Effects of Narratives and Behavioral Involvement on Adolescents’ Attitudes toward Gaming Disorder

This paper examines the impact of using narratives to communicate a controversial health issue, gaming disorder, on adolescents’ issue attitudes. In a between-subjects experiment, 115 adolescent participants read either a narrative or an informational message on gaming disorder. Results indicated that compared to the informational message, the narrative health message generated more positive attitudes toward the medical view of problematic gaming and greater attitude certainty. Transportation mediated the narrative’s effect on attitudes. Behavioral involvement moderated the narrative’s effect on attitudes and attitude certainty, such that the positive effects of the narrative on attitudes and attitude certainty were more pronounced for high-involvement adolescents than for low-involvement adolescents. In addition, behavioral involvement also enhanced the effect of message absorption on attitudes. By extending our research on narrative effects to the adolescent population, this study presents findings with both theoretical and practical implications.