ABSTRACT

Transgender community suffers from an extremely negative public perception. Can popular media images change people’s views about transgender persons? This study investigates the role viewers’ active participation and emotional reactions (termed as narrative performance) play in influencing their beliefs and attitudes about the transgender community. Narrative performance, a process by which readers bring cognitions and emotions to engage with a text, is an unexplored construct in narrative persuasion literature. This study advances narrative persuasion literature by examining how people’s performance of a transgender-themed TV drama, Transparent, affects their beliefs and attitudes about transgender persons. Participants (n = 118) watched a popular TV drama and responded to a questionnaire. Principal factor analysis using varimax rotation was conducted to determine the construct validity of narrative performance, and it demonstrated that narrative performance is distinct from related constructs of narrative transportation and identification with story characters. One dimension of performance – Affective and Outcome Preference Performance – emerged as the strongest predictor of viewers’ beliefs about transgender persons. The implications of this research are discussed.

摘要

跨性别社区受到极其负面的公众看法的影响。流行的媒体形象能否改变人们对跨性别者的看法？本研究调查了观众的积极参与和情绪反应（称为叙事表现）在影响他们对跨性别社区的信念和态度方面所起的作用。叙事表演是读者将认知和情感带入文本的过程，是叙事说服文学中未被探索的结构。本研究通过检验人们对跨性别主题电视剧《透明》的表现如何推进叙事说服文学的发展。，影响他们对跨性别者的信念和态度。参与者（n = 118）观看了一部热门电视剧并回答了问卷。使用方差最大旋转的主因子分析来确定叙事表演的构念效度，表明叙事表演不同于叙事传递和对故事人物的认同的相关构念。表现的一个维度——情感和结果偏好表现——成为观众对跨性别者信念的最强预测指标。讨论了这项研究的意义。