Using Stories to Prompt Attitude and Behavior Change

This lecture explores the the Entertainment Education (E-E) approach to communication for development. E-E uses stories to influence behaviour.

Following a discussion of the origins of E-E, exemplars are presented. For example, one field experiment in Tanzania involving 204 episodes of AIDS-related radio programming focussed on AIDS and related family planning/family practice themes. There was a 600% increase in condom distribution in treatment vs. a 140% increase in control communities over 3 years. Slater discusses factors influencing success of such programmes, like intensive formative research and pretesting of issues, characters, and story lines; negative, positive, and transitional role models who are similar but socially appealing; and use of epilogs. This approach, Slater claims, is well-suited to developing countries with fewer competing media channels.

The lecture then explores the theoretical foundations of E-E, including social learning theory and the psychology of narratives. Slater goes on to explore the nature of identification of characters, focussing on factors like similarity of characters to self; same vs. cross-gender effects; and identification with negative, positive, and transitional characters. A discussion of challenges and research issues conlcudes the lecture.

Rationale

Stories can be persuasive in terms of behaviour in ways that other advoacy methods cannot. Research shows that people who are engaged in stories are less resistant to persuasion, i.e., they are less likely to counterargue claims meant to convince them to adopt a certain belief or behaviour. For this approach to work, narrative must be engaging. There is no formula, but this lecture discusses factors needing attention in the design of E-E initiatives.

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