Common themes in stories: A content analysis of prosocial narratives regarding marginalized groups.
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2025-01-06
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en
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This study examined content characteristics of prosocial narratives about marginalized groups. A content analysis was performed on a corpus of 32 stimuli, focussing on three different aspects: setting, character and event. Findings revealed that narratives often took place in an urban setting, happened in the past or present, and spanned over one or more days. Furthermore, narratives often contained a small cast of characters, usually adults who were mostly facing situational or relational challenges with a prevalence of power imbalance. A chi-square analysis revealed a relation between type and valence of event. This implied that one variable often influences another. These findings provide an overview of which content characteristics are commonly used to create narratives effective for evoking prosocial behaviour. However, the scope of this research was limited, given the small dataset and only contained text-based narratives. Future research should analyse a broader dataset with different types of narratives.
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