Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 127
Absorbed is not persuaded
Attention imagery and emotion can strengthen a story’s influence without establishing its truth or its effect
Premise
A story can influence judgment without presenting an explicit list of claims and evidence. When an audience becomes absorbed, attention narrows, emotions intensify, and an imagined world becomes temporarily more salient than the immediate environment. Narrative Transportation Theory explains this state and its role in story-consistent beliefs and evaluations.
Melanie Green and Timothy Brock defined transportation as a convergent process involving attention, mental imagery, and affect. Their 2000 work also introduced a measurement approach. For executives, the important distinction is between an experience and an outcome. A compelling story may transport without persuading, while a belief may change through another route.
What the model is: Narrative Transportation Theory in Knowledge →
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What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Theories & Explanatory Models
Explains how or why a communication process works by relating mechanisms, conditions or variables. Its value is an account that can guide inquiry into what produces an outcome, rather than a name for the outcome alone.