ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

Effects of Narrative vs. Non-narrative Message on Attitudes and Memory: Comparison of Implicit and Explicit Attitude Measures

With the presumption that reading narratives helps to transform information search into a pleasant experience, an increasingly wide range of applications of narrative techniques has been developed in marketing and communication fields. This research explores the effects of narrative messages by employing two different types of attitude measures (i.e., explicit vs. implicit). The results of the study show that there are no statistical mean differences of between narrative and non-narrative messages in term of attitudes, but message effects are significant in short-term memory. This study is anticipated to have the potential to enhance our understanding of implicit and explicit attitudes, and measurement of the effects of narrative and non-narrative messages.