Taking perspective of the stories we tell about transgender rights: The narrative policy framework

Our project uses the narrative policy framework (NPF) to explore narrative effects on attitudes about transgender rights. The framework focuses on the stories that are told about public policy. As opposed to conceptualizing communications as informational, NPF suggests that getting lost in the story is primary for attitude change. We also incorporate a perspective taking exercise to examine its effects on individual attitudes. Using an experiment on 1784 American adults, we found that individuals who received the inclusive transgender policy narrative by either watching or reading the narrative held views more supportive of transgender rights, with the effect greater for watching than reading. Those who experienced greater narrative transportation, being more lost in the story, reported more supportive attitudes. We further find that those with traits that lead them to become more imaginatively involved in stories occasionally are more greatly affected by watching policy narratives than those who are less imaginatively involved. However, perspective taking did not influence attitudes and weakened the treatment effects of the narratives. Our findings suggest stories can affect policy attitudes and beliefs, which may be conceptually distinct from traditional framing-based accounts and implies distinctive causal mechanisms that result in attitude change.