“I’m happy I chose this study program!”: Influence of first-person perspective narratives on future students’ attitude towards a study program

Abstract

Study program brochures by Dutch universities often contain an experience-based narrative in a first-person perspective by a current student, next to the factual information about the study program. This study investigated the influence of such a first-person perspective narrative on the information processing and attitude towards the study program by future students. 95 participants read a study program brochure, either with a first-person perspective narrative or without such a narrative. Contrary to the hypotheses based on transportation theory and the elaboration-likelihood model, results showed that there was no difference in information recall or attitude towards the study program between readers who read the study program brochure with or without the narrative. This indicated that the narrative in the study program brochure did not cause transportation of the reader and that the narrative did not have an effect on the readers’ motivation to cognitively elaborate on the materials.