3.3 Vampires, wizards and the narrative collective assimilation hypothesis
The research and concepts described in the previous sections, particularly that on belonging, led Gabriel and Young (2011) to propose that engagement with narratives can provide the same sense and positive experience of being part of a social group or collective. They referred to this idea as the ‘narrative collective assimilation hypothesis’. The important point is that not only does this hypothesis involve the idea that a fictional story can provide many of the benefits associated with being part of a social group but that it actually predicts ‘collective assimilation’, namely that a reader will psychologically adopt key characteristics of the social group depicted in the story.
Gabriel and Young came up with a fascinating method of testing their hypothesis using passages taken from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the UK) (Rowling, 1999) and from Twilight (Meyer, 2005). As they were testing their hypothesis, that readers will adopt characteristics of the social groups in the narrative, this meant that their prediction was that reading about Harry Potter and Hogwarts would lead participants to feel like they had ‘become’ wizards, and that reading about the Cullen family in Twilight would lead to participants feel like they had ‘become’ vampires!
Before you go any further, take a moment to consider this. Do you think it is possible that readers can become so immersed in a story and develop para-social relationships with the characters to the extent that they (psychologically at least) start to feel like they had become a wizard or a vampire?
Next you’ll take a quick (heavily abridged) look at how they went about testing this hypothesis. The participants were 140 undergrads from the University of Buffalo (with an average age of 19) who were asked to read either a passage from Twilight or from Harry Potter as they would as if they were reading a story normally for their own pleasure. The passage from Twilight was Chapter 13 (‘Confessions’), in which Edward (a vampire) describes what it is like to be a vampire to Bella (a human). As you may know, the romantic relationship between Bella and Edward is one of the main plotlines of the series. The passage from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was both Chapters 7 (‘The Sorting Hat’) and 8 (‘The Potions Master’), in which Harry and friends are first sorted by a magical hat into one of four school houses (and all end up in Gryffindor House) before starting their lessons including Defence Against the Dark Arts, History of Magic, Charms and then a double period of Potions with Professor Snape.
Once they had read their passage, the participants completed what is known as an identity Implicit Association Test (often abbreviated to IAT), which uses decision time (literally how long it takes you to answer the question) to assess how strongly someone identifies with a particular social group. In this case the social groups in question were vampires and wizards. As predicted by the collective-assimilation hypothesis, the IAT revealed that the participants who read the Harry Potter chapters tended to associate themselves with wizards, while those that read the Twilight chapter tended to associate themselves with vampires. The authors concluded that this is evidence that narratives can alleviate loneliness by providing the reader with access to a collective identity which they can psychologically assimilate.
If you would like to find out more about IATs, please visit Project Implicit.