Enhancing Awareness of Moral Residue Through Literature: What Are the Underlying Mechanisms?

While prior research on narrative persuasion has primarily focused on changing specific beliefs or attitudes, this study investigates literature’s capacity to enhance awareness of a more complex experience, particularly regarding readers’ perceived susceptibility to moral residue (PSMR). Moral residue (MR) is defined as the anguished sense of responsibility that individuals may experience in response to a perceived moral failure, even though others would be wrong to hold the individual responsible (for instance, because they did everything in their power to avoid a bad outcome that nonetheless materialized). This preregistered experimental study explored whether literary narratives could activate an “anguished possible self” in healthcare professionals, thereby increasing their PSMR. A between-subjects design compared the effects of fiction- versus nonfiction-labelled narratives portraying MR, with 417 healthcare professionals participating. Additionally, the research examined the mediating roles of transportation, identification, and self-referencing. A newly developed scale was employed to assess participants’ PSMR. Although no significant differences were found between conditions in terms of PSMR, transportation emerged as the strongest predictor. These findings provide insights into how narrative engagement mechanisms may influence readers’ awareness of the human condition, offering implications for the empirical study of literature.