Leigh Ann Vaughn, associate professor of psychology, and Sarah Hesse '06, Zhivka Petkova '06, and Lindsay Trudeau '06 have published an article titled, "'This Story Is Right On': The Impact of Regulatory Fit on Narrative Engagement and Ppersuasion," in this month's issue of the European Journal of Social Psychology.
The research showed that when people read a story, feelings of rightness from regulatory fit (consistency between regulatory state and strategic means) can suggest that the story is "right on" relative to feelings of wrongness from regulatory nonfit. Under these conditions, individuals who are experiencing feelings of rightness engage more with the narrative and are more persuaded by its implicit messages.
The following passage from the beginning of the article illustrates these findings:
"Jake had heard about the book, The Da Vinci Code, so he bought a copy and began to read it. Actually, the experience wasn’t so much like reading; when he was into the story he didn’t seem to be present at all. In his imagination, he became lost in the book; he was a character with the events of the story happening to him. When he put down the book after a few chapters, he felt surprised to find himself -- as himself -- in his home. The story was so transporting that he thought about how the conspiracy in the book could be real. He also understood why so many conservative Christians seemed upset about the book and why numerous people had written books debunking the conspiracy it portrayed. Everything in the book seemed so plausible.
"But about two-thirds of the way through, something about the story started feeling not entirely right. He became increasingly aware of himself and his surroundings as he read and found it more and more difficult to suspend disbelief. It was not completely clear what it was about the story that had started to feel wrong, but he was not as transported or persuaded as he once had been.
"As third-person, omniscient narrators of this story, we can tell you that Jake’s feelings of wrongness weren’t caused by the story at all; they were caused by events at work. A lack of fit between Jake’s preference for caution and his need to take risks for a new project at work created mild, vague feelings of wrongness, which -- in part because he still had them while reading The Da Vinci Code -- he attributed to the story."
Vaughn, Hesse, Petkova, and Trudeau conducted this research in Professor Vaughn's Social Judgment Research Team over several years. Thanks go to the following research team students for their help with materials development, data collection, and posters about this research: Erin Abshere '06, Nathaniel Baum '07, Jolie Baumann '07, Laura Candeloro '06, Christine Dosch '07, Colin Flynn '07, Christine Klemann '07, Jill Malik '05, Nora McCaffrey '06, Jessica Nuzzetti '07, Melahat Ozses '08, Sandra Schwartz '03, Lisa Schlessinger '07, Bill Smith '06, Adam Weber '07, and Kumar Yogeeswaran '06.
