Despite being randomly selected, our respondents were also fairly acculturated as they needed to speak English to participate in the study

Our findings should encourage further theoretical exploration of narratives as suggested by the extended elaboration likelihood model (Slater & Rouner, 2002), especially with regard to clarifying the relative importance of perceived similarity versus empathy with specific characters; the relationship between involvement with the narrative, identifying with specific characters and counterarguing; and most importantly, the factors influencing the durability of effects

Thus, heightened emotion, both positive and negative, suppressed desired outcomes in this study. This finding may serve as a cautionary tale to other researchers and future health interventions that employ narrative to carefully pilot whether or not the emotion evoked has the intended effect on the target population. Obviously more research that varies the level, the hedonic valence, and the specific emotion evoked is required (see Dillard & Nabi, 2006 for an extended discussion on emotion and persuasion related to cancer prevention and detection messages).

However, these prior studies only include participants from the racial or ethnic target population for whom the narrative materials were designed.

esearchers have noted the difficulty in producing or selecting appropriately engaging narrative and nonnarrative messages for comparison within studies. This concern is exacerbated when working with films for which audiences typically expect high production quality. Additionally, it is challenging “for experiments (and internal validity) … to achieve a balance between a strong manipulation and one that is still directly comparable with the nonnarrative version in terms of form, length and content”

It is important to note that although this study uses a fictional narrative, this does not preclude the possibility that nonfictional narratives such as documentaries, personal stories, or testimonials could also produce effects