The effectiveness of stories

Use of narratives, in fact, may be one of the only strategies available for influencing the beliefs of those who are predisposed to disagree with the position espoused in the persuasive content. Normally, if persuasive message content is counterattitudinal, message recipients will ignore such content, counterargue it, or belittle the source of such information in a process Petty & Cacioppo (1986) called biased processing. However, the tendency of narrative-type information to suppress counterargung may be quite strong.—Michael D. Slater, “Entertainment Education and the Persuasive Impact of Narratives ,” in Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations, ed. Melanie C. Green, Jeffrey J. Strange, and Timothy C. Brock (London: Taylor & Francis, 2011), 175 (emphasis original)