Department of Communication, University of Utah, Languages and Communication Building , Salt Lake City , Utah , USA.
J Health Commun. 2019;24(6):603-614. doi: 10.1080/10810730.2019.1643954. Epub 2019 Jul 23.
Moving beyond personal responsibility-taking behaviors, this paper examines (interpersonal talk and online message sharing) and (public policy support and intention to donate) behavioral outcomes in the context of narrative persuasion. A web-based experiment was conducted to test the mediating effects of two narrative engagement constructs, transportation and empathy, on these behavioral outcomes. Participants recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (n = 467) participated in an experiment conducted on Qualtrics, where they were randomized to read either a narrative or a nonnarrative message about factors contributing to obesity. The narrative message, compared to the nonnarrative message, generated greater transportation and affective empathy but had no overall advantage regarding behavioral outcomes. Path analyses showed consistent, significant indirect effects via transportation and affective empathy on all the outcome variables: online message sharing, interpersonal talk, public policy support, and intention to donate to a non-profit obesity organization. Our study contributes to the extant narrative research by shedding light on how narrative messages, via engaging the audience, could shape social responses beyond personal responsibility-taking. Implications and limitations of findings were discussed.
超越个人责任承担行为，本文在叙事说服的背景下考察了（人际谈话和在线信息分享）和（公共政策支持和捐赠意愿）行为结果。通过亚马逊土耳其机器人（n=467）进行了一项网络实验，以检验两种叙事参与结构（交通和同理心）对这些行为结果的中介作用。参与者在 Qualtrics 上参与了一项实验，他们被随机分配阅读关于导致肥胖的因素的叙事或非叙事信息。与非叙事信息相比，叙事信息产生了更大的交通和情感同理心，但在行为结果方面没有总体优势。路径分析显示，通过交通和情感同理心对所有结果变量（在线信息分享、人际谈话、公共政策支持和向非营利性肥胖组织捐赠的意愿）都有一致的、显著的间接影响。本研究通过揭示叙事信息如何通过吸引受众来塑造超越个人责任承担的社会反应，为现有叙事研究做出了贡献。讨论了研究结果的意义和局限性。
