Narrative transportation, identification, and storytelling in environmental (science) communication.
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According to Bettinghaus and Cody (1987), persuasion is “a conscious attempt by one individual to change the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviour of another individual or group of individuals through the transmission of some message.” (p. 17). Examples of persuasive stories are the documentary films Blackfish (2013) by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, and Before the Flood (2016) by Fisher Stevens. These documentaries strive to change the viewer’s attitudes and opinions in favour of the environment.
When crafting persuasive stories, it is important to not sell it as ‘persuasive’. This is called forewarning. When people are warned that they are going to be exposed to a persuasive message, the persuasion will likely not succeed. Cognitive response studies have shown that individuals create counter-arguments in response to the forewarning, strengthening their opposition to the advocated position (Petty & Cacioppo, 1977). For example: during breakfast, a couple discusses the colour of the walls. The woman leaves for work, but before she leaves, she says: “We will talk about this tonight, and you will see I am right!”. The man realises that she will try to change his mind. His dominant response is to create counter-arguments, in favour of his position. William L. Benoit (1998) studied forewarning and concludes that informing someone about being exposed to a persuasive message, will make that message less persuasive.
It is also important to keep reactance theory in mind, which can occur when someone is heavily pressured to accept a certain view or attitude, limiting their freedom of choice. Storytellers may use reverse psychology to influence someone to choose the opposite of what they request (Brehm, 1966).
Distraction is an unexpected persuasion technique that stimulates persuasion by blocking the dominant cognitive response to a message (Petty et al., 1976). If individuals listen to a message with which they disagree, their dominant response will probably be to mentally counter-argue with the character in the story. If their mind is elsewhere, for example, if the participating individual is laughing about an occurrence in the story, they won’t be able to formulate counter-arguments. Thinking - especially mentally counter arguing - can increase resistance to persuasion (Perloff, 2013). Therefore, environmental (science) communicators could implement a distraction element in their narrative to block dominant cognitive responses from the audience, as distraction enhances persuasion-related outcomes.
This contradicts research by Hamby et al. (2016). Their research claims that distraction - by using a cognitive load - reduces persuasion. The cognitive load theory refers to the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory of the brains. The basic idea is that the capacity in working memory is limited (de Jong, 2010). They argue that distractions could overload the working memory, possibly activate another region of the brain, and therefore diminish transportation. Inserting a cognitive load after the story also reduces retrospective reflection. Retrospective reflection is a mediator of the transportation-persuasion relationship; see figure 1 (Hamby et al., 2016).
Figure 1 (Hamby et al 2016)