The Experience of Psychological Transportation: The Role of Cognitive Energy Exertion and Focus during Exposure to Narratives
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Narratives vicariously take people to new places, introduce them to new people, and provide them with new experiences.When exposed to narratives, people may become immersed in these narrative worlds, an experience that Green and Brock (2000, 2002) called psychological transportation.While they provided three domains of antecedents for transportation in their transportation-imagery model (i.e., individual characteristics, narrative characteristics, and context characteristics), it is not clear why such antecedents may contribute to transportation.Thus, the current set of studies takes multiple approaches to demonstrate two critical elements of the transportation experience.First, based on Green and Brock's (2000) own operationalization of transportation, I propose that one key element of the experience is the expenditure of cognitive energy.Such cognitive resources are directed towards attending to the narrative, developing mental images relevant to the narrative, and intensifying emotional responses.Consequently, variables that influence the amount of energy that people use during narrative exposure can impact transportation; in the current set of studies, I examine variables such as task difficulty, ego-depletion, and uncertainty reduction.However, considering previous distinctions between transportation and elaboration, described by Green and Brock (2000), I also suggest that the level of energy alone does not explain the phenomenological experience of transportation.Thus, the second key element of the transportation experience is the focus of energy expended.Based on previous work in iii emotions and motivation (e.g., Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2008), under an approach motivation, positive affect may narrow attention.From such previous work, I suggest that a motivation which makes the expenditure of effort desirable takes that exerted energy and focuses it on the activity, or in the case of transportation, the narrative.As I explore in the current set of studies, when expending effort is desirable (as in the case of those high in need for cognition; Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) or when it is in the service of growth, such as for self-expansion or learning goals.Together the six studies presented provide preliminary evidence for the roles of energy exertion and focus in the experience of transportation.
Author: Randi Shedlosky
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Topic: Media Influence and Health
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1033159470