Beyond Facts and Feelings: A Qualitative Exploration of How Emotional Storytelling in Documentaries Influences Memory, Interpretation, and Meaning Construction

Documentaries occupy a unique position as both informational media and emotional narratives, creating a fundamental tension between factual accuracy and compelling storytelling. This qualitative study explores how emotional storytelling techniques in documentaries influence viewers' factual recall and meaning-making processes. While neuroscientific research has demonstrated that emotional content activates different memory pathways than neutral information (Phelps, 2004), little is understood about how viewers themselves experience and articulate these effects. Using an interpretive phenomenological approach, the study conducted in-depth interviews with 25 participants after they viewed carefully selected documentary clips containing both emotionally charged and neutral segments. Findings revealed three key patterns: First, participants consistently demonstrated stronger but less accurate recall of facts presented in emotional segments, often conflating details or attributing heightened significance to emotionally framed information. Second, viewers showed limited awareness of how narrative techniques shaped their understanding, with many interpreting emotional resonance as evidence of truthfulness (Nichols, 2017). Third, the meaning-making process privileged emotional engagement over factual precision, with participants constructing personal interpretations that frequently extended beyond the documentary's explicit claims. These findings have significant implications for documentary ethics and media literacy. They suggest that emotional storytelling, while effective for engagement, may inadvertently compromise factual understanding. The study contributes to documentary theory by bridging neuroscientific evidence with audience reception research, offering practical insights for filmmakers balancing emotional impact with informational integrity (Winston, 2018). It also highlights the need for media literacy programs that address the subtle ways narrative construction influences factual perception and memory.