The role of causality in information acceptance in narratives: An example from science communication

Communication Research

Volumn 37, Issue 6, 2010, Pages 857-875

  Dahlstrom, Michael F ^a  

^a IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

causality; comprehension; narrative; persuasion; science communication

Indexed keywords

EID: 78650007570     PISSN: 00936502     EISSN: 15523810     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0093650210362683     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Appel, M. (2008). Fictional narratives cultivate just-world beliefs. Journal of Communication, 58(1), 62-83.
2. Appel, M., & Richter, T. (2007). Persuasive effects of fictional narratives increase over time. Media Psychology, 10(1), 113-134.
3. Baesler, E.J., & Burgoon, J.K. (1994). The temporal effects of story and statistical evidence on belief change. Communication Research, 21, 582-602.
4. Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundation of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
5. Bilandzic, H., & Busselle, R.W. (2008). Transportation and transportability in the cultivation of genre-consistent attitudes and estimates. Journal of Communication, 58, 508-529.
6. Bower, G.H., & Morrow, D.G. (1990). Mental models in narrative comprehension. Science, 247(4938), 44-48.
7. Braverman, J. (2008). Testimonials versus informational persuasive messages: The moderating effect of delivery mode and personal involvement. Communication Research, 35, 666-694.
8. Bridgman, T., & Barry, D. (2002). Regulation is evil: An application of narrative policy analysis to regulatory debate in New Zealand. Policy Sciences, 35, 141-161.
9. Britt, M.A., Perfetti, C.A., Sandak, R., & Rouet, J. (1999). Content integration and source separation in learning from multiple texts. In S. R. Goldman, A. C. Graesser, & P. van den Broek (Eds.), Narrative comprehension, causality, and coherence: Essays in honor of Tom Trabasso (pp. 209-233). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
10. Brock, T.C., Strange, J.J., & Green, M.C. (2002). Power beyond reckoning: An introduction to narrative impact. In M. C. Green, J. J. Strange, & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Narrative impact: Social and cognitive foundations (pp. 1-16). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
11. Brodie, M., Foehr, U., Rideout, V., Baer, N., Miller, C., & Flournoy, R.,et al.(2001). Communicating health information through the entertainment media. Health Affairs, 20, 192-199.
12. Brosius, H.B., & Bathelt, A. (1994). The utility of exemplars in persuasive communications. Communication Research, 21(1), 48-78.
13. Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
14. Busselle, R.W. (2001). Television exposure, perceived realism, and exemplar accessibility in the social judgment process. Media Psychology, 3(1), 43-67.
15. Busselle, R.W., & Bilandzic, H. (2008). Fictionality and perceived realism in experiencing stories: A model of narrative comprehension and engagement. Communication Theory, 18, 255-280.
16. Busselle, R.W., & Greenberg, B.S. (2000). The nature of television realism judgments: A reevaluation of their conceptualization and measurement. Mass Communication and Society, 3, 249-268.
17. Cacioppo, J.T., & Petty, R.E. (1984). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Consumer Research, 11, 673-675.
18. Chang, C.C. (2009). Being hooked by editorial content: The implications for processing narrative advertising. Journal of Advertising, 38(1), 21-33.
19. Davin, S. (2003). Healthy viewing: The reception of medical narratives. Sociology of Health & Illness, 25, 662-679.
20. de Wit, J.B.F., Das, E., & Vet, R. (2008). What works best: Objective statistics or a personal testimonial? An assessment of the persuasive effects of different types of message evidence on risk perception. Health Psychology, 27(1), 110-115.
21. Dillard, J.P., Plotnick, C.A., Godbold, L.C., Freimuth, V.S., & Edgar, T. (1996). The multiple affective outcomes of AIDS PSAs: Fear appeals do more than scare people. Communication Research, 23(1), 44-72.
22. Dudo, A., Dahlstrom, M., & Brossard, D. (2007). Reporting a potential pandemic: A risk-related assessment of avian influenza coverage in U.S. newspapers. Science Communication, 28, 429-454.
23. Durkin, S., & Wakefield, M. (2008). Interrupting a narrative transportation experience: Program placement effects on responses to antismoking advertising. Journal of Health Communication, 13, 667-680.
24. Egidi, G., & Gerrig, R.J. (2006). Readersa' experiences of charactersa' goals and actions. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition, 32, 1322-1329.
25. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
26. Fletcher, C.R., & Bloom, C.P. (1988). Causal reasoning in the comprehension of simple narrative texts. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 235-244.
27. Fletcher, C.R., Hummel, J.E., & Marsolek, C.J. (1990). Causality and the allocation of attention during comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition, 16, 233-240.
28. Gerbner, G. (1987). Science on television: How it affects public conceptions. Issues in Science and Technology, 3, 109-115.
29. Gerrig, R.J. (1993). Experiencing narrative worlds: On the psychological activities of reading. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
30. Graesser, A.C., Olde, B., & Klettke, B. (2002). How does the mind construct and represent stories? In M. C. Green, J. J. Strange, & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Narrative impact: Social and cognitive foundations (pp. 229-262). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
31. Graesser, A.C., Singer, M., & Trabasso, T. (1994). Constructing inferences during narrative text comprehension. Psychological Review, 101, 371-395.
32. Green, M.C. (2004). Transportation into narrative worlds: The role of prior knowledge and perceived realism. Discourse Processes, 38, 247-266.
33. Green, M.C. (2006). Narratives and cancer communication. Journal of Communication, 56, S163-S183. Green, M.C., & Brock, T.C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 701-721.
34. Green, M.C., Brock, T.C., & Kaufman, G.E. (2004). Understanding media enjoyment: The role of transportation into narrative worlds. Communication Theory, 14, 311-327.
35. Green, M.C., Garst, J., Brock, T.C., & Chung, S. (2006). Fact versus fiction labeling: Persuasion parity despite heightened scrutiny of fact. Media Psychology, 8, 267-285.
36. Guttman, N., Gesser-Edelsburg, A., & Israelashvili, M. (2008). The paradox of realism and Authenticity in entertainment-education: A study of adolescentsa' views about anti-drug abuse dramas. Health Communication, 23(2), 128-141.
37. Judd, C.M., Kenny, D.A., & McClelland, G.H. (2001). Estimating and testing mediation and moderation in within-subject designs. Psychological Methods, 6(2), 115-134.
38. Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
39. Kreiswirth, M. (1992). Trusting the tale: The narrativist turn in the human sciences. New Literary History, 23, 629-657.
40. Kreiswirth, M. (2000). Merely telling stories? Narrative and knowledge in the human sciences. Poetics Today, 21, 293-318.
41. Kreuter, M.W., Green, M.C., Cappella, J.N., Slater, M.D., Wise, M.E., & Storey, D.,et al.(2007). Narrative communication in cancer prevention and control: A framework to guide research and application. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 33, 221-235.
42. Laubscher, N.F. (1961). On stabilizing the binomial and negative binomial variances. Journal of American Statistical Association, 56, 143-150.
43. Mackie, J.L. (1980). The cement of the universe. Oxford, UK: Clarendon.
44. Magliano, J.P. (1999). Revealing inference processes during text comprehension. In S. R. Goldman, A. C. Graesser, & P. van den Broek (Eds.), Narrative comprehension, causality, and coherence: Essays in honor of Tom Trabasso (pp. 55-75). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
45. Marsh, E.J., Meade, M.L., & Roediger, H.L. (2003). Learning facts from fiction. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 519-536.
46. Mazor, K.M., Baril, J., Dugan, E., Spencer, F., Burgwinkle, P., & Gurwitz, J.H. (2007). Patient education about anticoagulant medication: Is narrative evidence or statistical evidence more effective? Patient Education and Counseling, 69, 145-157.
47. McComas, K., & Shanahan, J. (1999). Telling stories about global climate change-Measuring the impact of narratives on issue cycles. Communication Research, 26(1), 30-57.
48. Morrow, D.G., Bower, G.H., & Greenspan, S.L. (1989). Updating situation models during narrative comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 292-312.
49. Moyer-Guse, E. (2008). Toward a theory of entertainment persuasion: Explaining the persuasive effects of entertainment-education messages. Communication Theory, 18, 407-425.
50. Oatley, K. (2002). Emotions and the story worlds of fiction. In M. C. Green, J. J. Strange, & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Narrative impact: Social and cognitive foundations (pp. 39-70). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Oa'Keefe, D.J. (2002). Persuasion: Theory and research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
51. Prentice, D.A., Gerrig, R.J., & Bailis, D.S. (1997). What readers bring to the processing of fictional texts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 416-420.
52. Schank, R.C., & Abelson, R. (1995). Knowledge and memory: The real story. In R. Schank, & R. Abelson (Eds.), Knowledge and memory: The real story (pp. 1-85). Hilldale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
53. Schank, R.C., & Berman, T.B. (2002). The persuasive role of stories in knowledge and action. In M. C. Green, J. J. Strange, & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Narrative impact: Social and cognitive foundations (pp. 287-313). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
54. Simon, L., Greenberg, J., & Brehm, J. (1995). Trivialization-The forgotten mode of dissonance reduction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 247-260.
55. Singhal, A., & Rogers, E.M. (2002). A theoretical agenda for entertainment-education. Communication Theory, 12(2), 117-135.
56. Slater, M.D. (1990). Processing social information in messages: Social groups familiarity, fiction versus nonfiction, and subsequent beliefs. Communication Research, 17, 327-343.
57. Slater, M.D. (2002). Entertainment and education and the persuasive impact of narratives. In M. C. Green, J. J. Strange, & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Narrative impact: Social and cognitive foundations (pp. 157-181). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
58. Slater, M.D., Buller, D.B., Waters, E., Archibeque, M., & LeBlanc, M. (2003). A test of conversational and testimonial messages versus didactic presentations of nutrition information. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 35, 255-259.
59. Slater, M.D., & Rouner, D. (2002). Entertainment-education and elaboration likelihood: Understanding the processing of narrative persuasion. Communication Theory, 12, 173-191.
60. Slater, M.D., Rouner, D., & Long, M. (2006). Television dramas and support for controversial public policies: Effects and mechanisms. Journal of Communication, 56, 235-252.
61. Southwell, B.G., & Torres, A. (2006). Connecting interpersonal and mass communication: Science news exposure, perceived ability to understand science, and conversation. Communication Monographs, 73, 334-350.
62. Strange, J.J. (2002). How fictional tales wag real-world beliefs. In M. C. Green, J. J. Strange, & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Narrative impact: Social and cognitive foundations (pp. 263-286). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
63. Sundermeier, B.A., van den Broek, P., & Zwaan, R.A. (2005). Causal coherence and the availability of locations and objects during narrative comprehension. Memory & Cognition, 33, 462-470.
64. Trabasso, T., & Sperry, L.L. (1985). Causal relatedness and importance of story events. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 595-611.
65. Trabasso, T., & Suh, S. (1993). Understanding text: Achieving explanatory coherence through online inferences and mental operations in working memory. Discourse Processes, 16, 3-34.
66. van den Broek, P., & Gustafson, M. (1999). Comprehension and memory for texts: Three generations of reading research. In S. R. Goldman, A. C. Graesser, & P. van den Broek (Eds.), Narrative comprehension, causality, and coherence: Essays in honor of Tom Trabasso (pp. 15-34). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
67. van den Broek, P., Lorch, E. P., &Thurlow, R. (1996). Children's and adults' memory for television stories: The role of causal factors, story-grammar categories, and hierarchical level. Child Development, 67, 3010-3028.
68. Wheeler, S.C., Green, M.C., & Brock, T.C. (1999). Fictional narratives change beliefs: Replications of Prentice, Gerrig, and Bailis (1997) with mixed corroboration. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 6(1), 136-141.
69. Whittier, D.K., Kennedy, M.G., St Lawrence, J.S., Seeley, S., & Beck, V. (2005). Embedding health messages into entertainment television: Effect on gay men's response to a syphilis outbreak. Journal of Health Communication, 10, 251-259.
70. Winterbottom, A., Bekker, H.L., Conner, M., & Mooney, A. (2008). Does narrative information bias individuala's decision making? A systematic review. Social Science & Medicine, 67, 2079-2088.
71. Wise, M., Han, J.Y., Shaw, B., McTavish, F., & Gustafson, D.H. (2008). Effects of using online narrative and didactic information on healthcare participation for breast cancer patients. Patient Education and Counseling, 70, 348-356.
72. Witte, K., & Allen, M. (2000). A meta-analysis of fear appeals: Implications for effective public health campaigns. Health Education & Behavior, 27, 591-615.
73. Yaros, R.A. (2006). Is it the medium or the message? Structuring complex news to enhance engagement and situational understanding by nonexperts. Communication Research, 33, 285-309.
74. Yoder, P.S., Hornik, R., & Chirwa, B.C. (1996). Evaluating the program effects of a radio drama about AIDS in Zambia. Studies in Family Planning, 27, 188-203.
75. Zwaan, R.A. (1999). Five dimensions of narrative comprehension: The event-indexing model. In S. R. Goldman, A. C. Graesser, & P. van den Broek (Eds.), Narrative comprehension, causality, and coherence: Essays in honor of Tom Trabasso (pp. 93-110). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
76. Zwaan, R.A., Langston, M.C., & Graesser, A.C. (1995). The construction of situation models in narrative comprehension: An event-indexing model. Psychological Science, 6, 292-297.