Constraining and Persuading Narrative Elements in Orange is the New Black

• But telling stories is also risky, for at least two reasons. One is that people understand stories in terms of stories they have heard before. Stories that stray too far from the familiar risk seeming unbelievable, idiosyncratic, or simply strange.

• Even when activists have succeeded in creating a movement, and in gaining access to the venues where they can make their case, familiar stories pose a problem. Here, the problem lies less in the stories activists tell than the stories with which they are heard.

• This is where narrative comes in. Recent research suggests that audiences process stories neither centrally nor peripherally, but rather by a third route. They immerse themselves in the story, striving to experience vicariously the events and emotions that the protagonists experience. Green and Brock (2000) found that subjects who were highly absorbed in a story (indicated by statements like “activity going on in the room around me was not on my mind” while reading the story, and “I could picture myself in the scene of the events described in the narrative”) were likely to report beliefs consistent with those implied in the story.

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