Why do ambiguities in a story bother some people and not others?

KI-generierte Grafik eines geschockten MannesHow do such individual differences affect attitudes toward the brands featured in story ads?

Matthias Glaser of University of Salzburg and his co-authors Hans Baumgartner of Penn State University and Yung Kyun Choi of Dongguk University investigated the underlying psychological processes.

Narrative ads tell stories to communicate with consumers; the persuasive power of narrative ads depends on whether they succeed in transporting viewers into their story world. Previous research has shown that subjective comprehension promotes transportation, which in turn improves brand attitudes, and that a strong link between the product and the story enhances subjective comprehension. We test this extended transportation-imagery model in two studies conducted in a Western European and an East Asian country and provide evidence for its (cross-cultural) generalizability. We also propose that individual differences in need for closure (people’s tolerance for ambiguity and desire for definitive answers) moderate the relationship between subjective comprehension and transportation and, as a result, influence the extent to which a strong product-story link increases product attitudes via subjective comprehension and transportation. Support for the predicted moderator effect is obtained primarily in the Western European country.

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Link to article:   https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/727833

Image credit: AI generated image using Midjourney by Matthias Glaser