9803_Don ‘t judge a book by its author – Central and peripheral processing in narrative persuasion

Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and
Dissertations
2017
Don’t judge a book by its author: Central and
peripheral processing in narrative persuasion
Kelly Ann Kane
Iowa State University
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Recommended Citation
Kane, Kelly Ann, “Don’t judge a book by its author: Central and peripheral processing in narrative persuasion” (2017). Graduate Theses
and Dissertations. 15335.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/15335

Don’t judge a book by its author:
Central and peripheral processing in narrative persuasion
by
Kelly Kane
A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE
Major: Psychology
Program of Study Committee:
Kevin Blankenship, Major Professor
Kristi Costabile
Craig Anderson

The student author and the program of study committee are solely responsible for the
content of this thesis. The Graduate College will ensure this thesis is globally accessible and will
not permit alterations after a degree is conferred.

Iowa State University

Ames, Iowa

2017

Copyright © Kelly Kane, 2017. All rights reserved.

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DEDICATION

The author would like to dedicate this thesis to all the people who have worked hard to
see it completed, most especially Jason Geller. He has provided tireless work in reviewing
several drafts, infinite support in matters both statistical and emotional, and willingness to
provide endless encouragement.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………v
LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………….vi
NOMENCLATURE………………………………………………………………………..vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………..viii
ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………..ix
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………1

Narrative Persuasion…………………………………………………………………3

Narrative and Overcoming Resistance………………………………………………5

Narrative as Argument: Plot and Setting……………………………………………7
Character Identification and Character Exemplars…………………………………11

The Elaboration Likelihood Model…………………………………………………15

The Central Route…………………………………………………………..16

The Peripheral Route……………………………………………………….16

Determinants of Elaboration………………………………………………………..17

Distraction…………………………………………………………………..18

Ego Involvement……………………………………………………………19

Narrative and the Elaboration Likelihood Model……………………………………20

Pilot Study…………………………………………………………………………..24

Method………………………………………………………………………24

Results……………………………………………………………………….25

Pilot Testing of Materials……………………………………………………………26
CHAPTER 2: PRESENT RESEARCH……………………………………………………..28
CHAPTER 3: METHOD……………………………………………………………………33

Participants…………………………………………………………………………..33

Design………………………………………………………………………………..33

Procedure…………………………………………………………………………….34

Materials……………………………………………………………………………..35

Independent Variables……………………………………………………….35

Predictor Variables…………………………………………………………..36

Manipulation Checks…………………………………………………………37

Dependent Variables…………………………………………………………38
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS…………………………………………………………………….41
Manipulation Checks and Data Cleaning…………………………………………….41
Attitudes as a Function of Narrative Manipulation…………………………………..43
Pre-Reading Attitude Measures………………………………………………………46
Post-Reading Attitude Measures……………………………………………………..48

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Argument Perceptions……………………………………………………..48
Behavioral Intentions………………………………………………………50
Open-Minded Thinking……………………………………………………50
Perceived Elaboration ……………………………………………………..50
Cognitive and Affective Bases…………………………………………….52
Perceived Resistance………………………………………………………53
Correlations Between Outcomes…………………………………………..53

Demographic Characteristics………………………………………………………54

Exploratory Analysis: Thought-Listing Data………………………………………54

Exploratory Analysis: Narrative-Specific Measures………………………………58

Exploratory Analysis: Dispositional Measures……………………………………59

Need for Affect and Need for Cognition…………………………………..59

Positive and Negative Affect………………………………………………60
CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION………………………………………………………………61

Attitude Properties………………………………………………………………….65

Limitations in Study Design………………………………………………………..67

Pre-Reading Attitudes………………………………………………………67

Independent Variable Manipulations……………………………………….68

Perceived Resistance………………………………………………………..70

Future Directions……………………………………………………………………70

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..73
REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………75
APPENDIX A: STUDY MATERIALS…………………………………………………….86
APPENDIX B: IRB APPROVAL………………………………………………………….114

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Mean Persuasion as a Function of Study Condition………………………………45
Figure 2: Persuasion as a Function of Source by Distraction.……………………………….46
Figure 3: Argument Perceptions as a Function of Study Condition…………………………49
Figure 4: Unstandardized Regression Coefficients for the Relationship Between
Distraction and Post-Reading Opinions as Mediated by Perceived Elaboration..……………52
Figure 5: Unstandardized Regression Coefficients for the Relationship Between Narrative
Transportation and Post-Reading Opinions as Mediated by Character Perceptions.…………58

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Between Dependent Measures.………….48
Table 2: Correlations Between Dispositional Measures.……………………………………59

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NOMENCLATURE
ELM

Elaboration Likelihood Model
PANAS

Positive and Negative Affect
OMT

Open-Minded Thinking
ANOVA

Analysis of Variance

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ACKNOWLEGEMENTS
I would like to thank my committee chair, Kevin Blankenship (who read and returned
dozens of drafts within hours of receiving them), and my committee members, Kristi Costabile
and Craig Anderson, for their hard work in making this thesis what it is today.
In addition, I would also like to thank Jason Geller, Catharine Kane, Annie Kane,
Shuhebur Rahman, Rachel Dianiska, Johnie Allen, and Garrett Hisler, all of whom took the time
to read this thesis as it was in preparation in order to provide feedback. All my gratitude also
goes to my friends, colleagues, the department faculty and staff for making my time at Iowa
State University a wonderful experience. I want to also offer my appreciation to those who were
willing to participate in my surveys and observations, without whom this thesis would not have
been possible.

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ABSTRACT
According to the Narrative Transportation model of persuasion, narrative persuasion is
structurally different from non-narrative persuasion, and therefore not moderated by differences
in cognitive elaboration (Green & Brock, 2000). However, narratives also contain aspects of
arguments that can be influenced by elaboration—vividness, empathy, and causal structure. This
study tested the hypothesis that an Elaboration Likelihood Model paradigm using a narrative
message would produce similar results to those observed in rhetorical persuasion. Participants
(N = 478) read a narrative arguing against illegal media use which contained manipulations of
both peripheral and message-relevant aspects while completing distraction tasks. While highly
distracted participants were more persuaded by the peripheral cue, minimally distracted
participants were not. Unexpectedly, the central merit of protagonist representativeness had a
main effect on persuasion across distraction conditions. These findings suggest that narrative
persuasion arises partially from the inherent argument strength of narratives, but that narratives
may have different patterns of elaborative outcomes than rhetorical messages.

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

In 1997, bestselling author Stephen King chose to remove one of his early stories, Rage,
from print despite the novella’s financial success. The anthology where Rage previously
appeared (The Bachman Books) began to be printed without the short novel, and no new copies
of the book have been printed since that date. Why did King make this decision? Since its
release, the novel had been linked to no less than four separate incidents in which four different
individuals engaged in school shootings, resulting in nine murders. Rage tells the story of high
school student Charlie Decker, who takes his classroom hostage with an assault rifle and murders
three teachers. Charlie, the novel’s narrator, is portrayed as an intelligent and sensitive young
man who can find no other outlet for his feelings than committing murder. In the subsequent
shootings, of the murderers inspired by Rage directly related himself to Charlie Decker: he
paraphrased a line from the novel as he pointed a gun at his classmates and later cited Rage as
the inspiration for his decision to bring a gun to school (Associated Press, 1988). If this novel
could cause murders, King decided, then he should remove all copies from the world.

What exactly gave Rage so much power to inspire extreme actions? The shooters (none
of whom had a history of psychosis) presumably knew that the story contained within was a
purely imaginative exercise created by an author who only wanted to entertain readers; all copies
of the book were sold in the fiction section of bookstores (Associated Press, 1988). The author
himself did not set out to argue that killing one’s teachers is a justifiable course of action; King
expressed regret and horror that his work of fiction could inspire such atrocities (1997). The
novel does not explicitly provide reasons that taking one’s classroom hostage is a moral or
fulfilling course of action, and does not suggest that Charlie Decker is a good person for having
done so. However, individuals who read Rage nonetheless consciously attempted to emulate its
protagonist’s actions.

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Although most works of fiction do not directly inspire acts of mass murder, they still
have the power to change individuals’ attitudes and behaviors, regardless of the author’s
intentions. Children who read the Harry Potter novels express greater tolerance of derogated
outgroups than children who read a less engaging narrative (Vezzali, Stathi, Giovannini,
Capozza, & Trifiletti, 2014). College students who play a version of Call of Duty that portrays
Arabic characters as terrorists demonstrate more negative stereotypes in their thoughts about
Muslim individuals than students who play a version that features neutral portrayals of Arabic
characters (Saleem & Anderson, 2013). There are dozens of other studies which find that
narratives in the form of feature-length movies (Iguarta, 2010), short stories (Green, 2004),
personal anecdotes (McQueen, Kreuter, Kalesan, & Alcaraz, 2012), short films (Costabile &
Terman, 2013), consumer reviews (Hamby, Daniloski, & Brinberg, 2015), video games (Gentile
& Gentile, 2007) and radio shows (Zheng, 2014) have the power to induce changes in
consumers’ beliefs and behaviors. The outcomes of narrative persuasion are well-understood;
the mechanisms whereby narrative persuasion occurs are not.
This research will extend knowledge on the processes whereby narratives influence
individuals’ attitudes and behaviors. It will examine whether relatively peripheral cues toward
the persuasive power of the narrative (such as anticipated expertise of the author in creating an
effective narrative) and central aspects of the same narrative (such as representativeness of the
main character for a broader social category) differ in how they influence reader persuasion. In
the process, it will examine whether or not it is meaningful to apply the Elaboration Likelihood
Model (ELM) of non-narrative (rhetorical) persuasion to an examination of the persuasive
outcomes that result from reading narratives. Furthermore, it will provide insight into whether
narrative persuades because it is a form of strong argument in and of itself, because narratives
contain concrete information, causal explanatory processing, and character exemplar paradigms.

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Narrative Persuasion

Narrative persuasion is any form of attitude change that occurs through the consumption
of fictional narratives. Narrative persuasion elicits its effect via a process known as narrative
transportation (Green & Brock, 2000). Narrative transportation is a specific mindset that occurs
when a reader becomes so involved in a story that he or she loses track of time, becomes
emotionally invested in the plot, and spontaneously generates strong mental images that have to
do with the events or objects described in the story (Green & Brock, 2000). Fictional stories do
not typically present explicit arguments in favor of a particular position, and yet they have the
power to change readers’ attitudes toward real political issues, individual conflicts, and public
policies (van Laer, De Ruyter, Visconti, & Wetzels, 2013). In fact, persuasive communications
that use a narrative have greater power to change participants’ attitudes and intentions toward
consumer products than equivalent messages that use a rhetorical structure, through reducing
individuals’ resistance to arguments they would otherwise find counterattitudinal (Escalas,
2007). Anecdotally, almost all individuals can report having their lives changed by reading at
least one fictional story.

The study of narrative persuasion is still relatively new. Green and Brock (2000)
conducted the first study that deliberately sought to change attitudes through fiction just over 15
years ago, and although researchers in areas as diverse as health psychology (Banerjee & Greene,
2012), neurology (Zak, 2015), social psychology (Thompson & Haddock, 2011), and marketing
(Escalas, 2007) have since continued the investigation into the predictors and consequences of
narrative persuasion, the field is still young. Despite the relative newness of the field, narratives
are a fundamental aspect of human communication. The annual Nielsen survey of millions of
Americans estimates that American adults averaged more than 11 hours of media use per day in
2014, and that more than half of that media use came in the form of radio or television

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consumption (Richter, 2015). According to this report, more than 50% of content on television
is narratively structured, and although most radio content comes in the form of non-narrative
news or music, radio advertisements overwhelmingly use narrative formats to sell products
(Zheng, 2014).

Furthermore, humans naturally communicate with one another using narratives beyond
the structured narratives found in media. Consumers writing product reviews often
spontaneously use a narrative format when attempting to persuade fellow shoppers either to use
or avoid a particular product (Hamby, Daniloski, & Brinberg, 2015). Lawyers deliberately
evoke cultural narratives in the courtroom when trying to persuade jurors to have empathy for
defendants; logically sound narratives are far more likely to induce jurors to agree with the
lawyer’s side on a particular issue (Sheppard, 2011). Advertisements also use individual
customers’ anecdotes about experiences with a product as persuasive communication in order to
influence readers’ opinions through use of typical cases to generate empathy for a cause
(Escalas, 2007).
Simply instructing individuals to organize a set of information into a narrative will
change the way that they conceptualize that information, and will influence the inferences they
draw from it. Individuals who read a list of statements about an unknown other person will form
different attributional inferences when instructed to read with a narrative mindset as opposed to
reading with an impression-formation mindset (Costabile, 2011). In mock-jury tasks, individuals
generate narratives to fit the information presented by lawyers; the relative empathy for the
defense and prosecution contained in the narrative drives the subsequent decision to acquit or
convict (Huntley & Costanzo, 2003).
Despite the ubiquity of narratives in human communication, most readers do not expect
that they will be persuaded by fictional stories (Iguarta, 2010) and most authors of fictional

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works seek to entertain their audiences rather than change their opinions. The mechanisms and
boundary conditions of the powerful process of narrative persuasion are not yet fully
understood. The ubiquity of narratives in human communication, and the persuasive power of
these narratives, means that the process of narrative persuasion is not only intrinsic but also
fundamentally important to study if we are to understand how humans influence one another.
Narratives and Overcoming Resistance
The structure of a narrative argument itself is often highly appealing. Arguments
presented in the form of anecdotes with an emphasis on causal factors are more persuasive and
produce stronger attitudes than arguments based on statistical information alone (Slusher &
Anderson, 1996). Narrative messages can overcome the personal threat presented to readers by
an identity-attacking argument through avoiding direct statements of counterattitudinal positions
(van Laer, de Ruyter, & Wetzels, 2014). When readers encounter a potentially counterattitudinal
argument in the form of a narrative, they are more likely to experience less resistance and to
endorse the message than when encountering the same message in a rhetorical format. However,
when readers are specifically instructed to form a logical evaluation of a narrative argument, they
find the narrative less persuasive than when they are simply told to form an impression of the
narrative (Dillard & Hisler, 2015). This effect occurs because the process of using logical
evaluations interrupts narrative transportation, which then prevents narrative persuasion.
Readers also expect to enjoy narratives more than rhetorical arguments, and expectations
of enjoyment drive actual enjoyment, which itself influences the opinion that readers form
toward an attitude object, or the subject of the persuasive communication (Appel & Malečkar,
2012). Although greater expectations of enjoying an argument may cause participants to engage
with narrative appeals more so than rhetorical ones, mere positive affect does not account for all
attitude change from narrative persuasion. In addition, readers often find fictional narratives

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more persuasive than non-fictional ones, even when aware that the events described within did
not really occur, because they expect to enjoy a fictional narrative more than a non-fictional one
(Appel & Malečkar, 2012). Readers who expect to enjoy a narrative experience greater narrative
transportation and subsequent persuasion than readers who do not expect to enjoy the narrative.
Although affect is an important component of narrative transportation, the affective
experience does not need to be a positive one for transportation and subsequent persuasion to
occur. Readers experience transportation and persuasion even when the content of the narrative
itself is distressing to read. Green and Brock (2000) used negatively valenced stories in their
manipulation such as a narrative about a small child being murdered and a narrative about a
young boy contemplating survival cannibalism, but the participants still reported post-narrative
agreement with the stories’ themes. A lack of negative affect can even attenuate the effect of
narrative transportation: when individuals view emotionally negative films in silence or with
cheerful music, they experience less narrative transportation than when they view those films
with sad music (Costabile & Terman, 2013). Perhaps because of the primarily affective nature
of narrative persuasion, narratives also inspire less psychological reactance than rhetorical
messages.
Narratives overcome participants’ natural tendencies toward counterarguing. Concerns
which would normally drive participants’ degree of engagement in a text, such as the personal
importance of a persuasive subject to the reader or the reader’s dispositional preference for
counterarguing, fade to the background when an individual consumes a narrative (Slater &
Rouner, 2002). Indeed, participants who agree more strongly with a narrative appeal find few or
no flaws in the arguments presented in the narrative, have difficulty spontaneously generating
counterarguments, and do not list thoughts that reflect effortful consideration after reading a
narrative (Green & Brock, 2000). Readers also report less consideration of the merits of the

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information presented in narratives as they report greater enjoyment of the narratives, such that
they do not effortfully consider whether a narrative presents a powerful argument because their
cognitive resources are consumed by the process of narrative transportation, which acts as a
strong distractor preventing central-route processing (Appel & Richter, 2010). The process of
narrative transportation overcomes much of readers’ ability to resist persuasive appeals through
counterarguing. However, narratives themselves also use a structure that offers powerful support
for a particular position.
Narrative as Argument: Plot and Setting
Although the experience of narrative transportation overcomes resistance, the structure of
narrative is also uniquely appealing for several reasons. van Laer et al.’s (2013) meta-analysis of
the variables that predict narrative transportation outlined several boundary conditions for what
does and does not constitute a narrative. A story is a series of events connected by time that
involves a significant change in dramatic intensity (a plot with a climax) that involves at least
one agentic actor (one or more characters) who experiences these events and takes place during
an attempt to resolve some sort of problem or to enact a change in one’s environment (a setting;
van Laer et al., 2013). A narrative is a reader’s interpretation of a story, through the lens of his
or her own experiences and transportability. Gerrig (1993) first used the metaphor of the
narrative as “transporting” the reader, and defined a narrative as any discursive work that causes
the reader to experience unreal events vicariously through reading. Narratives then have
inherently persuasive appeal through their use of empathy-inspiring characters, causally
organized plots, and vivid imagery around setting.
Narratives are also persuasive because they make use of plotting, which involves causal
connections between events of a story. In order for a literary passage to be a narrative, it must
involve at least two events connected to one another in time or through character actions (van

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Laer et al., 2013). Plots are therefore causal explanations of a particular set of events. Messages
that argue a position through explaining the causal connections between elements of a process
are more persuasive than messages that present statistical arguments (Slusher & Anderson,
1996). Dahlstrom (2010) specifically applied this effect to narratives through varying where in a
narrative factual arguments appeared, and found that factual information that affected subsequent
elements of the plot of a narrative was more persuasive than factual information that did not
directly affect the plot of the narrative. Participants who read a story about an aquarium with
incidental information about climate change did not endorse story-relevant attitudes as much and
did not remember the information as well as participants who read a story about an aquarium in
which the information about climate change directly influenced characters’ actions and moved
the plot of the narrative forward (Dahlstrom, 2010). The perceived strength of an argument
within a narrative increases if it fits more coherently into the causal chain of the narrative plot.
A narrative is also grounded in a particular image or set of images. These images create a
vivid and therefore strong persuasive message if the vivid elements are central to the arguments
presented in the narrative (Guadagno, Rhoads, & Sagarin, 2011). As individuals read a
narrative, they spontaneously generate images of the places and objects described in the
narrative. These images are not only enjoyable exercises in fantasy; they are also emotionally
evocative (Chen, 2015). The vividness of readers’ self-reported mental imagery while reading a
narrative predicted their enjoyment of the narrative and their memory for details of the narrative
(Long, Winograd, & Bridge, 1989). When consumers listen to a narrative radio advertisement,
those individuals that generate more vivid mental imagery experience greater transportation into
the narrative in the advertisement and endorse more positive attitudes toward the product (Zheng,
2014). Vividness drives argument strength, such that vivid images closely tied to central
arguments in a message increase the persuasive power of the message (Guadagno et al.,

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2011). Not only do readers as young as seven form mental images of places described in
narratives, but these images drive subjective enjoyment of the narrative and degree of
comprehension of the narrative (van Laer et al., 2013).
The fact that the events of a narrative are typically fictional, and therefore imagined both
by the original author and the reader, does not prevent those events from having a powerful
impact on individuals’ assessments of the relationship between categories. Individuals who
imagine an event that exemplifies a stereotype (e.g. the belief that all lawyers are aggressive)
will subsequently report descriptions of the target group that make use of the stereotype to
describe the group as a whole, despite being aware that they have only imagined one way that the
link between a trait and a group occurs (Slusher & Anderson, 1987). Furthermore, imagined
events have the power to influence individuals’ behavioral intentions toward future events:
students who imagine themselves donating blood in the future report greater intentions to donate
blood several days later, whereas students who imagine a peer donating blood (or themselves
engaging in a different activity) show no change in their attitudes or behavioral intentions toward
blood donations (Anderson, 1983b). The influence of imagined events derives partially from
humans’ failure to engage in source monitoring, because individuals who have a memory of an
event—or even just a memory of having imagined an event—are likely to treat that memory as a
valid source of information about correlations between present events and also the likelihood of
future outcomes. Readers who consciously report knowing that a narrative is fictional
nevertheless endorse beliefs in line with that narrative as if it depicted factual events (Appel &
Malečkar, 2012).
Anderson (1983a) found that one reason for the strong influence of imagination, fiction,
and other non-real events derives from the concrete nature of these events. Individuals who read
an article suggesting a link between occupation and disposition will endorse the effect described

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by that article even after being explicitly informed that the article was artificially generated for
the purpose of the study—but the belief perseverance effect is far stronger if the information
contained within is anecdotal rather than statistical. This finding appears counterintuitive,
because in theory data from only two individuals who demonstrate a link between a trait and
their occupational success should be less persuasive than data from several dozen individuals
who all demonstrate approximately the same link (Anderson, 1983a). However, the participants
who read the anecdotal evidence in favor of the illusory correlation spontaneously generated far
more causal explanations for the correlation than the participants who read the statistical
evidence, and this difference mediated the effect of the concrete information on subsequent
persuasion. Not only do concrete, anecdotal arguments inspire greater causal processing, they
also increase argument availability. When individuals are asked to remember reasons for or
against a particular attitude position, concrete arguments are simply easier to call to mind than
abstract ones (Anderson, New, & Speer, 1985). The availability of those arguments then leads to
greater use in determining one’s own attitude: arguments which come to mind more easily are
more self-persuasive than arguments which are difficult to recall.
Narratives specifically describe concrete, vivid sequences of events, which then inspire
reader explanations which make the connections between previously-unconnected attitudes and
attitude objects explicit and likely-seeming in the minds of readers (Dahlstrom, 2010). Although
narrative transportation is an important component of the process of narrative persuasion, it is
clearly not the only means through which narratives persuade readers to change opinions.
Another important component of persuasion built into the very structure of a narrative is the use
of fictional characters as empathy targets and category exemplars.

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Character Identification and Character Exemplars
All narratives, in order to be narratives, must focus on at least one character; even if the
presence of a character is implied rather than stated, narratives always contain at least one
agentic actor of some kind. Even minimal manipulations such as having participants focus on
building a narrative structure out of several statements or telling participants to consider a
message in light of their own life narratives will still involve at least one implied character in the
narrative (Costabile, 2011; Escalas, 2007). Fictional characters often act as exemplars, or
individuals who exhibit a particular behavior portrayed as desirable, when making an
argument. Anti-smoking arguments that use individuals’ stories to illustrate a particular point
about the benefits of quitting smoking are more persuasive and more likely to increase readers’
self-efficacy toward their own ability to quit smoking (Kim et al., 2012). The researchers found
that individuals who read about an exemplar character giving up cigarettes perceive themselves
as better able to quit smoking in the future and endorse more of the arguments in the anti-
smoking message than individuals who read the same message but with a focus on general terms
rather than a single exemplar character.
Readers who empathize with a particular fictional character and perceive themselves as
being similar to that fictional character report greater shifts in their own attitudes such that they
come to agree with the character more (Green & Brock, 2000). Individuals’ identification with
the main character of a fictional film fully mediated the effect of viewing the film on subsequent
agreement with the political message endorsed in the film (Iguarta, 2010). Readers who identify
with different characters in the same narrative can have different persuasive outcomes,
depending on which character narrates the story (de Graaf, Hoeken, Sanders, & Beentjes,
2012). Simply changing the pronouns in a narrative about a job interview with an ambiguously
qualified applicant (i.e. making phrases such as “I spoke to him” into “she spoke to me” between

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versions) changed readers’ decisions about whether the interviewer should hire the
candidate. Individuals who read the interviewer-narrated story were more likely to endorse the
belief that the candidate should not be hired, whereas individuals who read the candidate-
narrated story were more likely to endorse the belief that the candidate should be hired (de Graaf
et al., 2012). Thus, character identification drives not only the quantity but also the type of
persuasion that participants experience while reading a narrative. Character identification then
leads to attitude change when readers perceive a character as an exemplar of a broader social
category, and change attitudes toward that category in line with new attitudes toward that
character.
Individuals who perceive fictional characters as attractive exemplars can come to identify
themselves not only with those fictional characters but with the categories represented by those
characters as exemplars. The power of the novella Rage’s ability to persuade readers to engage
in violence against classmates comes partially from its mere portrayal of a school shooter as a
complex human being. Although Rage is a fictional story, its narrator Charlie Decker offers an
attractive individual example of school shooters through acting as an exemplar (King, 1997). An
exemplar is an individual member of a greater social category, the qualities of which can then be
applied to the greater overall category (Limon & Kazoleas, 2004). The individual reader’s
attitude toward the exemplar usually then extends to the category as a whole. Exemplars are at
the center of mental categories, and influence categorization decisions (Rosch, 1975). An
individual’s exemplar for a social category will influence categorization decisions to a greater
degree than the prototype (or more general category idea) when encountering previously-unseen
social stimuli (Rosch, 1975). This effect may occur partially because of the concrete nature of
exemplars as opposed to prototypes (see discussion of Narrative as Argument).

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When deciding whether to place a novel stimulus into a particular category, an individual
will call to mind one or more exemplars from that category and then compare the stimulus to the
exemplars to make perceived similarity judgments (Medin & Smith, 1981). Individuals’
opinions of entire social groups are then driven by their opinions toward exemplars that come to
mind when considering those social groups (Sia, Lord, Blessum, Ratcliff, & Lepper, 1997). The
same person might have a negative opinion of the category “U.S. presidents” while thinking
about Richard Nixon and a positive opinion of the same social category while thinking about
Abraham Lincoln, not because thinking of a different exemplar changes one’s opinion, but
because the attitudes toward the salient exemplar drive attitudes toward the social category.
In narratives, fictional characters act as natural exemplars, because readers identify with
the characters and often come to support the courses of action endorsed by these exemplars
(Kim, Bigman, Leader, Lerman, & Capella, 2012). Although the individuals who found Rage so
persuasive they consciously decided to emulate its main character did not provide clear empirical
data indicating their degree of identification with Charlie Decker as an exemplar, one can
determine from reading that the main character is an attractive and well-informed source of
attitudes toward school shootings: he is intelligent, humorously sarcastic, and fiercely
individualistic (King, 1997). Given that most media attention around school shooters does not
present them as attractive exemplars, in contrast to King’s presentation of Charlie Decker as an
endearing character who is also a school shooter, the experience of reading Rage may have made
the entire category of school shooters more attractive to readers. For some individuals, their
cognitive representations of the category school shooter may not have included an exemplar at
all—or may have had only a vague image of a lone young man with a violent history in place of
a definitive exemplar—which meant that Charlie Decker then sharply defined the entire category
for some readers. Empathy toward this one individual could easily extend to empathy toward the

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social category, and some individuals clearly experienced this persuasive process strongly
enough to engage in interpersonal violence.
Readers’ attitudes toward any given protagonist are driven by character identification,
defined as liking for and perceived similarity with a character. Individuals will become more
immersed in a narrative and rate its realism higher if they perceive the characters in that narrative
as being more like themselves (Green, 2004) and if they have more positive evaluations of the
characters (Escalas, 2007). Fictional characters who are demographically similar to readers tend
to be rated as more attractive by readers, and tend to inspire greater attitude and behavioral
change than characters who differ demographically from readers (Murphy, Frank, Chatterjee, &
Baezconde-Garbanati, 2013). Studies of knowledge validation processes that occur during the
process of reading a narrative have found that readers only doubt the validity of new assertions
(i.e. check them against existing knowledge structures before incorporating into one’s store of
information) if the main character of a narrative has low credibility (Foy, LoCasto, Briner, &
Dyar, 2016). Readers treat the protagonist of a fictional story as being the source of any new
information, rather than the author of that story, despite knowing that the author is the person
who actually generated the narrative message. Therefore, the main character of any given
narrative will often influence attitudes toward a social group as a whole such that shifting
attitudes toward that individual will result in shifting attitudes toward related policies, social
groups, and mental categories.
Despite the power of fictional narratives as persuasive messages, social psychology does
not yet have information on how the process of narrative transportation and subsequent narrative
persuasion fits into the Elaboration Likelihood Model framework. Narrative transportation could
involve a more central (more thoughtful and effortful) route to persuasion, since it produces the
kind of lasting attitude change associated with relatively high levels of elaboration (McQueen,

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Kreuter, Kalesan, Alcaraz, 2012). It could be a more peripheral (more thoughtless and
expedient) route to persuasion, since it usually involves a relatively low level of thoughtful
consideration of message arguments and does not produce attitudes with complex associated
structures (Lewis & Blankenship, 2016). It could also be a process that results in varying
degrees of elaboration for message consumers, depending on whether those individuals are
motivated and able to consider the narrative as an argument.
Therefore, this study will examine the effects of an argument strength manipulation on
participants who have different levels of ability to engage with and elaborate upon a narrative
(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The present study will investigate whether a manipulation of both a
central feature of a narrative’s argument strength (the representativeness of the main character as
an exemplar) and a peripheral feature of the narrative’s structure (the perceived entertainment
level of the author) influence participants differently based on whether the participants are able
to think elaboratively about the narrative. This paradigm will provide new information on the
relative automaticity of narrative transportation and its influence on narratively-based attitudes
using the ELM framework.
The Elaboration Likelihood Model

The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) explains message consumers’ persuasive
experiences as occurring on a continuum (Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman, 1981). Readers engage
in varying amounts of elaborative (effortful) thought when reading a persuasive message,
depending on their motivation and ability to think effortfully (Petty, Cacioppo, & Schumann,
1983). If given sufficient time and motivation to consider the message effortfully, readers will
carefully consider the logic of the arguments presented within a message and use those to form
an opinion. If they lack the cognitive resources or the motivation to consider a message
effortfully, readers are more likely to use surface cues of the message such as its length or the