The mediating role of event-congruent emotions in narrative persuasion

Abstract

Listening to, reading, or watching a story is often a highly emotional experience. The current experiment was designed to gain insight into the role of emotions as part of the persuasive influence of stories. Our focus was on emotions that correspond to a storyline (event-congruent emotions). A short movie was presented that depicts the struggles of a limbless man, who ultimately performs a successful circus act. Recipients’ mindsets regarding human potential to improve (growth mindset and fixed mindset) served as the dependent variables. Six emotional scenes over the course of the movie were pre-selected to examine the occurrence and effect of event-congruent emotions. Transportation into the story-world was manipulated via reviews of the movie. Participants’ emotional experience was assessed with a software that measures and classifies emotional facial expressions in the moment they occur. After reading a positive review, participants reported to be more transported into the short film. This was related to more intense event-congruent emotions during the key-scene of the film, which, in turn, was positively related to recipients’ growth mindset. Implications regarding the importance of event-congruent-emotions for narrative persuasion are discussed.