Stories and Social Understanding: The Roles of Narrativity, Fictionality, and Literariness

故事和社会理解：叙事性、虚构性和文学性的作用

• 批准号: 503996997
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Markus Appel
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Psychologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/503996997?language=en
• 关键词: Stories; Social; Understanding; Roles; Narrativity

The potential of stories to improve audience members’ social understanding (in terms of mentalizing, empathy/sympathy, schemata, and attitudes) has attracted substantial theoretical and empirical attention. Most researchers in this area discuss the psychological impact of narratives by referring to “literary fiction” or “fictional narratives”, thus conflating narrativity, fictionality, and/or literariness. Empirical research has only begun to address the question which aspects of stories drive their effects: Is the narrative form or the degree of narrativity crucial for stories to have an impact on social understanding? Or is literariness (literary texts vs. genre media) better suited (or even required) to influence social understanding? Does fictionality (non-fiction versus fiction) play a role? The proposed project is meant to gather insight into these three conceptually separate aspects of narrative literary fiction—narrativity, fictionality, and literariness—and examine their distinct roles in fostering social understanding.Our focus in Work Package 1 is on narrativity. We will conduct a meta-analysis to summarize the available experimental evidence for the effects of stories on social understanding, with a focus on the features of the experimental texts that are constitutive for its degree of narrativity (Meta-Analysis 1). We will further conduct a quasi-experimental study (Quasi-Experiment 1) and an experiment (Experiment 2) to examine how textual features tied to narrativity relate to the flow of comprehension, transportation, and empathy/sympathy towards story characters, using naturalistic short stories. In Work Package 2, we will address the role of fictionality, with an emphasis on media choice. Research on the motivated selection of media has demonstrated that people prefer information that is consistent with their attitudes and beliefs and that provides a positive image of the in-group. Given that people are aware of the difference in epistemic status for fictional versus non-fictional stories motivated avoidance should be reduced for stories introduced as fictional. This hypothesis is tested with respect to attitudes and beliefs (Experiment 3) and in-group portrayals (Experiment 4). In Work Package 3, we will examine the relationship of literariness and social understanding. This work package includes a meta-analysis to examine extant evidence (Meta-Analysis 2). Major open research questions concern the particular textual devices that bring about any effects of literariness on social understanding and the processes carrying these effects. Experiments 5 and 6 will examine the influence of literary texts on the activation of vocabulary which is expected to increase mentalizing performance.

故事有可能提高观众的社会理解(在心智、移情/同情、图式和态度方面)，这引起了大量的理论和经验上的关注。这一领域的研究者大多通过提及“文学小说”或“虚构叙事”来讨论叙事的心理影响，从而将叙事性、虚构性和/或文学性混为一谈。实证研究才刚刚开始解决这样一个问题：故事的哪些方面推动了它们的效果：故事对社会理解产生影响的关键是叙事形式还是叙事性程度？或者，文学性(文学文本与流派媒体)是否更适合(甚至需要)影响社会理解？虚构(非虚构与虚构)起作用了吗？拟议的项目旨在深入了解叙事性文学小说的这三个概念上独立的方面-叙事性、虚构性和文学性-并检查它们在促进社会理解方面的不同角色。我们在工作包1中的重点是叙事性。我们将进行元分析，以总结现有的关于故事对社会理解的影响的实验证据，重点是实验文本的特征，这些特征是构成其叙事性程度的因素(元分析1)。我们将进一步进行准实验研究(准实验1)和实验(实验2)，以考察与叙事性有关的文本特征如何与故事人物对故事人物的理解、传输和移情/同情的流动有关，使用自然主义短篇小说。在工作包2中，我们将讨论虚构性的作用，重点是媒体选择。关于有动机地选择媒体的研究表明，人们更喜欢与他们的态度和信念一致的信息，这些信息提供了群体中的积极形象。鉴于人们意识到虚构故事和非虚构故事在认知地位上的差异，作为虚构故事引入的故事应该减少动机回避。这一假设在态度和信念(实验3)和群体描述(实验4)方面进行了检验。在工作包3中，我们将考察文学性和社会理解力的关系。本工作包包括一项元分析，以审查现有证据(元分析2)。主要悬而未决的研究问题涉及文学性对社会理解产生任何影响的特定文本手段以及带来这些影响的过程。实验5和实验6将考察文学文本对词汇激活的影响，这有望提高心智操作。