Does it matter who tells the story? An experimental test of the effects of narrative perspective on credibility, identification, and persuasion

ABSTRACT

This experimental study explores the effects of narrative perspective on the outcomes related to health testimonials. One testimonial was presented to each respondent regarding one of the four topics (AIDS, lung cancer, gum disease, and alcoholism) and in one of the three perspectives (patient, parent, and doctor). Respondents (n = 967) were then asked to report on various reactions to the video, including credibility, identification, and story-consistent attitudes. Results show that a testimonial narrated from the doctors’ perspective, as compared to patient perspective, produced greater credibility but less identification, affecting persuasion in opposite ways. These findings are discussed in the context of message design choices.

KEYWORDS:

• Persuasion
• narratives
• testimonials
• credibility
• narrative perspective

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. The data for this study were originally collected for a larger study that examined how narrative perspective and type of disease (the level of risk and stigma) interacted to affect persuasion. For the large study (that has not been published) we produced 24 videos and collected data from close to 1300 respondents. The study was conducted in two waves with some adjustments made before the second wave based on the results of the first wave, including adding a measure of credibility absent from the first wave. The present study uses the data of the larger study for the second wave only and is thus based on the same participants and stimuli but is asking a very different theoretical question.

2. The model was run with perspective as a multicategorical variable and the pattern of results was very much identical. For clarity of reporting the binary option was chosen.

Additional information

Funding

Data for this study were collected using funding by the Israel Science Foundation to the first author (Grant 772/18).

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Cohen

Jonathan Cohen (PhD, 1995 University of Southern California) is a Professor at the University of Haifa, in Israel. His research interests include persuasion and narrative persuasion, identification and parasocial relationships and media effects more generally.

Erga Atad

Erga Atad, (Ph.D., Tel-Aviv University) is a lecturer at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy at the Reichman University (IDC), Herzliya. Her research focuses on persuasion, digital media, media psychology, and political communication.

Tomer Mevorach

Tomer Mevorach (M.D., Hebrew University, is a physician scientist at the Eitan lab in mthe Tel Aviv edical center. He has completed his Child and adolescent Psychiatry residency at Schneider Children Medical Center in Israel, and is a Doctoral Instructor at the Tel Aviv University Medical School. His research focuses on neuro-psychiatric syndromes, suicidality and illness perspectives in mental health.