How to improve attitudes toward disliked groups: The effects of narrative versus numerical evidence on political persuasion

We propose a model of how messages about groups one personally dislikes affect individual attitudes. We build upon theories of message persuasion and out-group acceptance to account for evidence type (numerical vs. narrative), facilitating conditions (encouraging empathy vs. objectivity), and the underlying mechanisms (immersion). We test this model in a pretest-posttest experiment, in which a sample of Americans (N = 601) read counter-attitudinal commentaries below articles presenting either narrative or numerical evidence about illegal immigrants or same-sex couples. Narratives led to greater message acceptance and greater immersion, especially in the empathetic condition. In turn, numerical messages led to self-perceived attitude change in the objective condition. Persuasive effects of narratives in the empathetic, but not the objective, condition were mediated by immersion.