Abstract

This project investigates the mental processes people use to process media stories and investigates how those stories influence beliefs, attitudes, and decision making

Issue

While stories have long been recognized as playing an important role in human societies, research on the psychology and social psychology of narrative has greatly accelerated in the last decade. This research focuses on a wide range of topics including the mental processing of stories, the impact of stories on memory, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, the role stories play in our understanding and interpretation of the world, and the role stories play in our understanding of ourselves. This focus includes works of art, entertainment, news, and persuasion. This knowledge can be applied to strategic communication in health, the environment, the workplace, advertising and other venues.

Response

We investigated how people make realism judgments about the stories they see in the media, including news, entertainment and advertising. Our studies show that people make realism judgments as they process stories. These judgments depend heavily on judgments of the typicality of the events and people in the stories, but can also be influenced by a variety of other factors including familiarity. Realism judgments influence the enjoyment of a media story in some cases. Realism judgments are also influenced by the social judgments (attribution) we make about the people in the stories, the outcome of the stories, and the emotions expressed in the stories. In addition the amount of mental capacity allocated to processing the form of the story has a complex relationship with realism judgments. Recent studies have looked at how these judgments are related to judgments about women's body image and about ethnic groups. We are now starting to investigate other impacts of these judgments including how the realism of media presentation influence science literacy and how realistic stories might be used in more effective health messages.

Impact

This is basic research aimed at improving health and environmental messages.

Funding Sources

• Federal Formula Funds - Research (e.g., Hatch, McIntire-Stennis, Animal Health)

Collaborators

• University of Indiana-Bloomington, Dept. of Telecommunication

Key Personnel

• Michael A. Shapiro, Associate Professor, Cornell
• T. Makana Chock, Lecturer, Department of Telecommunication, University of Indiana
• Julia Fox, Assistant Professor, Department of Telecommunication, University of Indiana
• Claudia Barriga, Graduate Student, Cornell
• Feng Shen, Graduate Student, Cornell
• Laura Weisbein, Graduate Student, Cornell
• Rayna Jhavari, Graduate Student, Cornell
• Samuel Bradley, Graduate Student, University of Indiana
• Jordana Beren, CPRS, Cornell
• Courtney Silver, CPRS, Cornell