggest that readers monitor temporal and causal shifts as well as protagonists' emotional shifts in stories. Moreover, in Experiment 1 readers detected temporal and causal shifts regardless of th e degree oftheir engagement during the empathetic reading, while in Experiment 2 the high ego involvement group detected causal shifts during the normal reading. Thus, these results show both that readers monitor protagonists' emotional states and that reader emotional engagement c an influence situationmodel construction with normal reading.