Watching Videos on a Smartphone: Do Small Screens Impair Narrative Transportation?

ABSTRACT

Smartphones are a preferred platform to access audiovisual stories. Prior theory and research suggest that using smaller screens could lead to a shallower narrative experience. In three experiments we examined the influence of screen size (smartphone vs. computer screen) on the experience of being transported into the world of the story (narrative transportation). We further examined interaction effects with manipulations meant to change transportation by means of reviews (Experiment 1, N = 120), consistency of main character information (Experiment 2, N = 139), and prior information meant to facilitate comprehension (Experiment 3, N = 129). Because our series of studies involved theoretically and practically relevant null hypotheses (i.e., screen size does not influence transportation), we added Bayes factor analyses to standard frequentist statistics. A mini meta-analysis was conducted to summarize the results. Taken together, the three experiments indicate that smaller screen size does not impair narrative transportation. Implications and future research are discussed.

Acknowledgments

We thank Anna Anastasopoulos, Anna Thoma, Anne-Katrin Nagel, Bernadette Motschenbacher, Carolin Schwärzler, Helena Karl, Isabel Öchsler, Jana Graber, Jiyeon Yeo, Larissa Volk, Laura Erk, Lea-Teresa Luzner, Lisa Bäuerle, Lisa Zink, Lorena Scheurich, Nadine Ley, Nele Friedrich, Paula Cimander, Pauline Zahn, Sabrina Beck, Secil Kilicarslan, Teresa Schell, Theresa Politt, and Tina Schwabe for their support in conducting the experiments.

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/da827.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/da827.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementry material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Experimenters in the primary studies underlying the meta-analysis by Cummings and Bailenson (2016) tried to establish an identical distance in all conditions. Possibly, participants leaned forward and reduced their viewing distance in the respective smaller screen condition.

2. In addition to transportation, we assessed negative, positive, and meaningful affect, corniness, and sexism (please refer to online supplement for details).

3. The editing process led to a suboptimal sound quality that was unintended. The sound was the same in both screen size conditions.

4. The exclusion of participants was almost equally distributed across the four conditions, χ(3, n = 165) = 4.36, p = .232, Cramer’s V = .16. The rather unequal sample sizes can be attributed to the randomization results of the software.

5. One participant was excluded because of an outlier value, i.e. a 9.7 inch smartphone display.