When Narrative Transportation Narrows Attention: Changes in Attentional Focus During Suspenseful Film Viewing

Abstract

The construct of narrative transportation captures the psychological processes that occur when people experience an engaging narrative. Attention is an essential component of this construct: People often report feeling that they have focused attention into a narrative world, and disengaged attention from the physical environment. The goal of our research was to test if people’s attention is captured in a dynamic fashion over the course of narrative experiences. To achieve this goal, we used excerpts from narrative films. One way in which filmmakers command viewers’ attention is by generating suspense, which arises when viewers confront potential negative outcomes. In our experiments, we tested the hypothesis that hot spots, moments at which potential negative outcomes are emphasized, will narrow the viewer’s attentional focus compared to cold spots, moments that do not emphasize negative outcomes. We measured attentional tuning through latencies in reaction time to audio probes as participants viewed suspenseful film excerpts. We also administered post-viewing recognition memory tests for still images taken from hot and cold spots. Across three experiments, participants missed more probes and exhibited slower reaction times during suspenseful hot spots than cold spots. These findings provide evidence for changes in attentional tuning as people view film narratives.

We thank William Wenzel, Jeffrey Lin, Kelsey Peterson, and Zachary Greenberg for assistance in data collection. We also thank Gregory Zelinsky, Antonio Freitas, Jacqueline Reich, and Eric Schumacher for helpful feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Notes

1. For written narratives, we would have had concerns about individual differences in, for example, reading speed (e.g., Wallot, O’Brien, Haussmann, Kloos, & Lyby, 2014).

2. In each experiment, participants also completed the need-for-affect scale (Maio & Esses, 2001). Maio and Esses (2001) created this scale to measure an individual’s general tendency to approach or avoid emotion-inducing situations. For example, an individual with high need-for-affect might enjoy watching emotionally charged dramatic film and television programs, whereas an individual with low need-for-affect might find these types of programs aversive. Appel and Richter (2010) reported that need-for-affect had a positive effect on transportation, and that both need-for-affect and transportation mediated a narrative’s ability to persuade the reader. However, we found no significant correlations between the need-for-affect subscales and any of our other measures, so we will not discuss these data further.

3. We note however that, for all of our experiments, the same significant effects occurred when we retained data from films the participants had previously viewed. This observation is consistent with the theoretical claim that viewers often continue to experience suspense during repeat viewings (Gerrig, 1989, 1993).

4. The attention items on the transportation scale were: “While I was viewing the scene, activity going on in the room around me was on my mind” (reverse-scored); “I was mentally involved in the film scene while viewing it”; and “I found my mind wandering while viewing the scene” (reverse-scored).