What if two involving stories contradict each other? Transportation and robustness of narrative persuasion

This study investigated the relationship between individual differences in narrative transportation and attitude robustness. A total of 840 respondents participated in a web survey. In the first phase of the survey, respondents indicated their attitudes toward social issues after reading supporting or opposing texts with narrative and persuasive messages. After two weeks, the same participants read another text expressing the opposite perspective on the same issue, and again indicated their attitudes. Attitude robustness (i.e., degree of change in attitude between phases) was significantly predicted by transportability and mediated by transportation-related concepts of situational involvement. Additionally, whereas situational involvement with narrative text was predicted by transportability, situational involvement with persuasive text was consistently predicted by self-involvement with the issues. Implications of the findings for narrative transportation and persuasion research and limitations of the study are discussed.