The Study of the Effect of Transportation on Issuerelevant Thoughts in Narrative Persuasion

Abstract

The previous research of persuasive narrative messages has suggested that transportation into narratives prohibits issue-relevant thinking and critical thoughts on the issue, which is known as “the principle of incompatible of transportation and issue-relevant thought”. However, the previous research did not use narrative appeals with explicit persuasive intent and strong argument. Furthermore, the issues in the narratives were often not personally relevant. Hence, employing thought-listing techniques, this study tested the principle with persuasive narrative messages that had more explicit persuasive intention and more relevant issue to the participants. The findings of this study contradicts the principle: the extent to which the participants were transported into the story was not negatively associated with the number of issue-relevant thoughts, regardless of the valence of the thoughts. Consequently, this study suggests whether people are willing to think about the issue of persuasive narrative messages may be more related to the how explicitly the persuasive intent in narratives is presented in the narratives rather than transportation into the narratives.