Seeing Is Believing: The Role of Imagery Fluency in Narrative Persuasion Through a Graphic Novel

Compared with other entertainment-education formats, graphic novels and comics offer a number of practical advantages, but the role of graphics in narrative persuasion processes has received little scholarly attention. To examine the potential of graphic stories to facilitate narrative persuasion by enhancing imagery fluency, 212 Amazon Mechanical Turk participants were randomly assigned to read a story about people with schizophrenia formatted for a graphic novel, either with or without images. The results showed that exposure to illustrations increased imagery fluency, leading to narrative engagement and ultimately less counterarguing against a sympathetic, positive portrayal of schizophrenia. The effect of exposure to the illustration on story-consistent belief through imagery fluency was the most substantial indirect effect in the model. This research suggests that there could be a unique effect of media-provided images on narrative engagement and persuasion generally, and it underscores the usefulness of graphic novels as entertainment-education devices. Public Policy Relevance Statement It is well known that stories are an effective way to package educational messages, but research continues to explore the characteristics of narratives that make them more or less influential. Comparing the effects of a story that included images with a story without images on readers' attitudes about one of the messages in the narrative, this study finds some evidence suggesting that imagery fluency-the ease with which a story allows people to form mental images-is one factor that can make educational stories more cogent.