Narrative Collective Assimilation

What it is

Gabriel and Young proposed that reading a narrative can lead people to psychologically join the group it describes. In their experiments, participants read a passage about wizards or a passage about vampires, and those who read about a group came to identify with that group. Both implicit measures, which tap quick associations, and explicit measures, which ask people directly, supported the result.

The authors link the effect to the need to belong. People are motivated to form and keep social ties, and a story that places a reader inside a group offers a form of belonging. They reported that the assimilation increased life satisfaction and positive mood.

In effect

In the article on why people cannot get enough of Harry Potter, the finding is used to explain why four houses that act as ready-made groups may draw readers in. A reader sorted into a house, or who imagines which one they would join, is taking part in a small version of the process the experiment describes. The experiment used a short passage, and any extension to a decade of reading the series is an interpretation made on this site.

What it does not say

It does not show that reading a series changes a person's identity for life, and it does not describe what any single reader felt. The evidence comes from short reading tasks in the laboratory. It also says nothing about any fan community as it exists outside the experiment.

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