He sees the forest, I see the trees: Narrative perspective shifts how abstractly people construe a text.

Abstract

Humans tell stories to share information, evoke emotions, and change opinions. An inherent dimension of these stories is the narrative perspective from which they are told: Sometimes stories are told from a person's first-person narrative perspective (e.g., using I/me pronouns), whereas other times, they are told about the person using a third-person narrative perspective (e.g., using he/him, she/her, etc., pronouns). The current work tests the hypothesis that the first-person (vs. third-person) narrative perspective causes people to construe information more concretely (vs. abstractly), with downstream effects on how readers interpret and are influenced by a text. Experiments 1a/1b support this claim by showing that participants construe others' actions more concretely (vs. abstractly) when those actions are written from the first-person (vs. third-person) narrative perspective. Experiments 2a/2b build on this finding to show that people prefer concrete (vs. abstract) summary descriptions of short narrative stories that are written from the first-person (vs. third-person) narrative perspective. Experiment 3 tests the implications of this effect for persuasion, showing people were more motivated to donate blood when first-person (vs. third-person) donation testimonials were paired with concrete (vs. abstract) arguments for donating. Finally, Experiment 4 shows that narrative perspective influences identification with a character depending on the relatability of the character's experience. First-person (vs. third-person) narratives increase identification with characters, unless their experiences are too difficult to relate to. These findings provide insight into how narrative perspective influences people's understanding of a written text, as well as its subsequent influence on attitudes and behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).