Dark Narrative Transportation Scale

Abstract

The Dark Narrative Transportation Scale (DNTS) is a specialized psychometric assessment instrument developed by Colin Campbell, Sean Sands, and Carla Ferraro in 2023. Created to measure consumer absorption, emotional immersion, and cognitive engagement with dark, macabre, or unsettling narrative content in advertising, the scale addresses a theoretical and empirical gap in marketing communications and media psychology. Grounded in the conceptual framework of narrative transportation (Green & Brock, 2000) and visual grotesque aesthetics (Phillips & McQuarrie, 2010), the DNTS captures how audiences process narrative structures characterized by somber, disquieting, or taboo themes. Through rigorous psychometric refinement using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), an initial pool of candidate items was systematically pruned, eliminating psychometrically redundant and low-loading indicators to produce an ultra-brief, highly reliable three-item unidimensional scale. The validation process, conducted among adult consumers via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), revealed a robust single-factor structure accounting for 68% of the total variance with an eigenvalue of 4.75. The final instrument demonstrated superior internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s α = .89, with across-condition alphas ranging from .61 to .89). Demonstrating strong discriminant validity, the DNTS correlated moderately with classical transportation measures—specifically Escalas (2004) (r = .180) and Green and Brock (2000) (r = .348)—confirming that dark narrative transportation operates as an empirically distinct psychological construct. Furthermore, the DNTS exhibited discriminant sensitivity when exposed to non-dark control imagery (producing significantly lower immersion baselines, M = 2.18, compared to conventional scales), proving its sensitivity to dark storytelling paradigms.

Keywords

Dark narrative transportation, Narrative transportation, Advertising psychology, Dark storytelling, Visual rhetoric, Consumer perceptions, Narrative immersion, Grotesque imagery, Emotional ambivalence, Psychometrics

Authors

The Dark Narrative Transportation Scale was authored and validated by an international team of researchers specializing in consumer behavior, digital marketing, and market strategy:

• Colin Campbell, Ph.D. – Associate Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, Knauss School of Business, University of San Diego, San Diego, California, United States. (Email: [email protected]; Correspondence Author).
• Sean Sands, Ph.D. – Professor of Marketing, CXI Research Group, Department of Management and Marketing, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. (ORCID: 0000-0001-9192-3676).
• Carla Ferraro, Ph.D. – Senior Lecturer, Department of Management and Marketing, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. (ORCID: 0000-0002-3134-6712).

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Dark Narrative Transportation Scale is to provide researchers, marketers, and behavioral scientists with a psychometrically sound, parsimonious instrument designed to quantify narrative transportation evoked specifically by dark, provocative, and unconventional visual and textual narratives. While narrative advertising has historically relied on warm, inspirational, humorous, or aspirational story arcs to engender positive affect and brand affinity, contemporary marketing increasingly deploys “dark storytelling”—narrative content featuring mortality, moral conflict, uncanny occurrences, surreal horror, gothic tropes, or psychological distress.

Traditional instruments measuring narrative transportation, such as the seminal 15-item Transportation Scale developed by Green and Brock (2000) or the consumer-focused adaptation by Escalas (2004), were engineered primarily around prose fiction or mainstream advertising narratives characterized by linear, empathy-driven character arcs. Consequently, these instruments often presuppose positive identification, sympathetic emotional valence, or literal immersion into an alternate diegetic world. Such measures exhibit theoretical and empirical limitations when applied to dark storytelling, where audience engagement is frequently driven by tension, curiosity, morbid fascination, visual dissonance, and psychological unease rather than conventional empathic absorption.

In applied experimental and consumer research settings, the DNTS allows researchers to:

• Assess the extent to which dark visual rhetoric captures and holds audience attention despite negative emotional valence.
• Examine the cognitive mechanics of how haunting, unresolved, or intriguing dark visuals facilitate long-term brand and message recall (Campbell et al., 2023).
• Investigate boundaries where shock advertising crosses from constructive narrative engagement into unconstructive brand aversion or defensive processing.
• Serve as a brief, non-fatiguing mediator variable in structural equation models and experimental designs evaluating digital campaigns, anti-tobacco or public health warning campaigns, cinematic marketing, and cause-related social marketing.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the DNTS is dark narrative transportation. To understand this specialized construct, it is necessary to examine classical narrative transportation theory alongside the psychology of dark aesthetics.

Narrative transportation is traditionally conceptualized as a convergent state of cognitive, emotional, and imagery-based immersion wherein an individual becomes mentally “lost” in a story (Gerrig, 1993). In this state, mental faculties are entirely focused on narrative events, real-world surroundings fade, and the consumer undergoes vivid mental simulation. However, as demonstrated by Phillips and McQuarrie (2010), consumer narratives are not limited to uplifting or classical literary forms; they often embrace the “grotesque,” the unsettling, and the macabre.

Dark narrative transportation departs from classical transportation across several critical phenomenological and cognitive dimensions:

1. Persistent Cognitive Intrusion (Visual Haunting)

Classical transportation typically subsides when the narrative concludes, returning the individual smoothly to reality. Dark narrative transportation, conversely, is characterized by an enduring mental afterimage—a lingering cognitive presence where the imagery is difficult to dismiss from consciousness. This reflects an involuntary cognitive processing mechanism triggered by startling, unresolved, or taboo visual stimuli. As captured by the item “The image is difficult to get out of my mind,” dark transportation involves high mental stickiness and intrusive mental rumination.

2. Projected Memorability and Unresolved Processing

Dark narratives often present perceptual or moral incongruities that resist immediate cognitive closure. This creates an epistemic tension that compels the mind to repeatedly rehearse the scene. Captured by the item “The scene in the image could be difficult to forget,” this dimension reflects the consumer’s metacognitive awareness of the scene’s profound resistance to extinction or forgetting. Rather than merely enjoying the story, the recipient experiences a heightened sense of enduring imprint.

3. Cognitive Intrigue and Morbid Fascination

Whereas standard advertising narrative absorption is driven by warmth, humor, or aspiration, dark transportation is fueled by intrigue, curiosity, and psychological tension. As evaluated by the item “The scene in the image is intriguing,” this dimension reflects approach motivation toward stimuli that may simultaneously evoke discomfort. It represents the paradox of dark aesthetic consumption: consumers are drawn to explore, decipher, and immerse themselves in scenes that challenge conventional hedonic expectations.

Theoretical Framework

The Dark Narrative Transportation Scale rests upon the integration of three foundational theoretical paradigms: Gerrig’s (1993) Transportation Imagery Model, Green and Brock’s (2000) Social Cognitive Conceptualization of Narrative Processing, and Phillips and McQuarrie’s (2010) Aesthetic Theory of Grotesque Visual Rhetoric.

The Transportation Imagery Model

Psycholinguist Richard Gerrig (1993) first introduced the metaphor of narrative transportation, comparing the reader or viewer to a traveler who is physically transported to another location by narrative craftsmanship, returning fundamentally altered by the journey. Green and Brock (2000) formalized this into an empirical model, establishing that narrative immersion systematically inhibits counterarguing, enhances belief change in direction of the story, and creates intensely vivid mental imagery. Within their framework, transportation relies upon an integrated tripartite mental state involving attentional focus, emotional reaction, and imagery generation.

Grotesque Visual Rhetoric and Dark Immersion

Phillips and McQuarrie (2010) challenged the assumption that consumer narratives must conform to conventional, pleasant, or classic romantic structures. In their seminal work on narrative and grotesque imagery in fashion advertising, they demonstrated that modern visual communication frequently leverages grotesque, dark, and transgressive imagery to produce a powerful alternative aesthetic experience. Grotesque visual rhetoric deliberately combines disparate, unnatural, or taboo elements to elicit a complex psychological state of simultaneous repulsion and attraction, which Phillips and McQuarrie termed “dark transportation.” They observed that consumers immersed in grotesque narratives do not necessarily experience positive affect; instead, they undergo intense cognitive activation, deciphering visual metaphors and engaging with challenging, mysterious themes.

Extended Narrative Transportation Model

Expanding these insights into consumer psychology, van Laer, de Ruyter, Visconti, and Wetzels (2014) synthesized the antecedents and consequences of narrative transportation, demonstrating that story plot, character identifiability, and visual verisimilitude govern narrative persuasion. Campbell, Sands, and Ferraro (2023) established that dark storytelling alters this processing pathway: by disrupting conventional narrative templates with dark or disquieting imagery, the consumer’s automatic cognitive heuristics are interrupted. The resulting cognitive intrigue and visual rumination dramatically enhance brand and narrative recall over time, establishing dark narrative transportation as an important mechanism in strategic communications.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Dark Narrative Transportation Scale has been established through empirical investigations demonstrating robust construct, convergent, and discriminant validity (Campbell et al., 2023).

Discriminant Validity

A central psychometric objective during the scale’s development was verifying that dark narrative transportation constitutes an independent psychological phenomenon rather than an artifact of general narrative immersion. To establish discriminant validity, the DNTS was compared directly against two established narrative transportation instruments:

• The consumer transportation scale developed by Escalas (2004).
• The canonical narrative transportation scale formulated by Green and Brock (2000).

Bivariate correlational analyses demonstrated low to moderate correlations between the DNTS and the classical scales:

• Correlation with Escalas (2004) scale: r = .180.
• Correlation with Green and Brock (2000) scale: r = .348.

These coefficients demonstrate that while the scales share modest variance as members of the broader family of narrative engagement constructs, the DNTS captures substantial, non-overlapping psychological variance specific to dark narrative processing. The variance inflation and construct redundancy common when adapting general scales to dark content are successfully avoided.

Known-Groups and Experimental Discriminant Performance

To further test construct validity, researchers exposed participants to both dark narrative imagery and neutral/positive control imagery across experimental conditions. When exposed to control images, the DNTS demonstrated exceptional discriminant sensitivity by registering a significantly lower mean score (M = 2.18) compared to both the Escalas (2004) scale (M = 2.86, p = .01) and the Green and Brock (2000) scale (M = 3.01, p < .01). This finding indicates that the DNTS possesses high specificity: it remains dormant and unengaged when evaluated against non-dark stimuli, whereas legacy transportation scales tend to capture diffuse, non-specific narrative reactions.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

The DNTS demonstrated predictive validity in experimental paradigms assessing consumer memory outcomes. In their 2023 study, Campbell, Sands, and Ferraro found that dark narrative transportation scores mediated the relationship between dark advertising exposure and subsequent brand recall. Specifically, higher levels of dark transportation significantly predicted delayed memory retrieval of brand identifiers, supporting theoretical assertions regarding the role of cognitive intrigue and mental haunting in narrative durability.

Reliability

The reliability of the Dark Narrative Transportation Scale has been confirmed through evaluations of internal consistency across multiple stimulus conditions and experimental iterations.

Internal Consistency Reliability

In the primary validation study conducted by Campbell, Sands, and Ferraro (2023), the 3-item DNTS achieved a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of α = .89 for the final measurement model. Across varied testing conditions involving diverse dark and control advertising images, the scale’s Cronbach’s alpha values consistently ranged from .61 to .89, demonstrating acceptable to excellent reliability.

This level of internal consistency is noteworthy given the scale’s ultra-brief structure. Classical psychometric formulas (such as the Spearman–Brown prophecy formula) mathematically penalize scales with fewer items; producing an alpha of .89 with only three items demonstrates strong inter-item covariance and minimal residual error. Each item contributes meaningfully to the shared variance without introducing unnecessary measurement noise.

Factor Analysis

The factor structure of the Dark Narrative Transportation Scale was rigorously determined through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with adult consumer samples recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Item Reduction

The initial instrument design began with a broader pool of candidate items derived from theoretical insights by Phillips and McQuarrie (2010). During the initial factor analytic phase, candidate items were subjected to principal axis factoring and principal components analysis.

A systematic reduction process was implemented based on strict psychometric criteria:

• Factor Loadings: Two initial items were eliminated because of insufficient factor loadings (< .40) and poor communalities, indicating weak association with the underlying construct.
• Semantic Redundancy and Parsimony: Two additional items were systematically discarded due to extreme semantic overlap and redundancy with surviving indicators. This pruning minimized participant survey fatigue while enhancing construct focus.

Final Factor Solution

The resulting 3-item scale was re-analyzed using EFA. The final exploratory factor analysis revealed an unambiguous, single-factor solution:

• Eigenvalue: The extracted single factor generated an eigenvalue of 4.75, substantially exceeding the Kaiser-Guttman criterion threshold of 1.0.
• Variance Explained: This single latent factor accounted for 68% of the total explained variance, representing an exceptionally parsimonious capture of the underlying behavioral construct.
• Factor Loadings: All three final items demonstrated high factor loadings on the primary latent dimension, confirming unidimensionality and structural stability.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Dark Narrative Transportation Scale is an original self-report rating scale optimized for experimental research, marketing analytics, and media studies.

• Instrument Name: Dark Narrative Transportation Scale (DNTS)
• Authors: Colin Campbell, Sean Sands, and Carla Ferraro (2023)
• Construct Assessed: Dark narrative transportation (cognitive stickiness, memorability, and visual narrative intrigue)
• Test Type: Original psychometric rating scale; self-report questionnaire
• Item Count: 3 items
• Target Population: Adult consumers (ages 18 and older); general population
• Administration Format: Computerized, online, or paper-and-pencil; ideally administered immediately following exposure to static visual imagery, video commercials, or print advertisements containing dark story themes
• Response Format: Continuous rating scale (typically administered on a standard 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree, or a 5-point equivalent depending on experimental design)
• Scoring Protocol: Unidimensional scoring. An overall dark narrative transportation score is computed by calculating the arithmetic mean or composite sum across the 3 items. Higher scores reflect greater dark narrative transportation, cognitive immersion, and visual haunting. No reverse-scored items are present.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Dark Narrative Transportation Scale was officially published in 2023 in the Journal of Strategic Marketing.

• Publication Year: 2023
• Fee: There is no fee required to utilize the scale for non-commercial academic, educational, or scientific research purposes.
• Permissions & Licensing: Academic researchers may utilize the three scale items for scholarly research under standard fair-use conventions, provided full bibliographic citation is given to the authors and the original publication (Campbell et al., 2023). For commercial testing, licensing, or republication in corporate assessment batteries, interested parties should contact the corresponding author, Dr. Colin Campbell ([email protected]), or the journal publisher (Taylor & Francis / Informa UK Limited).

References

• Campbell, C., Sands, S., & Ferraro, C. (2023). How dark stories boost recall. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 31(7), 1279–1295. https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2020.1755352
• Escalas, J. E. (2004). Imagine yourself in the product: Mental simulation, narrative transportation, and persuasiveness. Journal of Advertising, 33(2), 37–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2004.10639163
• Gerrig, R. J. (1993). Experiencing narrative worlds: On the psychological activities of reading. Yale University Press. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1993-98832-000
• Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701–721. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701
• Phillips, B. J., & McQuarrie, E. F. (2010). Narrative and persuasion in fashion advertising. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(3), 368–392. https://doi.org/10.1086/651242
• van Laer, T., de Ruyter, K., Visconti, L. M., & Wetzels, M. (2014). The extended transportation-imagery model: A meta-analysis of the antecedents and consequences of consumers’ narrative transportation. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(5), 797–817. https://doi.org/10.1086/673383

Items of the Scale