How Narrative Persuasion in Health Communication Shapes Helping Intentions Toward People With Depression?

Narratives are increasingly used in public health communication to reduce mental health stigma, encourage help-seeking, and improve social support. Prior research on narrative persuasion has identified transportation, identification, and emotion as key mechanisms to impact attitudes and behaviors. However, the ordering and interrelation of the key mechanisms through which they exert persuasive influence on prosocial responses in health-related narratives remain underspecified. This article examines how narratives affect the responses to health messages pertaining to depression and investigates the relationships of underlying mechanisms of narrative persuasion. An online survey experiment was conducted with a 2 (message type: narrative vs. non-narrative) × 2 (other-responsibility attribution: presence vs. absence) between-subjects factorial design. A serial multiple mediation model was assessed by linking transportation, identification, and feeling of pity to intention to help. The findings evidenced that narrative messages could trigger intention to help people with depression through several indirect pathways. However, altering the presence of social attributions regarding depression in messages did not significantly moderate the narrative effects on helping intention. These findings also highlight feeling of pity as a critical mediator that bridges other mechanisms to helping intention. The results provide practical guidance and lessons for better designing mental health narratives for prosocial behaviors.