Stories about “us” and “them”: an Experimental Inquiry into the Relative Appeal of Populist Narratives

Due to continued mediatization of politics, storytelling plays an increasingly important role in political communication. Against this background, it is often argued that populist narratives are essentially more appealing than non-populist political narratives, yet empirical evidence to support this assumption was missing. A multi-message experiment was conducted among U.S. citizens (N = 206) to compare how populist and non-populist political stories affect narrative transportation—a psychological state strongly associated with narrative enjoyment. The results show that populist framing significantly increases the ability of political narratives to cause transportation, controlling for the political partisanship and populist predispositions of the participants. This effect is mediated by the identification with story characters and feelings of anger and anxiety. The positive impact of populist framing extends to the story-consistent attitudes of the participants, suggesting a parallel–serial mediation model. The study enhances our understanding of psychological responses to populist storytelling.