Distracted by Details: Narrative Influence Following Conflicting Stories

Work on narrative influence has demonstrated that stories can have a strong effect on people's thoughts and attitudes. However, existing research has not addressed how people respond to multiple stories endorsing different conclusions. The current studies examined how reading two conflicting narratives influences people's decisions about a subsequent situation, with particular emphasis on how resemblances between the narratives and the situation moderate the effects. Across two studies, participants read two testimonials that described the successful use of different treatments for a medical disorder. Participants subsequently made treatment recommendations for a patient who resembled one of the testimonials in treatment-relevant ways. The key manipulation was whether the patient also resembled the other testimonial in treatment-irrelevant ways. Both studies found that these distracting, irrelevant similarities led to less appropriate treatment recommendations. The effect on decision confidence, however, was less clear, with some suggestion of both an increase (Study 1) and a decrease (Study 2) in confidence.