The Role of Perceived Societal Relevance in Narrative Persuasion

The current manuscript examines the potential utilization of perceived societalrelevance within the narrative persuasion framework. It assesses the influence of perceivedsocietal relevance on related outcomes including attitude change, identification,transportation and self-guarding strategies, and compares it to perceived personal relevance.A randomized online experiment (n = 406) found that perceived societal relevance leads tosimilar persuasion outcomes as perceived personal relevance with minor, albeit meaningful,differences. Narratives that included societal relevance cues resulted in greater attitudechange compared to narratives without cues. The influence on attitudes was mediated viacharacter identification, but not via narrative transportation. Likewise, narratives with societalrelevance cues resulted in less experienced reactance, but the data did not indicate asignificant influence on counterarguing. Additional analyses and results are discussed in themanuscript.