The SAGE Handbook of Persuasion

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The SAGE Handbook of Persuasion Page 42

by James Price Dillard


  Second, several studies used summary measures of counterarguing, asking audience members to estimate, for example, how much they “wanted to ‘argue back’ with what was going on onscreen” (Moyer-Gusé, Chung, & Jain, 2011, p. 395), or “found myself thinking of ways I disagreed with what was being presented” (Moyer-Gusé & Nabi, 2010, p. 36). Using this method, Moyer-Gusé, Chung, and Jain (2011) found counterarguing with the program about sexually transmitted infections negatively related to the intention to discuss and discussions about the topic. Further, counterarguing moderated the relation between identification with characters and intentions to discuss the topic.

  There are advantages and disadvantages to both measures, which will become evident as we proceed. For now it is sufficient to point out that summary measures provide an indication of counterarguing, but obfuscate the target of counterarguments. Conversely, thought lists provide a more direct indication of the target of participants’ thoughts allowing researchers to distinguish between thoughts about the persuasive target and other aspects of the narrative. However, selecting thought categories and establishing intercoder reliability can be problematic.

  Three factors complicate our understanding of counterarguing in a narrative context. First, engaging with a narrative involves processes and motivations different from those involved in processing overtly persuasive messages. Second, the persuasive elements in a narrative may vary with respect to their availability to an audience member’s awareness and therefore their availability as the target of a counterargument. Third, the nature of involvement in a narrative is not the same as involvement in an overtly persuasive argument. We address each of these issues in turn.

  In narrative comprehension, the primary cognitive activity is constructing mental models to represent characters, situations, and ultimately the meaning of the text (Graesser, Olde, & Klettke, 2002; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser, 1995). Conversely, engaging with a persuasive argument requires consideration of claims and evaluation of evidence (Bruner, 1986; Zarefsky, 1990). To the extent that these are separate cognitive activities, they put separate demands on cognitive capacity and are more likely to interfere with than complement each other.

  Related to this is the idea that humans are Spinozan processors when evaluating the truth status of information (Gilbert, 1991). Evidence suggests that humans initially accept information, and then evaluate the veracity of that information only when and if motivated to do so (Bradley & Shapiro, 2005; Gilbert, 1991; Gilbert, Krull, & Malone, 1990). This suggests that rather than suspending disbelief when engaging with a narrative, audiences must construct disbelief (Prentice, Gerrig, & Bailis, 1997). The implication for narrative persuasion is that for someone engaged in a fictional story, the initial truth status of an event, character, or situation is neither real nor unreal. Instead, events and characters simply are accepted. Their status as fictional products only becomes relevant to the audience member if something prompts evaluation about the truth or realism of story assertions (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008). Such a prompt may take the form of awareness of persuasive intent (Nabi, 2002), an observed inconsistency within the text (Oatley, 2002), or an inconsistency between the text and an audience member’s background knowledge or experience (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008).

  For example, consider a program in which a police officer says that she and her partner must recover a stolen snake-bite antidote because “millions are bitten by poisonous snakes annually.” An audience member may counterargue the premise that snake bites are so prevalent (“millions”) or become aware that the program is sponsored by, for example, an outdoor safety organization. However, such consideration of veracity or persuasive motive requires cognitive energy beyond that necessary for comprehending the narrative and also requires a shift of cognitive focus toward evaluative processes rather than narrative comprehension. This refocusing should interfere with the story’s progression. Subsequently, the audience’s engagement in the narrative experience should be compromised (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008; Green & Brock, 2002), along with enjoyment of the narrative experience itself (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009; Green, Brock, & Kaufman, 2004); all of which point toward acceptance rather than critical scrutiny as the default processing mode.

  A second issue relates to the various possible targets of counterarguing and their availability to the audience. Typically in advertisements and PSAs, the persuasive intent is obvious to the audience and the advocated position is explicitly articulated. This is true even when the message takes a narrative form. This avails to the audience the motivation and opportunity to counterargue, as well as a target for that argument. Conversely, many narratives do not offer explicit advocated positions, but simply show what happens to characters facing certain problems. Essentially, such stories show lived experiences that are difficult to argue against (Oatley, 2002). Here, the story itself makes no assertion about how representative or typical a case may be—it shows specific people in specific situations, at a specific time and location. It is possible to argue that such a portrayal is unlike reality or unlikely to happen in reality. This may occur, for example, when events seem incoherent (Oatley, 2002) or behaviors and characters seem unrealistic (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008). But, again, this requires the additional cognitive work of abstraction and generalization. Further, such counterarguing may be focused more on the representation’s authenticity than on a specific advocated persuasive position. In some cases, audiences may infer a story’s point or morale, and use the inference for counterargument. It is unlikely, however, that an audience member is more than minimally aware of such thematic points as they process the narrative (Graesser, Olde, & Klettke, 2002). Indeed, a story’s thematic point (e.g., one must take risks to gain rewards) may be unavailable to the audience until the story is near or at its conclusion.

  The third point we will take up related to counterarguing is the issue of involvement in a narrative versus involvement in an overtly persuasive message. In attitude change models, such as the Elaboration-Likelihood-Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), high involvement creates a mind set in audience members that fosters attention to the message and scrutiny of argument quality. People who are involved make connections between themselves and the content, compare and judge media content against their prior knowledge and experiences, and are motivated toward thorough evaluation. This, in turn, means higher involvement is positively related to the likelihood that an individual will scrutinize the content for persuasive intent, accuracy, and agreement with their own views.

  Conversely, in narrative processing, the dominant processing experience is transportation or narrative engagement—a state of intense cognitive and emotional focus on the story (Green & Brock, 2000; Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009). This form of engagement is different from involvement in that it does not necessarily activate the recipient’s self-concept, experiences, and life-world. The character and plot of “Harry Potter” does not in any way refer to or reflect an average adult’s situation; nonetheless, readers may be highly transported into the plot and feel with the young protagonist. On the other hand, involvement and narrative engagement are similar in that they represent intense, active processing. A transported reader vividly relives the story in her mind, extracts meaning from the story without consciously investing effort, elaborates the story text, and understands hints and clues provided by the story by drawing inferences. In this sense, engagement in a narrative parallels involvement in a persuasive message but without the assumption that the audience’s ego is implicated. This suggests that the relationship between engagement in a narrative and involvement in an overtly persuasive message is surprisingly oppositional. While involvement enables counterarguing with overtly persuasive messages, involvement in the form of narrative engagement or transportation is a mechanism that prevents counterarguing: When audiences focus their mental capacity on processing the narrative, they should have neither the ability nor the motivation to counterargue (Green & Brock, 2000; Slater & Rouner, 2002).


  To sum up, the suppression of counterarguing, facilitated by a text’s narrative properties and a reader’s narrative engagement, has been discussed as the most important mechanism for narrative persuasion. As we have demonstrated, it is not easy to determine the target of counterarguing in a narrative. It seems to be necessary to separate the story itself from the persuasive message. However, such a separation suggests a more complex conceptualization of counterarguing, one in which counterarguing, when it does occur, may be targeted toward elements of the imbedded or implied persuasive message, or toward elements of the narrative itself, such as plot or character development that may be unrelated to an intended persuasive point.

  Elaboration and Inference

  * * *

  Elaboration of a persuasive message is considered an important factor in persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). It describes the extent to which someone is engaging in issue-relevant thinking and thorough weighing of argument quality. If the arguments stands up to this critical scrutiny, the persuasive message should change beliefs and attitudes. Issue involvement may increase the likelihood of elaboration by increasing the motivation to attend to and process information (Petty & Wegener, 1999).

  However, as we have previously argued, involvement is not sufficient to describe narrative processing. Slater and Rouner (2002) suggested replacing involvement with the more suitable notion of engagement or transportation in their Extended ELM (E-ELM). In this model, elaboration is an outcome of engagement (not involvement) and that changes attitudes and behavior. Similarly, the Transportation-Imagery-Model (Green & Brock, 2000) assumes that “all mental systems and capacities become focused on events occurring in the narrative” (p. 701). However, Green and Brock (2000) derive different consequences from this intensive focus on the story. It is not elaboration of story content that enhances persuasive effects (as is the case in the E-ELM), because there is no rational evaluation of arguments. Rather, strong immersion into a story reduces counterarguments against story assertions, creates a lifelike experience, and provides strong connections with characters, all of which facilitate narrative persuasion. However, elaboration may still be compatible with the assumptions put forward by the Transportation-Imagery-Model.

  Approaches that are concerned with elaboration seem to build on a capacity model of human information processing (e.g., Lang, 2009). Deploying more resources to a task (manifested as involvement, or transportation) improves task performance (elaboration). There is a limited pool of resources, which is divided between the story itself and the persuasive message. The capacity model by Fisch (2000, 2009) is useful here. It explains how children learn educational content embedded in stories. It assumes that both the story itself (events, characters, locations, time, etc.) and the educational content draw on a limited pool of capacity available in working memory. If story and educational content are not related to each other, the two tasks will compete for resources. In general, comprehension of the story will be prioritized in resource allocation. In contrast, when educational content is not tangential, but integral to the story (in other words, important for the development of the plot or the actions of the characters), there will be synergies between processing story and processing the educational content.

  The smaller the distance between story and educational content, the better the educational content will be comprehended. Although this model is concerned with children, the same principle should apply to adults. It should be recognized that there is a bit of a paradox here regarding a narrative and the integration of educational and persuasive content into that narrative: A story is likely little affected by information that is not integrated, but that information likely has little persuasive or educational influence. Conversely, when information is highly integrated, the information is likely to have greater influence, but it also has greater impact on the narrative, which may in turn render the narrative less interesting or engaging. For example, an action film with an un-integrated comment about casual sex likely will have little impact on audience attitudes about sexual behavior. But an action film with a strong safe-sex theme likely is not a typical action film, and may border on romance, drama, or tragedy, and may be less engaging to an audience that anticipated an action film.

  When there is no explicit persuasive message to attend to and process, processing should first and foremost be directed at the story elements—changes in characters, time, location, events, causality (Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser, 1995). In order to make the story coherent, readers or viewers make inferences where the story does not provide enough information (e.g., Graesser, Wiemer-Hastings, & Wiemer-Hastings, 2001). The more capacity is used to process the story, the richer the mental model of the story should be. It makes sense to assume that people who are more immersed in a story also make more inferences about the implications of the story events. More immersion also means that readers are more affected by negative outcomes and story endings. In this case, people may engage in “anomalous replotting” (Gerrig, 1993) or counterfactual thinking (Tal-Or, Boninger, Poran, & Gleicher, 2004)—a cognitive activity of imagining a different course of events that may have prevented the negative outcome. However, it is difficult to imagine repotting before a story has concluded. Thus, elaboration, inferences and re-plotting should be increased when people are engaged, and any of these cognitive activities may lead to more persuasion.

  Elaboration is stimulated by personal involvement—when people think that an issue is relevant, or when it relates to their own lives and experiences. Evoking personal memories and experiences is also well-known as resonance in other fields, such psychology of reading (Seilman & Larsen, 1989) or cultivation (Morgan, Shanahan, & Signorielli, 2009). Personal relevance may induce central processing and increase persuasive effects (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), and add autobiographical emotions to the emotions evoked by the narrative (Oatley, 2002).

  While transportation and involvement have similar properties regarding the intensity of information processing and also clear differences regarding references to the self, they most often are not considered simultaneously. However, there are some exceptions. For example, Prentice, Gerrig, and Bailis (1997) explored the role of familiarity of story setting for processing fictional texts and found that unfamiliar settings support narrative effects. When readers are familiar with the setting and read unsupported assertions in a story (corresponding to weak arguments), they are more prone to critically assess the content and reject the assertions. Wheeler, Green, and Brock (1999) failed to find the same effect of familiarity in an exact replication, but did find support for closer scrutiny of texts in familiar settings. Green (2004) found that previous experience (i.e., having a homosexual friend or family member and reading story with a homosexual protagonist) increased transportation, but did not alter its effects on beliefs. Strange and Leung (1999) found that being reminded by a narrative (“remindings”) of people one knows in real life facilitates the story’s effect on responsibility attribution.

  Bilandzic (2006) argued that the consistency of prior experience with the story is important. The model put forward by Bilandzic predicts that persuasive effects of narratives should be weakened by prior experiences that diverge from the narrative and facilitated by prior experiences that are consistent with the narrative. Specifically, divergent prior experiences produce a critical mode of viewing, which is characterized by the increased occurrence of negative thoughts about the narrative and noticing flaws in the narrative. Critical mode lowers narrative engagement, as well as narrative effects. In contrast, consistent prior experiences reinforce narrative engagement and produce an “enhanced engagement” mode of viewing, in which autobiographical memories and emotions mesh together with emotions elicited by the story and produce even stronger narrative engagement than in a situation where there is no match between the story and one’s experiences. The enhanced engagement mode should reduce counterarguing and strengthen narrative effects.

  The concept of self-referencing also deals with personal experience
s, but places emphasis on how processing of information changes when the information is considered in conjunction with self-relevant information (Escalas, 2007). One explanation for how self-referencing affects processing is that it induces elaboration and turns the reader’s attention toward argument quality. Effects only occur when strong arguments are present (e.g., Burnkrant & Unnava, 1989). Other research however suggests that self-referencing binds cognitive resources and levels the influence of argument quality (e.g., Sujan, Bettman, & Baumgartner, 1993). To resolve this disparity in research, Escalas (2007) differentiates between analytical and narrative self-referencing. In analytical referencing, information is related to self-structure in memory and leads to more attention to argument quality. Narrative referencing, in contrast, evokes autobiographical memories that are replayed in the mind. These thoughts are similar to stories and can transport the reader into past events, which leaves less capacity for scrutinizing argument quality and should facilitate persuasion. This version of the relation with the self is even more potent than simply being involved, because readers or viewers actively generate or retrieve a complete and self-specific story in their mind, and are transported into their own specific construction.

  Altogether, elaboration and inference represent cognitive activities of the audience associated with deeper reflection of the story and higher persuasive outcomes. While these cognitive activities can be stimulated by any kind of story, they are certainly encouraged by ambiguous plots or characters, and open or negative endings. A crucial question concerns the nature of elaboration. In a narrow sense, elaboration can be understood as thinking about the arguments of a persuasive message. However, as we have pointed out already, narratives do not always contain arguments, for example, if, in Fisch’s (2009) terms, the distance between educational content and story is small. In this case, it is likely that people will elaborate the persuasive message by thinking about the story itself, or the fate of the characters (for example, the alcohol-related death of the protagonist’s husband). In this sense, it is useful to define elaboration in a broader way, as thinking about an issue rather than scrutinizing argument quality.

 

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