Understanding audience involvement: Conceptualizing

and manipulating identication and transportation

Nurit Tal-Or
*
, Jonathan Cohen
Department of Communication, University of Haifa, Mt. Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel
Available online 4 July 2010
Abstract
Two central avenues for audience involvement in entertainment are identication and transportation.
This study conceptually and empirically differentiated between these processes by manipulating informa-
tion about the hero of a lm and about the plot in order to affect the ways viewers respond to the lm and
character. The valence of information about the hero affected the level of identication (but not the level of
transportation), and the time of deeds affected the level of transportation (but not the level of identication).
These results provide evidence that identication and transportation are distinct processes and an analysis of
how each of them relates to enjoyment supports this conclusion. Results are discussed in terms of their
theoretical and methodological contribution to the study of audience involvement.
# 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The power of entertainment to draw peoples attention, to teach and persuade them, and to
delight and gratify them is known to depend on its ability to engage viewers, readers and listeners
and to involve them psychologically in many ways (Wirth, 2006). In its most general sense,
involvement is the degree to which we invest emotional and mental efforts in decoding the text
and making sense of the story. It is also the degree to which we care about the story, howit unfolds
and what it means (Slater and Rouner, 2002). One key component of involvement is that, when a
person is involved with a narrative, s/he pays close attention to the details of the story and
becomes engrossed or absorbed by it. Simply put, this means that his or her mental resources are
focused on the text to a greater degree than a non-involved or nonabsorbed person.
The ways in which stories succeed in involving audiences has long been a source of wonder to
entertainment scholars who have developed a host of theories and concepts to describe and
explain the power of narratives. Many concepts and variables have been dened in an attempt to
explicate and measure involvement, some as more intense information processing (e.g., Petty and
www.elsevier.com/locate/poetic
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Poetics 38 (2010) 402418
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: Ntalor@com.haifa.ac.il, ntalor@com.hevra.haifa.ac.il (N. Tal-Or), Jcohen@com.haifa.ac.il
(J. Cohen).
0304-422X/$ see front matter # 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2010.05.004
Cacioppo, 1986; Wicks, 2006) and others that explain involvement as depending on more
emotional bonds (Oatley, 1999) between audience and text. But, although involvement has long
been recognized by communication researchers as an important mediator between exposure and
effects, a coherent explanation of the various forms involvement can take has yet to be developed.
Instead, involvement has become a catch phrase, a meta-concept (Wirth, 2006) that is used to
describe any psychological process that mediates exposure and effects. In the present experiment,
we take an initial step in specifying the various modes of involvement by examining in depth two
of the most important, and often confused, concepts used in recent years to describe and explain
involvement in narrative texts: transportation and identication. We seek to explicate better each
of these concepts in relation to one another, then empirically demonstrate that they are indeed
different by experimentally manipulating them separately, and nally to explore their respective
relationships with enjoyment. Success in distinguishing between these concepts would help
clarify previous research dealing with these processes, often interchangeably. Moreover,
establishing manipulations that would affect identication and transportation independently
would allow future research to move from correlational examination of these processes to causal
examination of their effects.
1. Identifying with media characters
Narrative texts, whether in the form of a novel, a play or a lm, create an imaginary and closed
world and invite us to forget ourselves and to become involved with the story. If we accept the
invitation to become closely involved with the story, there are at least two ways in which we can
do this: as external observers or as participants (Oatley, 1999). As Barker (2005) claims, these
reactions to texts are not mutually exclusive and often occur interchangeably (or perhaps
simultaneously), but they have been treated conceptually as separate types of reactions.
Importantly, very strong reactions to texts may occur without the loss of identity or self-
awareness, e.g., fandom, para-social interaction, recognition (Barker, 2005) and loss of self-
awareness does not mean that one loses all cultural knowledge and engages with the text tabula
rasa. However, even if, as Barker claims, we cannot prove or see identication, it is hard to
deny that some texts make us forget our surroundings and feel closer to characters than others,
suggesting a greater degree of absorption and engagement.
One common feeling we experience when we become deeply absorbed in a story is that we
come to care deeply about the characters. We become anxious when they face danger and we
share their sadness or joy. At times these feelings take on a physical manifestation (e.g., crying or
cringing in fear) that suggests that these are more than mere sympathetic feelings; they are
empathic responses through which we share a characters identity. This experience of shifting
identities (which may be intermittent and very eeting) is known as identication, and is
considered a more involved form of readership/viewership in that people are likely to pay more
attention to the text if they identify with a character (Maccoby and Wilson, 1957), be more
emotionally invested in how the narrative will be resolved, and be more affected by the message
(Eyal and Rubin, 2003).
Identication is a popular term used by literary and cultural theorists, lm theorists, and
experimental media researchers. Literary scholars (e.g., Bettelheim, 1976 [1943]; Wollheim,
1974) see identication as a concept that describes how people are moved by ction and how
ction can help people understand the world and their own lives. Film theorists try to explain
identication and tend towards the technological in their explanation. They see the camera as the
focus of the audiences attention and the lens through which they enter the ctional world and
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 403
adopt the perspectives of characters (e.g., Benjamin, 1969; Flitterman-Lewis, 1987). Cultural
theorists also use the term in their analysis of audiences. For example, Fiske (1989) sees
identication as an instrument of referential interpretations of texts and as associated with
enjoyment and proximity at the expense of critical distance. In Wilsons (1993) understanding
of the TV viewing experience as a constant movement between a position of spectator and
participant, identication also marks the lack of distance. Within the positivistic study of
media psychology, identication has most recently been dened as an imaginary process that
entails merging with the character and sharing the characters knowledge about the narrated
events, adopting the characters goals (i.e. hoping that they succeed), and sharing the
characters emotions (Cohen, 2001, 2006). Identication, according to this denition, is a
temporary, imaginary process that takes place during exposure. When identifying with a
character a person imagines him or herself to be that character, a process that involves feeling
empathy and afnity towards that character (affective empathy component) and adopting the
characters goals and point of view within the narrative (cognitive empathy component). This
last component has been more colloquially referred to as being in someones shoes and seeing
the world through their eyes (Livingstone, 1998). In identifying, a viewer or reader becomes
absorbed in the text and this necessarily diminishes his or her self-awareness, but
importantly this absorption is not focused on the narrative as a whole. Rather, one becomes
absorbed and mentally engaged with a specic character and temporarily assumes that
characters identity. It is through this absorption with the character that the viewer, listener or
reader becomes engaged with the narrative and so identication denes the way the text will
be experienced.
1.1. Measuring and manipulating identication
Though advances have been made in conceptualizing identication and creating a scale to
measure identication (Cohen, 2001; Tsao, 1996), no careful test of these scales and especially
their discriminant validity has been attempted. Some studies attempted to manipulate
identication level and tested its effects. For example, Maccoby and Wilson (1957)
documented the effects of identication on childrens social learning using the assumption that
identication will be higher with same-sex characters, an assumption which they tested and
found to be only partially true. Similarly, Oatley (1999) provided male and female participants
with two different stories, one about a girl and another about a boy, as a way of manipulating
identication. This manipulation achieved the desired results in generating a greater number of
memories and thoughts, but did not inform us about the nature of identication. Other studies
(e.g., Cupchik et al., 1998) have used a procedure in which participants were directed to either
take a spectator role or to adopt the perspective of one of the characters. Such a direct
manipulation assumes that identication is a conscious and controllable process, a difcult
assumption to support.
Developing a valid scale and a valid manipulation of identication are increasingly
important challenges as the research on involvement with narratives continues to grow. But it is
a difcult task because identication is theoretically similar to another type of involvement in
narrative transportation. These two ways that people become involved with narratives are
similar in that they both involve a loss of awareness of the viewing situation and a shift in
identity. However, while identication describes a relationship with a specic character,
transportation is a more general experience created by the narrative as a whole. So, for example,
a narrative that features a negative hero may create strong transportation because it enhances
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 404
suspense, but a viewer/reader may resist identication with the negative character. Both
transportation and identication produce a sense of being in the narrative, a sense of presence,
but they do so in different ways.
2. Transportation
According to Transportation Theory (Gerrig, 1993; Green and Brock, 2000), readers, listeners
or viewers sometimes go through a process in which they are transported into a narrative,
whereby their thoughts and attention are focused on the events occurring in it. In this
transportation process, audience members enter the world presented in the narrative and
temporarily lose access to real facts from the real world (Green and Brock, 2000).
This process might be conceived as a special case of a ow experience in which people are
completely focused on a specic activity in elds such as sport, work or art and are not attentive
to other aspects of their surrounding (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). However, in most cases, people
are focused on a specic activity that is part of their immediate reality while in transportation the
focus is on an alternative reality (Busselle and Bilandzic, 2009).
The process of transportation, which was also termed engagement, immersion, engrossment,
or absorption by other researchers (Moyer-Guse, 2008; Slater and Rouner, 2002), is particularly
interesting and important to psychologists and media scholars because it was found to be a
signicant contributor to enjoyment of texts (Green et al., 2004b) and to a change of attitudes
and beliefs following exposure to texts (Green and Brock, 2000). Several hypotheses have been
suggested to explain the importance of transportation. For example, transportation has been
shown to be associated with reduced counter-arguing and thus with increased persuasion (Dal
Cin et al., 2004; Slater and Rouner, 2002). Green (2004) found that increased transportation was
associated with increased perceptions of realism, a variable known to be an important factor in
audience enjoyment (e.g., Ang, 1985; Cohen and Ribak, 2003; Corner, 1992). Another way that
the effects of transportation on enjoyment of the narrative can be explained is through the
mediating role of identifying with characters (Green et al., 2004a). People may be swept up by
the narrative as a result of their identication with media characters and this experience may
contribute to their enjoyment of the narrative. Alternatively, it may be that being transported
into a narrative increases afnity with characters, thereby increasing identication with them,
and it is this identication that increases enjoyment. Similarly, Green (2005) suggested that the
impact of transportation on attitude change might also be mediated by identication.
Transported people might identify with media characters and thus the experiences of those
characters as well as their declared beliefs might alter the attitudes of the people identifying
with them.
2.1. Measuring and manipulating transportation
Transportation is commonly measured by a 15-item scale created by Green and Brock (2000).
This scale was shown to have internal consistency as well as discriminant and convergent
validity. Though this scale was originally created for measuring transportation into written
materials, it has also been used since, in a partial form, with audio-visual stimuli (Tal-Or and
Papirman, 2007). Because transportation was originally conceptualized within the tradition of
persuasion research, it was validated by showing that it was distinct from cognitive elaboration
and was moderately associated with absorption, but its relationships to concepts from the media
research tradition were not explored. Thus, transportations theoretical relationships to the more
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 405
general concepts of involvement (Perse, 1990) or suspense (Zillmann, 1996), and most
specically its relationship to identication, remain unclear.
The relationships of transportation to enjoyment and persuasion were established both in
correlational studies, using the above discussed scale, and in experiments that attempted to
manipulate level of transportation. These experiments manipulated transportation in various
ways, such as varying the amount of details in the story (Green et al., 2004c) and providing
different instructions which encouraged either being completely absorbed into the story or
focusing on surface aspects of the story (Green and Brock, 2000).
3. Transportation and identication: a possible confounding
Both transportation and identication can be seen as ways to describe how audiences become
engaged and involved with media texts. But whereas transportation focuses on the degree of
absorption and does not specify what it is in the narrative with which a reader or viewer is
engaged, identication describes a strong attachment to a character indicated by seeing the
character as positive and adopting his or her goals and perspective on the narrated events. So,
although one can be transported into a text through close attention to the plot and a sense of
suspense about how it will be resolved without necessarily being partial to one character or
another (e.g., Barker, 2005), to identify means to develop a strong connection with a character, to
care about this character and what happens to him/her.
Perhaps because traditionally identication was seen as a general proxy for involvement,
empirical research has not, until recently, studied identication in conjunction with other forms of
involvement such as transportation. The result of this oversight is that in many studies it is
impossible to know whether the mediating role between exposure and effects that was assigned to
identication is not in fact due to transportation. Similarly, it is not clear whether the ndings
regarding the role of transportation in enjoyment and persuasion may not in fact be attributable to
identication.
In studies that manipulated identication through gender similarity, it is impossible to know
whether the increased response and learning were indeed due to identication or to some other
result of similarity (e.g., relevance). Likewise, the manipulation of identication through
instructions either to take a spectator role or to adopt the perspective of one of the characters (e.g.,
Cupchik et al., 1998) may also be confounded. It is unclear what exactly was manipulated; for
example, it could be that adopting an observer role reduced transportation and other forms of
mental involvement, as well as identication.
Furthermore, studies have manipulated transportation using procedures that do not necessarily
avoid affecting the level of identication with characters in the text (Green and Brock, 2000;
Green et al., 2004c). One such study manipulated transportation by providing different
instructions that encouraged either being completely absorbed into the story or engaging in a
cognitive task that demanded focusing on surface aspects of the story (Green and Brock, 2000).
As predicted, transportation was higher in the complete absorption condition, but the impact of
these differing instructions on identication was not assessed. The increased cognitive demands
required by the additional task, which resulted in increased persuasion, may well have reduced
readers ability to identify with a character.
Another study manipulated transportation by varying the amount of details in the story and
showed that people are more transported by the more detailed text (Green et al., 2004c). But once
again, providing more details may not only increase transportation but also increase the length of
the text as well as the desire or ability to identify with a character. Indeed, in this study
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 406
identication was measured and was shown to be inuenced by the manipulation in the same way
that it inuenced transportation. It is, therefore, not necessarily clear whether identication or
transportation (or both) were responsible for the increased enjoyment.
Increasing the suspicion that transportation and identication have been confused in
previous studies, research on identication has produced results that are surprisingly similar
to those found by studies of transportation. Identication with a TV or lm hero has
been argued to increase enjoyment (Fiske, 1989) and also to impact which reading of the
narrative is adopted by viewers (Cohen, 2002). Identication is also known to increase social
learning of children (Eyal and Rubin, 2003) and persuasion (Basil, 1996). Thus, unless a way
is devised to manipulate these constructs independently of each other, it is impossible to
provide a valid and precise experimental account of the effects of transportation and
identication on media audiences. In the present study, we attempt to distinguish conceptually
and theoretically between transportation and identication, to devise experimental procedures
to manipulate each independently of the other, and to examine their respective role in
enjoyment.
4. Differentiating between identication and transportation
Previous studies manipulated identication and transportation in a way that does not
distinguish between these processes. We will attempt to create manipulations that derive from
the theoretical denitions of the processes in order to ascertain their conceptual independence.
Like Green and Brock (2000), we also vary the pre-viewing information provided to viewers
as a way to inuence the experience of the text rather than changing the text itself. However,
instead of varying viewing instructions, we focus on providing information that is intended to
vary the assumptions of viewers about what preceded (past deeds) or what follows (future
deeds) the scenes they are about to watch. We make use of theoretical denitions of these
concepts in order to vary the information in a way that should manipulate the causes of
transportation and identication and hence experimentally create varying levels of these
variables.
5. Hypotheses
Identication is based on a shared perspective between viewers and characters. We therefore
assume that identication should intensify the more that the information available to the viewer is
similar to information available to the character. That is, identication should be strongest when
the viewer knows what the character has experienced in the past (knowledge that the character is
assumed to possess), but does not know what will happen to the character in the future
(knowledge the character is assumed to be lacking).
Hypothesis 1. There will be a main effect of time of deeds on identication. Viewers will
identify more with the main character after receiving information regarding his past than after
receiving information regarding his future.
Previous research has shown that people wish to associate with positive, rather than negative,
characters (e.g., Batson et al., 2007; Hoffner and Cantor, 1991) just as in real life they prefer
people who enjoy good fortune (e.g., Lerner, 1980). Moreover, sympathy towards the good fortune
of others was hypothesized to be especially high following the exposure to the misfortune and
difculties experienced by these others (Royzman and Rozin, 2006). Thus, we expect that
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 407
providing positively valenced information about a character that experiences difculties should
increase identication with that character, whereas providing negative information should
decrease identication.
Hypothesis 2. There will be a main effect of valence of information concerning the character on
identication. Viewers will identify more with a character presented as positive than with a
character presented as negative.
Because transportation is highly associated with suspense it follows that increasing suspense
should increase transportation. According to Zillmann (1991), suspense can create an illusion of
being there, a description very reminiscent of how Gerrig (1993) dened transportation.
Furthermore, suspense is known to increase when there is an expectation of a future event that has a
high chance of occurring(Zillmann, 1991). Based on this premise, we expect that providing general
information about a future dramatic event (without detailing the exact occurrences, in order to
preserve suspense) should increase transportation as compared with providing information about
the past.
Hypothesis 3. There will be a main effect of time of deeds on transportation. Viewers will be
transported more after receiving information regarding the future than after receiving informa-
tion regarding the past.
Both transportation and identication are known correlates of enjoyment derived from media
entertainment (Fiske, 1989; Green et al., 2004b). It is not surprising that the more an audience
member is involved with a message the more s/he will enjoy it. As Nabi and Krcmar (2004)
recently dened it, enjoyment is a judgment we make about a text that reects our appreciation of
our experience with it. Thus, it would seem very plausible that if we become involved and
emotionally moved by a text we will see it as a superior text and rate our enjoyment of it as
greater.
But do all forms of involvement necessarily produce enjoyment? Do we not become engrossed
in programs that disgust or infuriate us? While we may appreciate sad lms (Oliver, 2008),
especially when they are not relevant to our own life, we may also become involved in a negative
way that will produce aggravation rather than enjoyment. Following our conceptual discussion of
transportation and identication it seems likely that the link between enjoyment and identication
would depend on what happens to the character with whom we identify, while the contribution of
transportation to enjoyment should be more general. Past research has shown that both
identication and transportation are connected to enjoyment, but because each has been explored
separately and because the measures most commonly used do not clearly differentiate them, we do
not know what the unique contribution of each to enjoyment may be. Thus, once we have
differentiated between the two concepts we will explore their unique contributions to enjoyment.
Research question 1: What will be the independent contribution of identication and
transportation to enjoyment?
6. Method
6.1. Participants
The participants were 80 university students from the University of Haifa who were recruited
through advertisements to participate voluntarily in the experiment in exchange for 30 shekels
(the equivalent of 7 dollars at that time). Twenty-six of the participants were male and 54 female.
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 408
6.2. Design
We employed a 2 (the valence of characters deeds: good or evil) 2 (time of occurrence of
the deeds: past or future) between-subject factorial design.
6.3. Materials and procedure
The participants arrived at a communication laboratory alone or in groups of 23 and were
assigned to cubicles equipped with computers and headphones. First, they were given a
questionnaire that contained a description of the purpose of the study, as well as the manipulation
and post-viewing scales. The participants were told that the study aimed at testing the effects of pre-
viewing information on the viewing experience. They then read a written explanation concerning a
particular plot line that contained the manipulation. This plot was taken fromthe lmThe Brothers
McMullen (Burns, 1995), which tells the romantic stories of three Irish catholic brothers fromLong
Island. After watching the lm, they were asked to complete the measures of the dependent
variables. This lm was pre-tested to ensure it produced both transportation and identication.
The introductory explanation that included the studys manipulation was ostensibly meant to
provide participants with the context for the clip they were to see, and participants were randomly
assigned to one of four versions of the introduction. Participants were told that this lm clip dealt
with the relationship of the main character with a friend of his wife. To manipulate the
information held by participants, they were told that the main character was either a very loyal
person or a serial cheater (the manipulation of valence in the two past conditions). In the
remaining two conditions, they were told that the main character will face a dilemma between his
desires and conscience and that he will eventually submit to his desires and hurt his wife, or that
he will eventually follow his conscience and not hurt his wife (the manipulation of valence in the
two future conditions). Following the presentation of this description, the participants watched
the 15 min vignette used as a stimulus for this experiment.
Thevignettewas composed of an editedseries of scenes takenfromthe movie soas tofollowone
plot line. This plot started by a scene showing the main characters wife celebrating her 30th
birthday in a dinner with her family and friends. One friend is seen as showing special interest in the
main character. The following scenes depict her attempts at seducing him, but while he is clearly
attracted to her, there is no resolution to the plot shown in the clip. Participants were then asked to
complete the second part of the questionnaire, which included the scales for identication,
transportation and enjoyment. In addition, the questionnaire included control items measuring
relevance, realism, familiarity with the movie and the actors, marital status and the occurrence of
indelity in participants relationships. All continuous variables were measured using seven point
Likert scales with response options ranging from 1 (=strongly disagree) to 7 (=strongly agree).
Familiarity, marital status and indelity were measured as dichotomous yes/no items.
6.4. Measures
The transportation scale included seven of the 11 general items used by Green and Brock
(2000), we excluded one item that was appropriate only for a written narrative (regarding the
ability to picture the events in ones mind) and one itemthat measured relevance (the events in the
narrative are relevant to my everyday life). We also removed two other items regarding the
resolution of the narrative and its inuence on the life of the viewer that were not appropriate to
the relatively short scene we used as a stimulus.
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 409
The identication scale included ve items that were taken from Cohen (2001). Cohen
suggested 10 items, but did not empirically test the reliability or validity of the scale. Because
these items were devised without a comparison to transportation, the items were less precise in
their focus on being engaged with characters as separate from engagement with the narrative as a
whole. Thus, we selected the items that seemed closest to the theoretical denition of
identication as consisting of emotional and cognitive perspective taking. Items included
statements about understanding the character, understanding the events in a way similar to the
character, having similar feelings to the character, being able to get inside the characters head,
and understanding why the character did what he did (see Appendix A).
Enjoyment was measured using three items simply asking participants whether they enjoyed
the clip, whether they would be likely to watch the movie if it were on TV, and whether they
thought this movie could be enjoyable to them (these items are similar to those used in other
studies, e.g., Krcmar and Albada, 2000). An enjoyment score was calculated based on the mean
of these three items (M = 5.29, SD = 1.21, Cronbachs a = 0.89).
In addition, we measured several other variables that were used for control. First, we wanted to
assess the realism of the scenes, which is known to predict audience responses. We measured
realismusing three items based on Busselle (2001), including the extent to which events in the lm
reminded participants of events in the real world, the extent to which the lm reects problems
couples encounter in their marriage, and the extent that the relationships described in the lm
resemble real world relationships. Arealismscore was calculated based on the mean of these three
items (M = 5.40, SD = 1.19, Cronbachs a = 0.84). Relevance of the scenes was similarly measured
using four items relating to the degree that the situations in the scenes relating to each of the three
characters and in general, reminded the subject of situations in his or her personal life. Arelevance
score was calculated based on the mean of these four items (M = 3.08, SD = 1.54, Cronbachs
a = 0.86).
7. Results
7.1. Factor analysis
As a rst test of the conceptual distinction between transportation and identication, we
conducted a factor analysis (principal components; varimax) on all the items from the two scales.
In our initial analysis, we limited the number of factors to two with the expectation that the items
would cleanly divide into identication and transportation items. Indeed, this is exactly what
happened (the variance explained by the two factors was 36.6%). However, though the
identication items produced an internally consistent scale (a = 0.83), the transportation items
produced a less reliable scale (a = 0.63). Thus, in order to create a more reliable measure of
transportation we performed a second analysis without restricting the number of factors. This
analysis revealed three factors: one for all of the identication items and two for transportation.
One transportation factor included an experience sub-dimension consisting of four items related
to experiencing the narrative from within (being able to imagine, being mentally involved,
wanting to know how the lm ended, and being emotionally affected) and the second was an
attention sub-dimension concerned with paying close attention to the narrative (thinking about
surroundings, stopped thinking about clip after viewing, wandering thoughts during viewing
these were reverse coded) (Table 1). We calculated three scores based on the mean of the items in
each of these factors: An identication score (M = 3.96, SD = 1.34, Cronbachs a = 0.83), and
two transportation scores, i.e., the experience sub-dimension (M = 4.45, SD = 1.28, Cronbachs
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 410
a = 0.80) and the attention sub-dimension (M = 5.34, SD = 0.99, Cronbachs a = 0.39). Given
the low reliability of the attention sub-dimension and our theoretical focus on the viewing
experience, we used only the experience sub-dimension of transportation. The problems with
the transportation measure notwithstanding, the results of this analysis provide initial
conrmation that transportation and identication can indeed be dened as separate constructs.
Identication was not signicantly related to transportation, though the correlation was
marginally signicant (r = .22, p < .10). Relevance and realism were both related to
transportation (r = .50, p < .001 and r = .36, p < .01, respectively). Relevance was only
marginally related to identication (r = .21, p < .10) but realism was not (r = .06, ns). None of
the dichotomous variables: the familiarity variables, gender, relationship status or indelity,
were related to identication, transportation, or enjoyment. As a rule, we included in each
analysis the control variables found to be related at the bi-variate level to the relevant dependent
variable.
7.2. The effect of valence and time of deeds on identication and transportation
Two-way ANOVAs were conducted with characters deed valence and time of deed as
independent variables, the reported levels of transportation and identication as dependent
variables, and with the relevant co-variates in each model. As expected, a main effect was
revealed for the valence of the characters deeds on level of identication. Conrming Hypothesis
2, which predicted that valence is related to identication, the participants identied more with
the character with positive deeds (M = 4.5, SD = 1.21) than with the character with negative
deeds (M = 3.43, SD = 1.26), F(1, 76) = 15.13, p < .001, h
2
p
:17. In contrast to Hypothesis 1,
however, we did not nd a signicant main effect of time of deeds on identication, nor a
valence time interaction on identication (see Fig. 1).
As expected by Hypothesis 3, a main effect for time of deed was revealed for transportation.
Participants were more transported into the scene when receiving information regarding the
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 411
Table 1
Descriptive statistics and factor loadings for identication and transportation items.
Item Mean SD Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3
Identication Experience Attention
I think I understand jack well 4.27 1.84 .778 .109 .088
I understood the events in the movie the way
Jack understood them
4.16 1.50 .706 .094 .215
While viewing, I felt like Jack felt 3.51 1.71 .838 .116 .186
During viewing, I could really get inside Jacks head 4.08 1.69 .767 .199 .101
I tend to understand why Jack did what he did 3.85 1.92 .771 .118 .126
While viewing, I thought about the events
occurring in the room I was in (reverse)
5.91 1.19 .056 .132 .711
I could imagine myself in the scenes I was watching 3.90 1.79 .106 .754 .128
I was mentally involved in the scenes I was watching 4.14 1.69 .127 .848 .055
After viewing, I stopped thinking about the
scenes I was watching (reverse)
4.97 1.50 .019 .341 .594
I would like to know how the movie ends 6.05 1.24 .019 .673 .220
The scenes affected me emotionally 3.82 1.64 .135 .804 .122
While viewing, my mind wandered (reverse) 5.19 1.64 .015 .043 .665
The values in bold indicate the items that loaded on each factor.
future (M = 4.83, SD = 1.04) than when receiving information regarding the past (M = 4.06,
SD = 1.39), F(1, 74) = 5.79, p < .05, h
2
p
:07. Also consistent with our reasoning, a main effect
was not found for valence of deeds on transportation, nor was a signicant effect of the
interaction between time of deeds and valence found on transportation (see Fig. 2).
7.3. The impact of identication and transportation on enjoyment
Previous ndings that transportation is a predictor of enjoyment were replicated in our data by
a signicant correlation between transportation and enjoyment (r = .382, p (one tailed) < .001).
However, the correlation between identication and enjoyment was not signicant (r = .182, p
(one tailed) > .1). Using Fishers z, the difference between these two correlations was marginally
signicant ( p = .09).
To examine further the separate contribution of transportation and identication in predicting
enjoyment, we constructed a linear regression model to explore the relationship of both to
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 412

Fig. 1. The inuence of time and valence of the characters deeds on identication.

Fig. 2. The inuence of time and valence of the characters deeds on transportation.
enjoyment. The model included identication and transportation as independent variables and
enjoyment as the dependent variable. The regression was signicant R
2
= .16, R
2
adj = .13,
F(2, 77) = 7.11, p < .01; transportation was a signicant predictor of enjoyment (b = .36,
p < .001), while identication did not signicantly predict enjoyment (b = .10, ns). Adding
the interaction between identication and transportation to the model also revealed a
signicant regression R
2
= .18, R
2
adj = .15, F(3, 76) = 5.72, p < .01. Here too transportation
was a signicant predictor of enjoyment (b = .86, p < .05), while identication was only a
marginally signicant predictor of enjoyment (b = .77, p = .07). The interaction was not
signicant (b = .93, p > .1). The differential ndings of the effects of transportation and
identication on enjoyment provide a further illustration of the independence of these two
constructs.
8. Discussion
Our main goal in this study was to dene and operationalize the distinction between two of the
major concepts used to describe viewer involvement in entertainment: transportation and
identication. By attempting to create reliable experimental manipulations for these concepts,
such that we could operate one without the other, we sought to gain a better understanding of the
psychological underpinnings of each of these processes. To achieve these goals we rst ne tuned
existing scales using an exploratory factor analysis so that they measured each concept with
greater clarity and precision. The factor analysis was largely supportive of the existing denitions
of both concepts, though it did suggest the transportation scale captures both the degree to which
viewers were absorbed by the narrative and the extent they pay attention to the lm. It is unclear
how these dimensions relate to each other, and this question is beyond the scope of this study.
Importantly, this analysis shows that identication and transportation can be reliably and
separately measured.
Based on existing theory and research we formulated our manipulations based on the
assumptions that transportation is linked to suspense (Zillmann, 1991) and that identication is
linked to developing an emotional connection with the character and to a unity of perspectives
between character and viewer (Cohen, 2001). The results of our experiment partially conrmed
our expectations but also helped us to advance our understanding of these two processes and how
they relate to each other. Identication appeared to be affected rst and foremost by the
emotional connection to the character and thus was manipulated by the valence of information
provided to viewers. Transportation, on the other hand, was affected by suspense that was
manipulated through time of deeds. Manipulating valence inuenced identication without
changing the levels of transportation, whereas time of deeds affected transportation without
having an impact on identication.
In contrast to our expectation, whether we informed participants about what the character did
in the past or what he will do in the future did not affect their reported identication with the
character. The expectation for this effect was based on the assumption that identication is
related to a unity of perspectives between viewer and character (Cohen, 2001). Thus, we expected
that information that the viewer has but that the character lacks will necessarily reduce the unity
of perspective and hence weaken identication. The lack of an effect of time of deed on
identication might indicate that identication works differently than howwe anticipated. Rather
than both being components of identication, it may be that emotional connection with the
character is an antecedent of identication while unity of perspectives between character and
viewer is a consequence of identication. Thus, the positive feelings and emotional connection to
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 413
the character were more powerful than the disruption of the joint perspective, and identication
remained strong despite our manipulation.
1
The impact of valence of deeds on identication might also be questionable. The
participants who were faced with a main character described as a serial cheater might have
found it socially undesirable to admit identifying with him. While this possibility is plausible,
we believe it does not present a true threat to our research, as the questionnaires were
anonymous and the participants were seated in separate cubicles that prevented them from
seeing one another responses. It should also be noted that in the clip used for this experiment
the hero is seen as a generally positive person and the supposed betrayal itself (that is alluded
to in the manipulation) is not seen in the clip. Thus, identifying with the hero even in the
negative condition is plausible.
After establishing the conceptual and operational distinction between transportation and
identication, we next explored the differential effects of each on enjoyment. Initially, we
wondered whether the previously reported effects of transportation on enjoyment were not, in
fact, due to unintentionally manipulating identication, and vice versa. Using regression
analysis, we found that whereas we reproduced the effects of transportation on enjoyment when
controlling for identication, identication did not have a signicant effect on enjoyment when
controlling for transportation. Though this nding supports our quest to differentiate
transportation and identication it does raise questions about the role of identication in
enjoyment. One way to explain this result is that in the text used in this study the hero, with which
viewers were expected to identify, was put to a moral test that perhaps caused some psychological
strain on viewers who strongly identied with the hero, especially since the viewers did not see
the resolution to the heros dilemma. This strain may have counteracted the possible increase in
enjoyment generally produced by increased identication.
This explanation points to what may be the major limitation of this study, namely that the
applicability of its results across texts and genres is unknown. It may be that in other texts
identication will predict enjoyment and that identication and transportation will be more
closely related. Indeed, texts are complex sets of signs that require active decoding, and their use
as experimental stimuli always assumes that they, and the way audiences respond to them, are
much simpler than they actually are (Livingstone, 1998). It is possible to argue that by
manipulating the contextual information provided to viewers we not only manipulated
identication and transportation but also the very understanding of the story, and that something
in how the varied level of identication changed the interpretation of the clip counteracted the
usual relationship between identication and enjoyment (Cohen, 2002). However, given our use
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 414
1
Another possible explanation for our failure to conrm the unity of perspective hypothesis is related to the type of
information we provided participants. We told our participants that the hero will or will not betray his wife, thereby
manipulating the characters own future deeds. It is likely that what reduces the unity of perspective is knowledge about
what will happen to the hero rather than what s/he will do. This is because the hero may well have a sense of how s/he will
act, and thus his/her own future actions are unlikely to be a great surprise to him or her. So, as opposed to events over
which the hero has no control and whose anticipated occurrence (by the viewers) is likely to create a signicant shift in
perspective, knowing what the character will do may not have a similar effect. In order to examine this possibility we
conducted two studies. In both studies we used the same text as in the original study and we manipulated the information
the participants received about the main character. In one condition, Ss were told the hero knows that his wife had an affair
(or in the second study, that he has cancer) and in the other condition they were told that the hero was unaware of his
wifes affair (or of his cancer). This variation satised the condition of either sharing or not sharing with the hero
information about something that has happened to him. Results did not provide support for the above alternative
explanation in that in the conditions where the hero did not know what viewer did know (i.e., about the affair or about the
cancer), identication was not lowered.
of a relatively short clip and the fact that we pre-interpreted the main point of the story (will he or
will not he cheat?), the openness of the text was quite limited. Thus, we believe that it was the
moral difculty facing the hero of this text that counteracted the usual association between
identication and enjoyment. To explore further this possibility, we computed the correlation
between identication and enjoyment for each of the conditions separately. In support of
our explanation, we found that only in the condition that viewers were told that the hero
would not cheat (future-positive condition) the correlation was signicant (r = .492, p (one
tailed) < .001).
The issue of generalizability across texts notwithstanding, the crucial value of our study is that
it demonstrates that at least under some conditions identication and transportation are not
inextricably linked. Thus, we provide strong evidence that these two concepts are indeed
theoretically separate and at least sometimes empirically independent. Specifying the exact
conditions under which transportation and identication operate in tandem or apart remains for
future research.
Moreover, our study provides a new way to manipulate the transportation and identication
that audiences develop with a text without altering the text itself. While there has been one
successful attempt to manipulate transportation without changing the text (Green and Brock,
2000), such attempts have largely failed (Green, 2004). Furthermore, no similar manipulation has
been shown to manipulate identication. Though replications of this method are necessary before
it becomes paradigmatic, this is a promising direction that should open up many possibilities for
relatively accessible experimental research into audience involvement. Such research, in turn,
will allow to replicate earlier correlational studies whose ndings are tentative and to further
advance our knowledge into how we enjoy narratives and how we are affected by media texts.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Ayelet Gal-Oz for her help in data collection and to three anonymous
reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions.
Appendix A
The scales item that were used in the experiment, translated into English.
Identication items
1. I think I understand jack well
2. I understood the events in the movie the way Jack understood them
3. While viewing, I felt like Jack felt
4. During viewing, I could really get inside Jacks head
5. I tend to understand why Jack did what he did
Transportation: experience sub-dimension items
1. I could imagine myself in the scenes I was watching
2. I was mentally involved in the scenes I was watching
3. I would like to know how the movie ends
4. The scenes affected me emotionally
N. Tal-Or, J. Cohen / Poetics 38 (2010) 402418 415
Transportation: attention sub-dimension items
1. While viewing, I thought about the events occurring in the room I was in (reverse)
2. After viewing, I stopped thinking about the scenes I was watching (reverse)
3. While viewing, my mind wandered (reverse)
Enjoyment items
1. I enjoyed the lm segments I watched in the experiment very much.
2. If this lm will be screened on T.V. I will watch it.
3. This is a movie that I can enjoy.
Realism items
1. The events in the scenes resemble ones in real world.
2. The lm reects problems couples encounter in their marriage.
3. The relationships described in the lm resemble relationships between people.
Relevance items
1. Jacks situation reminded me of situations in my own life.
2. Mollys (Jacks wife) situation reminded me situations in my own life.
3. Anns (Mollys friend) situation reminded me situations in my own life.
4. The events narrated in the scenes reminded me of events that happened to me.
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Nurit Tal-Or is a Lecturer at the Department of Communication, The University of Haifa. Her research interests focus on
media psychology and interpersonal communication. She is particularly interested in third-person perception, involve-
ment in narratives and impression management.
Jonathan Cohen is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Communication, The University of Haifa. His research interests
primarily revolve around forms of narrative involvement especially identication with ctional characters, but also
interpretation of narratives as well as para-social relationships. In addition he has worked on several studies related to
public perceptions of media inuence and the various effects of such beliefs.
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