Can’t stop thinking about Star Wars and The Office: antecedents of retrospective imaginative involvement

Abstract

Retrospective imaginative involvement (RII) is a concept that encapsulates how audiences reflect back on a narrative’s characters and events after the story has ended. The current study aims to explicate the antecedents of RII in order to provide initial steps toward creating a theory of RII. Through two studies, we tested the role of familiarity, traits (e.g., curiosity), entertainment experiences broadly (e.g., parasocial relationships), and content- or exposure-specific experiences (e.g., boundary expansion). Results suggest that RII plays an important role in self-regulation through repeated asynchronous engagement with specific narratives. This demonstrates a further mechanism by which narratives impact our lives even after the exposure. Further results and implications are discussed.