Why do people share fantasies? An empirical investigation of a basic tenet of the symbolic convergence communication theory

Abstract

This study investigates the features of an individual's preference for certain kinds of narratives and the resulting shared fantasies. We studied the following features of narratives, whether the stories were happy or sad, set in the past or the present, implied moral or immoral values, and were bizarre or realistic. Fifty‐four original dramas were created using different combinations of the four characteristics and were presented to American subjects in an interview situation with a Q‐sort methodology. The Quanal factor analysis found five different subject types. Members within each subject type exhibited similar fantasy sharing and rejecting patterns. These findings help fill in an important gap in the symbolic convergence theory by addressing the question of why people share fantasies.