Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Incorporating Psychological Distance Framing in Narrative Persuasion

DRMS 博士论文研究：将心理距离框架纳入叙事说服

• 批准号: 2046692
• 负责人: Janet Yang
• 金额: $ 2.27万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Buffalo
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-01-15 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2046692&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; DRMS; Incorporating

Scientists often use numbers and statistics to communicate health and environmental risks with the public. Members of the public, however, may find this type of messaging difficult to understand or unappealing. In contrast, narrative or stories may offer an effective alternative. When reading a well-crafted narrative, people may find themselves absorbed into an imaginary world and identify with the characters portrayed. These processes, termed as transportation and identification, illustrate how narratives may change people’s attitudes and behaviors. Notably, when people are engaged in a narrative, they may feel closer to the characters or the scenario, which may also influence their perception about the issue featured in the story. This research project examines whether narratives indeed reduce the distance people perceive toward the characters and the scenario and subsequently influence their attitudes toward two risk topics – ocean plastic pollution and e-cigarette use. Specifically, participants will read a narrative that features either a close scenario (e.g., ocean plastic pollution harming their own country) or a far scenario (e.g., ocean plastic pollution harming a foreign country), and portrays characters that are either similar or different from them. We then examine whether these differences in the narrative influence their transportation and identification levels, and more importantly, whether they report attitude changes that are consistent with the positions promoted in the narrative. This project will help risk communication experts craft narrative persuasion messages to target different individuals more effectively. This research project seeks to advance the theorization of narrative persuasion in risk communication through the lens of psychological distance. There are two main objectives. First, this research explores how using narrative can influence risk communication outcomes. The central argument is that via the mediation of transportation and identification, the effectiveness of narrative persuasion is influenced by the perceived distance between audience and the risk featured in the narrative. Second, the research aims to incorporate distance framing into narrative message design to effectively communicate about abstract and uncertain risks. Specifically, this research seeks to identify the impacts of distance cues associated with narrative character and narrative scenario in actualizing persuasion effects. The two experiments feature different character-based and scenario-based distance cues. The experiments focus on one environmental risk – ocean plastic pollution, and one health risk – e-cigarette use. Intrinsic to public perception of these two topics are all four dimensions of psychological distance – social, spatial, temporal, and hypothetical. By testing the proposed theoretical framework in different environmental and health contexts, this research has broad theoretical and practical implications. Findings from this project contribute to the literature on narrative persuasion and risk communication and inform the design of narrative messaging that is widely utilized in information campaigns and entertainment education.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

科学家经常使用数字和统计数据与公众传达健康和环境风险。但是，公众可能会发现这种类型的消息传递难以理解或不吸引人。相反，叙事或故事可能提供有效的选择。当阅读精心制作的叙述时，人们可能会发现自己被假想的世界所吸收，并认同所描绘的角色。这些过程称为运输和身份，说明了叙事如何改变人们的参与者和行为。值得注意的是，当人们从事叙述性时，他们可能会更接近角色或场景，这也可能影响他们对故事中出现的问题的看法。这项研究项目考试叙事是否确实减少了人们对角色和情景的距离，并随后影响与会者对两个风险主题的影响 - 海洋塑料污染和电子烟的使用。具体而言，参与者将阅读一种叙事，该叙述具有近距离情况（例如，损害其国家的海洋塑料污染）或远处的情况（例如，损害国外的海洋塑料污染），并描绘了与他们相似或不同的角色。然后，我们检查叙事中的这些差异是否影响它们的运输和身份识别水平，更重要的是，它们报告的态度变化是否与叙事中提升的立场一致。该项目将帮助风险交流专家制作叙事说服信息，以更有效地针对不同的人。该研究项目旨在通过心理距离的角度来推动风险交流中叙事说服力的理论。有两个主要目标。首先，这项研究探讨了使用叙述如何影响风险交流结果。中心论点是，通过传输和身份识别的调解，叙事说服力的有效性受观众与叙事中的风险之间的感知距离的影响。其次，该研究旨在将距离框架纳入叙事信息设计中，以有效地交流抽象和不确定风险。具体而言，这项研究旨在确定与叙事特征和叙事情景相关的距离提示在实现说服力效应中的影响。这两个实验具有不同的基于字符和基于方案的距离提示。该实验集中在一种环境风险上 - 海洋塑料污染和一种健康风险 - 电子烟的使用。对这两个主题的内在感知是心理距离的四个维度 - 社会，空间，临时和假设。通过在不同的环境和健康环境中测试所提出的理论框架，这项研究具有广泛的理论和实际含义。该项目的发现有助于有关叙事说服力和风险交流的文献，并为信息运动和娱乐教育广泛使用的叙事消息的设计提供了信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的审查标准通过评估来通过评估来支持的。