Extratextual effects on the evaluation of narrative texts

• Extratextual critical reviews and textual excerpts were integrated in evaluation.
• A negative review from a literary expert had an effect prior to the excerpt.
• A positive review from a peer had an effect after the excerpt.
• Process orienting was implicated when the review was read first.
• Evaluation adjustment was implicated when the review was read second.

An experiment was run to determine the effect of critical reviews on readers’ evaluation of literary works. We hypothesized that there are two mechanisms by which extratextual information can have an effect on evaluation: orienting, in which processing is directed to different aspects of the text by the extratextual information, and adjustment, in which the summary evaluation is changed based on how others have evaluated the work. Subjects either read a review of a work and then an excerpt from that work or first read the excerpt and then the review. In both experiments, the review had a substantial impact on reader evaluations, showing that readers combined textual and the extratextual, critical review information to form an evaluation of a literary work. However, when the review was read prior to the excerpt, this effect was mediated by the source of the review: the effect was found only for an expert source. In contrast, when the review was read after the excerpt, a larger effect was found for a peer source. Based on this differential effect, we suggest that expert pre-excerpt reviews orient readers to consider certain classes of information, while peer post-excerpt reviews lead readers to adjust their evaluation.