Mechanisms Of Narrative Based Belief Change

For all three experiments, male and female Ohio State undergraduates served as participants.

Over the past thirty years, and particularly within the last ten years, researchers in the areas of social psychology, cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience have been examining fascinating questions regarding the nature of imagination and mental simulation – the imagination and generation of alternative realities. Some of these researchers have focused on the specific processes that occur in the brain when an individual is mentally simulating an action or forming a mental image, whereas others have focused on the consequences of mental simulation processes for affect, cognition, motivation, and behavior. This Handbook provides a novel and stimulating integration of work on imagination and mental simulation from a variety of perspectives. It is the first broad-based volume to integrate specific sub-areas such as mental imagery, imagination, thought flow, narrative transportation, fantasizing, and counterfactual thinking, which have, until now, been treated by researchers as disparate and orthogonal lines of inquiry. As such, the volume enlightens psychologists to the notion that a wide-range of mental simulation phenomena may actually share a commonality of underlying processes.

Advertising Theory provides detailed and current explorations of key theories in the advertising discipline. The volume gives a working knowledge of the primary theoretical approaches of advertising, offering a comprehensive synthesis of the vast literature in the area. Editors Shelly Rodgers and Esther Thorson have developed this volume as a forum in which to compare, contrast, and evaluate advertising theories in a comprehensive and structured presentation. With new chapters on forms of advertising, theories, and concepts, and an emphasis on the role of new technology, this new edition is uniquely positioned to provide detailed overviews of advertising theory. Utilizing McGuire’s persuasion matrix as the structural model for each chapter, the text offers a wider lens through which to view the phenomenon of advertising as it operates within various environments. Within each area of advertising theory—and across advertising contexts—both traditional and non-traditional approaches are addressed, including electronic word-of-mouth advertising, user-generated advertising, and social media advertising contexts. This new edition includes a balance of theory and practice that will help provide a working knowledge of the primary theoretical approaches and will help readers synthesize the vast literature on advertising with the in-depth understanding of practical case studies and examples within every chapter. It also looks at mobile advertising in a broader context beyond the classroom and explores new areas such as native advertising, political advertising, mobile advertising, and digital video gaming.

This book explores the evolutionary and cognitive foundations of human communication, focusing on narrative as its distinctive dimension. Within a framework of continuity with both the communication of our hominin predecessors and that of non-human animals, the book is about a twofold proposal. It includes the idea that (human and animal) communication has an intrinsically persuasive nature along with the hypothesis that humans developed narrative forms of communication in order to enhance their persuasive abilities. In this view, narrative persuasion becomes the feature that distinguishes human communication from animal communication. The study of the transition from animal communication to language addresses both the selective pressures that led communication for persuasive purposes to take a narrative form and the cognitive architectures and expressive systems that enabled our ancestors to cope with the selective pressures of persuasive/narrative-based communication. Language evolution is interdisciplinary, even from the specific perspective of evolutionary pragmatics chosen here. Therefore, this book is intended for researchers working in fields such as cognitive sciences, philosophy, evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and primatology. It also represents a valuable resource for advanced students in cognitive sciences, linguistics, and philosophy.

First Published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Inspired by Susan Sontag’s examination of the impact of “photography of conscience” in Regarding the Pain of Others, Kimberly A. Nance’s Responding to the Pain of Others: Ethics of Witness in Global Testimonial Narratives takes as its point of departure Sontag’s speculation that in combatting human rights abuse, “a narrative seems likely to be more effective than an image.” Building on her own earlier research on Aristotelian rhetorical theory and testimony, along with other interdisciplinary approaches, Nance analyzes the socio-literary narratives of Elvia Alvarado, Medea Benjamin, Peter Dickinson, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Clea Koff, Delia Jarrett-Macauley, Valentino Achak Deng, Dave Eggers, Uwem Akpan, and Alicia Partnoy. Each of them, she finds, confronts a human rights discourse in which words—and witnesses—have become disconnected from actions. Recognizing that the genre’s own conventions have become an obstacle to its projects, these testimonialists draw on humor, irony, satire, parody, and innovative literary techniques, alongside strategies rooted in real-life organizing, in an effort to reactivate the discourse of human rights. They seek to persuade readers to exchange a solidarity of sentiment, a state Michael Vander Weele calls “an aesthetics in which the engine revs but the clutch is never engaged,” for actual social action.

With strong foundations in theory and featuring a wide range of current and international examples, Strategic Advertising Management presents an overview of how advertising works and what is required from a manager's perspective, in the development of an effective communication plan.

Belief change lies at the heart of all human aspirations. From career progression, weight loss, spiritual commitment, and ideological passion, to love, grief, war, identity, and sport, beliefs guide our lives and to a great extent, determine our success, satisfaction and happiness. Cognitive Mechanisms of Belief Change is relevant to anyone interested in the machinations of how this occurs. It explains how certain ideas and concepts steal a place in the mind because they latch on to hardwired ways of thinking, experiencing, and behaving. Concepts throw light upon the mind’s desires, which in turn casts a kaleidoscope of silhouettes against the walls of thought, with those taking distinct shape forging the outlines for beliefs to inhabit. Beliefs infiltrate our minds, and this book shows how they arrive and change in ways critical to our sense of meaning and identity.

The impact of public narratives has been so broad (including effects on beliefs and behavior but extending beyond to emotion and personality), that the stakeholders in the process have been located across disciplines, institutions, governments, and, indeed, across epochs. Narrative Impact draws upon scholars in diverse branches of psychology and media research to explore the subjective experience of public narratives, the affordances of the narrative environment, and the roles played by narratives in both personal and collective spheres. The book brings together current theory and research presented primarily from an empirical psychological and communications perspective, as well as contributions from literary theory, sociology, and censorship studies. To be commensurate with the broad scope of influence of public narratives, the book includes the narrative mobilization of major social movements, the formation of self-concepts in young people, banning of texts in schools, the constraining impact of narratives on jurors in the court room, and the wide use of education entertainment to affect social changes. Taken together, the interdisciplinary nature of the book and its stellar list of contributors set it apart from many edited volumes. Narrative Impact will draw readership from various fields, including sociology, literary studies, and curriculum policy. Providing new explanatory concepts, this book: *is the first account on the psychology of narrative persuasion and brings together the relevant conceptualizations from within various sectors of psychology together with the major issues that concern cognate disciplines outside of psychology; *focuses on understanding the mechanisms that underlie the power of public narratives to achieve broad historical and social changes; *offers breakthroughs to the future: the role of "presence" in virtual reality narratives; the role of "zines" in females' fashioning of their selves; and the central role of imagery in transportation into narrative worlds; *explains varying roles of emotion in narrative immersion; and *addresses the growing blurring of fact and fiction: mechanisms and implications for beliefs and behavior.