​Health communication campaigns increasingly make use of narratives, for good reason. Various studies have shown that stories can positively influence people's health-related behaviour. In this presentation Carel Jansen will focus on two recent studies into narratives he was involved in. The first study compared two types of health warnings on cigarette packages: narrative visual warnings, that might evoke a story-like interpretation, and visual warnings with non-narrative content (i.e. body parts). What were the effects of these two types of warnings, and by which mechanisms in the processing of the warnings can these effects be explained? 

From earlier research it is well known that a key part in the persuasive power of stories is played by what is referred to as 'transportation'. The story should grab readers, listeners or viewers in such a way that they forget the world around them. Communications researchers have been looking for some years now at ways to increase transportation. Empirical studies into the effects of portraying main characters as more or less sympathetic have so far produced unclear results. For this reason, two large scale replication studies were performed. Did the story versions with a sympathetic main character lead to more or less transportation? And what were the effects on the readers' story-consistent beliefs?​​