Transportation Theory

MELANIE C. GREEN
University at Buffalo, USA

MARC SESTIR
University of Central Arkansas, USA

Introduction

Many people have had experiences in which they become so deeply engaged in a story or
fictional world that they feel swept away by it: Their emotions and thoughts are strongly
affected by events that take place solely on a page or a screen. This experience of absorp-
tion or immersion into narratives has been labeled narrative transportation (Green &
Brock, 2000) and is typified by a sense of personal presence in the narrative, with the
reader, listener, or viewer vicariously experiencing the characteristics and events of a
narrative “world” as if they were real. Transported readers may experience vivid men-
tal images, feel strong emotions in response to story events, and lose track of time.
Transportation into a narrative world is defined as an integrative melding of cognitive,
emotional, and imagery engagement in a story.
Transportation is a pleasant state: The billions of dollars spent each year on movies and
novels attest to individuals’ desire to leave reality behind and experience other worlds.
However, individuals are frequently transported into narratives that evoke negative emo-
tions (fear, sadness, or anger). The enjoyment of a transportation experience does not
necessarily stem from the particular emotions evoked by a narrative but from the process
of temporarily leaving one’s own reality behind (Green, Brock, & Kaufman, 2004).
Transportation is not only a powerful experience in the moment but also a key
moderator for the influence of media consumption on those who consume it.
Individuals who are more transported into narratives are also more likely to experience
effects ranging from simple enjoyment to changes in specific beliefs to alterations in
fundamental worldviews, and even shifts in self-concept. Gaining an understanding of
the predictors, characteristics, and outcomes of transportation is in many ways gaining
an understanding of the appeal and impact of media content itself.

Scope of transportation

Although individuals may become engaged in nonnarrative media (e.g., science

programs), transportation per se occurs primarily in response to narrative communi-
cations. Narratives present a sequence of connected events and characters, typically in

The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects.

Patrick Rössler (Editor-in-Chief), Cynthia A. Hoffner, and Liesbet van Zoonen (Associate Editors).
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118783764.wbieme0083
2 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y

a causal chain that moves from beginning to middle to end (e.g., Kreuter et al., 2007).
Narratives generally contain the elements of character (a person, people, or other
types of being who experience the events of the narrative), temporality (events occur
over time), and causality (events lead to one another in a cause-and-effect sequence).
In contrast, nonnarrative persuasive messages consist of propositions or evidence in
support of a claim. Narrative transportation can occur in any medium. Individuals
may be transported into spoken, written, audio, video, or multimedia stories.
Similarly, individuals can be transported into both fictional stories (such as novels or
sitcoms) and nonfiction stories (such as personal testimonials or documentaries; Green
& Brock, 2000). Transportation does not depend on whether a narrative reflects real-
world truth; rather, individuals appear to pay attention to plausibility rather than strict
accuracy in their narratives. Indeed, labeling a story as fiction can be a cue to readers to
engage in more immersive, less critical processing. Further, a number of studies from
cognitive psychology, social psychology, and communication suggest that fiction can
often be as persuasive as fact (e.g., Strange & Leung, 1999).

Individual differences

There are individual differences in the tendency for individuals to become transported;
some people have consistent difficulty becoming immersed in narrative content
whereas others are easily and readily transported. This tendency has been labeled
transportability, or the extent to which individuals typically become transported into
stories (Mazzocco et al., 2010). Individuals who are more transportable also tend
to be more influenced by narratives (compared to individuals who are less trans-
portable). Transportability research (Dal Cin, Zanna, & Fong, 2004) has found that
transportability predicted endorsement of story-consistent beliefs across a variety of
modalities, genres, and narrative quality. The link between transportability and belief
change was wholly mediated by level of transportation, demonstrating a clear link
between transportability and transportation and the cognitive outcomes associated
with transportation.
Transportable individuals tend to find themselves easily immersed in a variety of
content, but some research has found that levels of transportability can vary across dif-
ferent forms of narrative content; for example, a consumer might become “lost” in a
book with ease but find themselves distracted and detached from movies.
There does not, however, appear to be a consistent gender difference in transportation
propensity. Men and women can become equally immersed in stories, although certain
types of stories may appeal more to one gender than another (e.g., the audience for
romance novels tends to be largely female; the reverse may be true for westerns).
Another trait that can influence transportation is the need for affect, defined as the
extent to which an individual will approach or avoid emotion-inducing situations. Sto-
ries often affect people emotionally. Individuals higher in need for affect are more drawn
in to real-life, emotional events and are also more willing to expose themselves to narra-
tives that have emotional content. One set of studies showed that higher transportation
among individuals with a high need for affect could lead to higher levels of endorsement
 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y 3

for narrative-relevant attitudes (Appel & Richter, 2010), and this effect was stronger for
highly emotional stories.

Measurement and manipulation

Transportation has been measured with a 15-item self-report scale (Green & Brock,
2000). The original version of the scale contained 11 general items and 4 mental imagery
items specific to characters in the story (e.g., “I had a vivid mental image of Jane, the
main character”). The number of imagery items can be tailored to the number of main
characters or settings in the story. Participants answer each item on a scale of 1 (not at
all) to 7 (very much). Example items include “I was emotionally involved in the narra-
tive while reading it” and “I could picture myself in the scene of the events described in
the narrative.” The items tap the cognitive, emotional, and mental imagery components
of transportation. This scale is widely used and has demonstrated good validity. More
recently, a six-item brief version of the scale has been developed (Appel et al., 2015).
The short version shows strong psychometric properties and may be especially useful
for field research where long questionnaires are impractical.
Researchers have also attempted to measure transportability; Dal Cin, Zanna, and
Fong (2004) modified the Transportation Scale described above to assess transporta-
bility as a consistent trait. Two versions of the Transportability Scale were created, one
for visual narrative formats such as television and movies and the other for written
narrative formats, primarily books. Both scales were strongly linked with transporta-
tion and significantly correlated with one another, indicating that, despite occasionally
varying by media modality, transportability level does seem to be a persistent individual
tendency.
Not all narratives or all media use situations create the experience of transporta-
tion. Rather, aspects of the individual, the narrative, and the situation can all influence
the extent of transportation into a narrative. Typical studies investigating the effects of
transportation into a narrative world expose individuals to a story and then ask them to
rate their transportation into it (using the Transportation Scale described above; Green
& Brock, 2000). Some studies have included manipulated differences, described below,
and others have included measured differences, such as preexisting reader familiarity
with settings or themes described in the story. Typical dependent measures, in addition
to measured transportation, may include evaluations of the characters, story recall, or
attitude and behavior intention measures.
In addition to measuring naturally occurring transportation responses, researchers
have manipulated transportation in various ways. Transportation can be affected by the
instructions given to readers. For example, instructions to focus on the surface aspects
of a story, such as difficulty and grammar, produce lower transportation. The quality or
craftsmanship of a text also influences transportation. Well-written and well-structured
texts are more transporting, and disrupting the logical order of a text can reduce trans-
portation. Bestsellers or classic texts are rated as more transporting than stories created
by psychologists for experiments. Kreuter and colleagues (2007) outlined a number of
4 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y

elements that can contribute to narrative quality, including plot coherence, character
development, emotional intensity, cultural competence, and production values.
Preexisting familiarity with an aspect of the narrative world can also increase trans-
portation. For example, in one study, individuals who reported greater knowledge of the
fraternity and sorority system were more transported into a story about a man attend-
ing his fraternity reunion. This type of increase in transportation may be in part due to
feelings of mental fluency; if particular ideas are already activated in readers’ minds, the
process of simulating the narrative world becomes easier. This ease in processing can
contribute to the feeling of being immersed in a story.

Transportation and belief change

Individuals who are transported into a narrative are more likely to change their atti-
tudes, beliefs, and behaviors in response to events or claims in a story (see Van Laer et al.,
2014, for a review). Narrative transportation effects on beliefs have been demonstrated
in a variety of domains, including social issues, health topics, and consumer products.
Because people associate stories with entertainment and pleasure, narratives may be
especially helpful in domains in which individuals may be likely to resist persuasion or
in which nonnarrative messages may be difficult to comprehend or threatening. In some
cases, narratives may be a more subtle form of persuasion; stories may not be perceived
as persuasive attempts (e.g., viewers might form ideas about the criminal justice system
from watching crime dramas, but these viewers would not necessarily think that the
programs were intended to persuade them, or even believe that the programs affected
their real-world views).
Transportation aids in belief change in several ways. First, transportation reduces
counterarguing about the issues raised in a story. A sense of immersion tends to reduce
skepticism and disagreement with the events and themes depicted. Next, transporta-
tion may affect beliefs by making narrative events seem more like personal experience,
or more directly related to the consumer’s actual personal experience. If a reader or
viewer feels as if he or she has been part of the narrative’s events, the lessons implied by
those events may seem more powerful. Finally, transportation can lead to identification
or other types of connections to characters. This attachment to characters, including
emotional responses such as warmth and empathy, may play a critical role in narrative-
based belief change. If a viewer likes or identifies with a character, statements made by
the character or implications of events experienced by that character may carry spe-
cial weight. Further, the mental imagery created by stories can lead to greater story
impact.
In early studies on transportation, transported readers identified fewer “false notes”
in a narrative, indicating greater acceptance of story content (Green & Brock, 2000).
Research on mental correction suggests that individuals need both motivation and abil-
ity to reject information that they do not wish to believe. Transportation may reduce
individuals’ ability to counterargue assertions or events in a story because the reader’s
cognitive capacity is committed to imagining story events. Transportation may also
 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y 5

reduce motivation to counterargue. Transportation is typically a pleasurable experi-

ence, and interrupting this experience to critique the narrative or dispute the author’s
claims detracts from story enjoyment. Even when individuals have finished a story, they
may be unlikely to go back and critically evaluate story events, especially if they do not
believe that the story has influenced them.
It may also be difficult to discount narratives because stories tend to be concrete,
presenting the experience of particular (real or fictional) others rather than abstraction
claims. Indeed, people tend to generalize from a narrative exemplar even when the pre-
sented case is not typical (Strange & Leung, 1999), especially if they are engaged in the
narrative.
To the extent that readers become transported into narratives, they tend to react
to events in the narrative as if they were real, increasing the likelihood of emo-
tional responding. Conversely, aspects of the narrative that are strikingly unrealistic
or inconsistent with the rules of the narrative world can disrupt the reader’s or
viewer’s formation of a mental model and thus reduce engagement with the narrative
(Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009).
An additional component of transportation is story-guided visual imagery. The
transportation-imagery model (Green & Brock, 2002) highlights the role of visual
imagery in transportation-based belief change. According to this model, images take
on meaning from their role in a story. The transportation experience links the vivid
images with beliefs implied by the story. This linkage may be one basis for the power
of narrative-based persuasion. It may be difficult for verbal or statistical arguments to
overcome the power of a mental image; even though a person may know rationally that
airplane travel is quite safe, he may not be able to shake the mental picture of a plane
crash (in a manner similar to that described by the availability heuristic). Additionally,
over time, recalling the image may reevoke large parts of the original communication,
thus reinforcing the story-relevant beliefs. An implication of this perspective is that
individuals’ imagery ability and situations that allow for the formation of rich mental
images increase the persuasive power of a story.
Many studies of narrative-based attitude change have examined only immediate
effects. Although research on the effects of transporting narratives over time is still
underrepresented, initial studies are promising in demonstrating both persistence
effects and sleeper effects (i.e., when a message becomes more effective over time).
Theoretically, transporting narratives should lead to attitude change that persists over
time, because they create both cognitive and emotional impacts as well as linking
attitudes to vivid mental images.

Transportation across domains of attitudes and behavior

The effectiveness of narrative transportation has been demonstrated in health domains.

Transporting narratives can evoke self-relevant emotions, which can, in turn, cause peo-
ple to perceive themselves as more at risk of an injury or disease and therefore more
likely to protect themselves against it (Dunlop, Wakefield, & Kashima, 2010). Simi-
larly, when directly pitted against statistical data, narrative testimonials can be more
6 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y

persuasive than the statistics at raising people’s personal risk perception and inducing a
desire to behave self-protectively. Narratives can be effective in promoting screening
or prevention behaviors; for example, one study suggested that video stories can be
an effective means of helping high-risk individuals to quit smoking. Individuals who
were more transported were more likely to report attempts to quit smoking at a 2-week
follow-up.
Consumer psychology and marketing researchers have shown that transporting nar-
ratives can be effective in advertising contexts. Transportation (or transportation-like
effects) can occur in very brief persuasive appeals. For example, Escalas (2004) found
that, when an ad directed readers to imagine themselves using a product, their liking
of that product was not affected by the quality of argument in favor of the product.
Instead, these readers were transported into their own imagined simulation, leading to
a decrease in critical thoughts about the product and an increase in positive feelings
about the product. Work has extended the exploration of transportation to consider
advertisements that include particularly unusual images, ones that encourage viewers to
create a story in their minds. Phillips and McQuarrie (2010) label these types of images,
which are often bizarre and even disgusting, as grotesque and propose that part of their
effectiveness lies in their transporting nature.
Advertising studies have also investigated the timing of ads relative to other trans-
porting content (e.g., TV shows). When an advertisement interrupted a highly trans-
porting narrative, people formed more negative attitudes toward the advertised product
(Wang & Calder, 2006). However, when an ad accompanied a transporting story with-
out interrupting the experience (e.g., appeared after the story was finished), people liked
the product more than when they were not transported.
Transporting narratives can affect individuals’ views about social issues. One set of
studies examined the effects of narrative and nonnarrative messages about affirmative
action and about acceptance of homosexuality (Mazzocco et al., 2010). The results sug-
gested that narratives are especially effective in this domain, particularly with individ-
uals who are dispositionally likely to be transported into narratives. Narratives appear
to be particularly useful in changing individuals’ feelings of warmth and empathy, the
emotional basis of these social attitudes.
Over time, transportation may contribute to cultivation effects, in which individu-
als’ beliefs come to more closely resemble the vision of the world portrayed in popular
media content rather than the real world (e.g., TV shows higher rates of crime and
divorce than exist in real life). For example, TV narratives about controversial contem-
porary issues such as the death penalty have been shown to reduce resistance to attitude
change that stems from prior liberal or conservative ideology. Transported individuals
may be especially likely to integrate televised portrayals into their real lives.
Although relatively little research has explored the effect of narratives on implicit
attitudes, narrative transportation should affect these types of attitudes as well. Implicit
attitudes are unconscious associations that individuals have with an attitude object.
Individuals may not be aware of these attitudes and cannot control their activation.
However, such attitudes can affect behavior. For example, evidence from a study
of popular movies suggests that stories can indeed alter implicit attitudes toward
smoking.
 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y 7

Related topics

The subjective experience of being fully engaged in an experience and losing track of
time that occurs in transportation resembles the concept of flow. Flow is a type of opti-
mal experience marked by effortless, deep concentration, which happens most often
when the challenge of the activity matches the skills of the individual. Although much
flow research focuses on relatively active or skilled pursuits (sports, music), reading
has been highlighted as one of the most frequent flow activities engaged in by people
around the world. However, flow is a more general term for absorption or engage-
ment in an activity, and transportation highlights aspects more specific to narrative
worlds, such as emotional connections, mental imagery, and potential real-world belief
change. Additionally, flow experiences generally connote active engagement in an activ-
ity, whereas transportation can occur via more passive consumption, such as watching
a TV show.
Transportation is also related to empathy. Although empathy is an interpersonal
construct and transportation relates to a person’s interaction with a text, both con-
structs involve taking the perspective of another person. Additionally, both concepts
have an affective component, such that feelings are evoked in response to events that
may not personally involve the individual. Davis’s (1980) Interpersonal Reactivity
Index, a widely used measure of empathy, contains four subscales (perspective taking,
empathic concern, personal distress, and fantasy) that tap different components of
dispositional empathy. Research has found significant correlations with the trans-
portation scale and three of the four subscales of Davis’s index. The fantasy scale
measures the tendency to transpose oneself into fictional situations, and is theoretically
and empirically the most closely related to transportation. The one uncorrelated
subscale, personal distress, consists of items that assess individuals’ tendencies to
become distressed in emergency situations. Since narratives rarely involve the need
for immediate response, personal distress items are the least theoretically relevant to
transportation.
Busselle and Bilandzic (2009) have proposed an alternative measure of story immer-
sion that they have termed narrative engagement. Although the overall measure is
strongly correlated with transportation, the goal of this measure is to examine separate
components of narrative engagement. It has four dimensions: narrative presence,
emotional engagement, attentional focus, and narrative understanding.
Traditional theories of persuasion, most specifically the elaboration likelihood
model and the heuristic systematic model, have focused on two routes to persuasion:
one requiring mental effort and involving careful consideration of a persuasive
attempt (high elaboration) and the other occurring through a less thoughtful route
of heuristics and the influence of peripheral details (low elaboration). Despite the
ubiquity of these models, narrative transportation does not fit cleanly into them. Both
the transportation-imagery model (Green & Brock, 2002) and Slater and Rouner’s
(2002) extended elaboration likelihood model have highlighted the different processes
involved in narrative persuasion versus traditional rhetorical or argument-based
persuasion. Most importantly, elaboration is primarily an evaluative, critical mode of
thinking about a text, whereas transportation is an immersive way of thinking about
8 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y

a text. Additionally, two of the most reliable ways of predicting high elaboration are
when a persuasive appeal involves issues that are highly relevant to the listener and
when a listener is high in an individual difference called need for cognition (enjoyment
of thinking). These predictors are less relevant for transportation generally. However,
as discussed below, high need for cognition may aid transportation in certain contexts,
particularly when narratives require greater effort (e.g., text as compared to print;
interactive narratives that allow reader participation).

Transportation and connection to characters

Transportation is seen as one key aspect of response to a mediated narrative; however,

several other factors can also be relevant to the narrative process, particularly regarding
the perceived realism of the narrative content. Two of the most thoroughly studied and
theoretically meaningful factors are identification and parasocial interaction.
Identification, or the process of subjectively “becoming” or seeing oneself as another
individual, does not require narrative content to occur but has been found to play a
major role in the consumption of narrative content. When narrative consumers identify
with a character, they will frequently react to that character’s experiences as if they are
happening to the consumer, an experience that resembles a more focused version of the
more holistic immersion typified by transportation.
Identification is considered to be a primary moderator in the acquisition of behavior
described by social learning theory, where a viewer of behavior is likely to mimic that
behavior based on level of identification with the role model as well as the positive or
negative consequences of the behavior. While social learning does not require narrative
content or media to occur, behavioral mimicry is of great concern to media researchers,
as it is central to many of the most problematic consequences of consumption, such
as the adoption of aggressive behavior portrayed in media content, as well as many
beneficial consequences, such as the adoption of healthy or prosocial behaviors.
Parasocial interaction is superficially similar to identification in that it involves the
perceived realism of an individual unknown to the consumer. But, rather than transpose
the self with the other individual, the individual is still viewed as a distinct entity, but
is “interacted” with as if the consumer had an actual social relationship with the char-
acter. Over time, frequent parasocial interaction with the same individual can lead to
viewing that individual as a friend, romantic interest, enemy, or role model. Parasocial
interaction is an inherently asymmetrical relationship, where one party is essentially
completely unaware of the other; it subjectively “levels the playing field,” giving the
unaware party a more equal standing in the mental life of the media consumer. Like
identification, parasocial interaction does not require a fictional character, but instead
the perception of realism is applied over an inherently fictitious or one-sided inter-
action. Unlike identification, parasocial interaction may create direct mimicry or the
opposite—behavioral change in opposition to that displayed by a character, particularly
if that character is disliked.
Transportation, identification, and parasocial interaction frequently cooccur, but
they are distinct concepts that can be present in isolation. However, all share one
 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y 9

key factor in the context of media consumption: narrative content, whether fictional
or based in fact, is interpreted and responded to as if it were part of the real-world
experiences of the consumer. This can occur in spite of the consumer consciously
recognizing this is not so. Perceived realism is a major factor in the intensity of
cognitive, affective, and behavioral media effects, and transportation, identification,
and parasocial interaction are key facets of that verisimilitude.

Self-concept

Transportation has consistently been found to produce narrative-consistent persuasion

in media consumers, but it may even create temporary changes in the accessibility of
self-concept. A series of studies (Sestir & Green, 2010) presented participants with brief
video clips of characters displaying strong personality traits, while transportation and
identification were manipulated. Measures of reaction time indicated temporary shifts
in the accessibility of traits displayed by the character—accessibility increased when the
trait was initially seen as self-descriptive and decreased when it was not.
Additionally, some traits showed a crossover pattern—changing from non-
self-descriptive to self-descriptive when displayed by the character. These effects
consistently emerged when character identification was high, but only the crossover
effects were significant under high transportation. Nonetheless, this provides an initial
indicator that transportation is influential even on attitudes as central as the consumer’s
self-concept, causing traits displayed by characters to alter the relative accessibility of
those traits in the consumer’s beliefs about himself or herself, even with brief exposure.
Further research has found transportation moderates the influence of a narrative on
the gender identity of women, with transported women scoring higher on a measure of
femininity after reading a first-person narrative describing the life of a young mother.
Finding these results on a self-report measure indicates that the impact of narratives
on self-concept may not be restricted to simple accessibility but can even influence a
conscious sense of self as well.
Transportation can open the doors to exploring other possible selves. Possible selves
are those that individuals might become, wish to become, or fear becoming. The reper-
toire of possible selves is influenced by social context, and narrative worlds can provide
additional sources of influence beyond the individual’s immediate social world. Narra-
tive worlds have the unique benefit of providing simulations of alternative personalities,
realities, and actions without any real cost to the reader. Stories also provide an orga-
nized and concrete means of simulating new lives; individuals can learn from authors
instead of or in addition to their own imagined future lives.
One way in which a narrative might prompt self-examination and change is by
reminding readers of their experiences that relate to those in the narrative. Strange and
Leung (1999) highlighted the role of remindings in narrative impact. Individuals who
were more immersed in a story showed greater generalization of the beliefs implied by
the story but, additionally, whether or not the story brought to mind events from the
readers’ real lives seemed to be important in determining narrative impact.
10 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y

Therapeutic uses

One potentially fruitful, but largely unexplored, application of transportation principles

involves biblio- and cinematherapy, the use of narratives in books and movies to effect
cognitive, emotional, and/or behavioral change in therapeutic clients. Such narrative-
based therapies have been shown to be effectual in areas as diverse as depression, anxiety,
alcoholism, self-esteem, and adolescent aggression. Meta-analytic reviews (e.g., Marrs,
1995) have consistently found narrative-based therapy approaches to be about as effec-
tive as traditional therapy. Narrative therapy is seen as beneficial to clients by presenting
ideas and strategies for therapeutic progress concretely and saliently displayed in a nar-
rative setting. Clients may find such a presentation much more easily digestible than the
frequently abstract and introspective approach used in more conventional therapies.
While transportation, either situationally or as an individual difference, has not been
explicitly linked to biblio- and cinematherapy effects, there is substantial evidence to
support a major role for transportation in narrative-based attitude change. As a key
moderator of the influence of narratives broadly, it is likely that transportation, both in
terms of individual differences and narrative characteristics that elicit it, is a primary
determinant of the impact of specific narrative-based therapies. Research to examine
the role of transportation in cinematherapy is underway as of 2016.

Interactive narratives

Interactive narratives have been defined as stories in which the reader has opportunities
to decide the direction of the narrative, often at a key plot point. Interactive narratives
are best understood when contrasted with traditional narratives. In traditional
narratives, the story’s plot moves from beginning to end without input from the reader.
In contrast, interactive narratives typically present introductory materials (e.g., the
characters, the situations) and then reach a decision point. At this decision point, the
reader must choose what the character will do (e.g., whether or not to send a text
message while driving). The story then branches off in one of multiple directions,
depending on the reader’s decision, before returning to the main storyline. Interactive
narratives may be used as both narrative persuasion and entertainment education.
Interactive narratives, relative to their traditional counterparts, involve more active
engagement. The structure of interactive narratives lends itself to reader immersion.
Readers must make decisions for the characters in interactive narratives; this extra cog-
nitive effort may lead readers to become more engaged in the story. Interactive TV pro-
grams have been shown to be more immersive than traditional TV programs, although
some research on interactive texts has suggested that they are equal in transportation
to noninteractive versions.
Immersive experiences akin to transportation have also been shown with video
games, although, in that research literature, these experiences have more commonly
been termed presence or telepresence. Presence is generally defined as a loss of aware-
ness of the mediated nature of an environment and of the role of technology in its
presentation (e.g., Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003). The core elements of transportation
 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y 11

and presence overlap; specifically, both mental states involve feeling as if one is in a
different place (a virtual or story world) from where one actually is. However, measures
of presence have tended to focus more on physical and technological aspects of the
experience and may not necessarily involve a story or narrative per se.
Individuals who are more willing or able to exert mental effort may be particularly
transported by interactive media. There has been some evidence that need for cogni-
tion, or individuals’ enjoyment of thinking, can impact how people perceive interac-
tive media. Vorderer and colleagues showed that people with higher cognitive capacity,
compared to people with lower cognitive capacity, rated an interactive movie as more
entertaining than a traditional movie (Vorderer, Knobloch, & Schram, 2001). Ostensi-
bly, interactive narratives require more mental effort than traditional narratives. Thus,
interactive narratives should be more enjoyable for people high in need for cognition.

Future research directions

Although the research on the physiology and neuroscience of story immersion is still
in its infancy, Mar (2011) provides a summary of related findings, focusing on nar-
rative comprehension and production. Mar notes that data from both neuroimaging
and brain lesion studies suggest that the full pattern of neural activation for narrative
processing is distinct from related processes, such as sentence processing and seman-
tic retrieval. Stories activate frontal, temporal, and cingulate areas of the brain, which
support working memory and theory of mind processes. Mar (2011) provides several
examples of fruitful new directions involving neuroscience, including studying differ-
ences in brain activity when a text is a rich sensory experience compared with when a
text is an abstract representation. Research by Zak and colleagues has also suggested that
stories can lead to the release of oxytocin, a hormone that appears to be related to inter-
personal trust (Barraza & Zak, 2009). The physiological effects of narrative immersion
remain an exciting area for future research.
Current research is also exploring the effect of different kinds of narrative content
on both transportation and persuasive outcomes. For example, in health narratives, is
it more transporting or impactful to have a story of a patient who survived a disease or
one who did not? Additionally, research continues to investigate the question of when
and for whom narratives will be more or less effective than other forms of communica-
tion (e.g., statistics or didactic presentations); the degree of transportation may help to
determine this effectiveness.
The increasing ubiquity of media access, primarily through mobile personal devices
such as smartphones, includes the potential for increased access to a vast and diverse
array of narrative content and is therefore of interest to transportation researchers and
theorists. The trend toward brief bursts of content such as tweets (which have a limited
length) and 6-second videos delivered via Vine is a particularly notable, and potentially
highly relevant, shift in the ways in which modern consumers engage with media. The
creation of narratives and the experience of transportation in these new modes is an
exciting question for future research.
12 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y

Transporting narratives may also have important effects beyond persuasion. For
example, in health contexts, narratives of fellow patients might help to provide feelings
of social or emotional support to individuals undergoing medical treatments, and such
effects may be especially likely when individuals are transported into the stories.
In sum, transportation into a narrative world is a state of being immersed in a
narrative; this immersion can lead to attitude and behavior change across a variety of
domains.

SEE ALSO: Cultivation Theory: Effects and Underlying Processes; Cultivation Theory:
Idea, Topical Fields, and Methodology; Dual Process Models of Persuasion; Emotion in
Media Persuasion; Flow Theory; Identification; Narrative Persuasion Theories; Paraso-
cial Interaction and Beyond: Media Personae and Affective Bonding; Presence Theory;
Social Learning Theory and Social Cognitive Theory; Third-Person Effect: Basic Con-
cept; Third-Person Effect: Perceptual and Behavioral Component

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Further reading

Gerrig, R. J. (1993). Experiencing narrative worlds. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Green, M. C., Strange, J. J., & Brock, T. C. (Eds.). (2002). Narrative impact: Social and cognitive
foundations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Oatley, K. (2011). Such stuff as dreams: The psychology of fiction. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Melanie C. Green is an associate professor of communication at the University at

Buffalo, USA. Her research interests include transportation into narrative worlds and
narrative impact more broadly, as well as the impact of technology on interpersonal
interactions. Dr. Green has examined narrative persuasion in a variety of contexts,
from health communication to social issues. She has edited two books on these
topics: Persuasion: Psychological Insights and Perspectives (2nd ed., 2005) and Narrative
14 TR A N S P O R TAT I O N TH E O R Y

Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations (2002). She has published numerous articles
in leading psychology, communication, and interdisciplinary journals.

Marc Sestir is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Central

Arkansas, USA. His research interests focus primarily on the impacts of media con-
sumption, including narrative effects, the influence of social network sites use on social
attitudes, and the link between violent media, aggression, and prosocial behavior.