Social Comparison in Narrative Persuasion: When Struggling Characters Serve as Motivation

Abstract

The effects of gain and loss frames have been examined extensively, but there can be more nuance in health narratives. Experimental research with narratives has not yet thoroughly investigated all combinations of protagonists’ health recommendation compliance and story outcomes. People engaging in healthy behaviors may experience negative outcomes. The current study utilized social cognitive theory to investigate protagonist self-efficacy (low vs. high) and social comparison self-evaluation as moderators of story outcome (positive vs. negative) with sleep and alcohol topics. A three-way interaction indicated that, for the alcohol narratives, the more participants compared themselves to low self-efficacy, negative ending protagonists (vs. low self-efficacy, positive ending protagonists), the greater their positive change in alcohol self-efficacy.

Keywords:

• Message framing; narrative persuasion; self-efficacy; social cognitive; theory; social comparison

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08934215.2023.2278486

Notes

1. A priori power analysis using GPower version 3.1 (Faul et al., 2007) with power (1- β) of 0.80 and α = .05, two-tailed, produced a sample size of 175 participants for a statistical significance level of p = .05.

2. Data was collected in 2020, separate from Robinson and Knobloch-Westerwick (2022).

3. Fifty-two participants were randomly assigned to the high self-efficacy, positive ending condition; 56 to the high self-efficacy, negative ending condition; 57 to the low self-efficacy, positive ending condition; and 57 to the low self-efficacy, negative ending condition.

4. Per Trauzettel-Klosinski and Dietz (2012) and Frazer et al. (2021), participants who spent less than 7 minutes (2 SD from the mean; n = 91) or over 2 hours (n = 2) were considered outliers, suggesting insufficient attention. Those who spent 100 seconds or less reading (n = 16) were removed from sleep analyses, representing the lowest 7% of reading times.

5. For education, participants had completed a high school degree or equivalent (12.2%), some college or an associate’s degree (32.9%), and a bachelor’s degree or higher (55.0%). For employment, participants were not currently working or working part-time (18.5%), working full-time (64.4%), students (0.9%), and self-employed (16.2%). For relationship status, participants were single (44.1%), widowed (2.3%), married (43.7%), and divorced or separated (9.9%).

6. Sleep item reliability was low, possibly because items captured behaviors, not perceptions, which are less likely to be correlated (Robinson & Knobloch-Westerwick, 2022). Test-retest reliability demonstrated that the scale was consistent over time with a high correlation between T1 and T2 (r = .81, p < .001; Boateng et al., 2018).

7. A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted with participant alcohol and sleep self-efficacy measures and story topic (alcohol and sleep) as within-subjects factors. Story outcome and protagonist self-efficacy were between-subjects factors. The interaction of time, story topic, and protagonist self-efficacy was not significant, F(1, 198) = .00, p = .996. The interaction of time, story topic, and story outcome was not significant, F(1, 198) = .20, p = .89. The interaction of time, story topic, story outcome, and protagonist self-efficacy was not significant, F(1, 198) = .22, p = .64.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Penn State Fayette Academic Affairs Department.