Does it matter if a story character lives or dies?: a message experiment comparing survivor and death narratives

Intention to Screen for Hepatitis C Among University Students: Influence of Different Communicative Scenarios

This study aimed to evaluate the influence of different narrative scenarios regarding students' intentions to undergo diagnostic screening for hepatitis C, and whether gender identification with the characters of the scenario could influence the students' intentions to undergo a medical test. A sample of 600 participants was administered three narrative scenarios with different frames (positive, negative, and ambivalent), including two gender options (male and female) for the main character of the story. A statistically significant three-way interaction between scenario, gender identification, and time resulted. There were significant simple main effects on the intention to have a diagnostic test for hepatitis C for the scenarios with the protagonist of the same gender as the participant and after the administration of the negative scenario. The use of a negative scenario with the same gender character was always more effective than the use of a positive framed scenario, even though there was a high level of knowledge regarding the disease. Personal diagnostic testing was not directly associated with knowledge regarding the infection. The findings of this study can ultimately help policymakers develop communication campaigns adapted to target populations such as college students, in order to raise awareness of the risk, promote prevention and behavioral change, and encourage medical screening.

Death Narratives, Negative Emotion, and Counterarguing: Testing Fear, Anger, and Sadness as Mechanisms of Effect

Narrative messaging research has demonstrated that story outcome (e.g., whether the main character lives or dies) can impact audience behavior, but more research explicating and testing mechanistic pathways is needed. The current study tests fear, anger, and sadness as mechanisms of persuasion, assessing effects on counterarguing, reading flow, and behavioral intention. The current study utilized a 2 (story outcome: death vs. survivor) × 4 (story character: Marla, Erin, Don, and Ray) between-participants experiment (N = 735) to test the effect of story outcome on behavioral intentions via discrete emotion. Death narratives generated greater fear, anger, and sadness. Fear was related to greater behavioral intention and reading flow and diminished counterarguing. Sadness had the opposite effect. Anger produced a mixed persuasive effect, increasing both counterarguing and reading flow. Results have implications for discrete emotions theorizing and underscore the importance of conceptualizing narrative stimuli along multiple affective dimensions rather than single dimensions.