Issue-relevant thinking and identification as mechanisms of narrative persuasion

•Consistent evidence for mediating role of identification in narrative persuasion.•Argumentative content integrated in narrative evokes issue-relevant thoughts.•Issue-relevant thoughts predictive of attitude.•Perspective more important for identification than attitude similarity.

Fictional narratives can have strong effects on people's real world opinions, attitudes, and behavior. Given the far-reaching implications these effects may have, understanding when and how narratives can have such effects is important. One frequent claim about narrative impact is that stories can disable people's ability to critically evaluate the issue. In an experiment, optimal conditions were created to assess whether readers came up with issue-relevant thoughts and to what extent such thoughts influenced the participants’ attitude. The impact of issue-relevant thoughts was compared to that of another mechanism of narrative persuasion: identification. Participants (N = 138) read a story including a discussion scene on a personally relevant issue. The manipulation consisted of the main character being in favor of or against a certain issue. Participants identified more strongly with the main character than with the antagonist. A mediation analysis revealed that identifying with the character being in favor of the issue yielded a more positive attitude toward the issue. A considerable number of participants generated issue-relevant thoughts that proved predictive of the attitude. The experiment provides further evidence for the identification mechanism while revealing insights into how integration of explicit argumentative content into a narrative can influence issue-relevant thinking.