“The Emotion-Invoking Impact of Advertising Narratives and the
Mediating Role of Sympathy and Empathy” (Jennifer Escalas, Barbara
Stern).
Abstract
Research has shown that narratives play a role in creating and
interpreting emotions. Therefore, advertising narratives, that is, ads
that tell stories, should be well-suited for evoking emotional
responses. This chapter reviews a series of experiments that find that
ad story quality has a positive effect on the emotional responses
desired by advertisers and a negative effect on undesired feelings.
These effects are mediated by sympathy, where an observer is conscious
of another’s feelings, and empathy, where the participant vicariously
merges with another’s feelings. The empathy response is stronger,
consistent with the higher degree of absorption in the ad story for
empathy as compared to sympathy.