Death Narratives, Negative Emotion, and Counterarguing: Testing Fear, Anger, and Sadness as Mechanisms of Effect.

ABSTRACT: Narrative messaging research has demonstrated that story outcome (e.g., whether the main character lives or dies) can impact audience behavior, but more research explicating and testing mechanistic pathways is needed. The current study tests fear, anger, and sadness as mechanisms of persuasion, assessing effects on counterarguing, reading flow, and behavioral intention. The current study utilized a 2 (story outcome: death vs. survivor) × 4 (story character: Marla, Erin, Don, and Ray) between-participants experiment (N = 735) to test the effect of story outcome on behavioral intentions via discrete emotion. Death narratives generated greater fear, anger, and sadness. Fear was related to greater behavioral intention and reading flow and diminished counterarguing. Sadness had the oppos

SUBMITTER: Lillie HM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8631252 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature