Breaking the Fourth Wall: Effects on Mental State Attribution, Narrative Comprehension, and Character Identification

Breaking the fourth wall, when TV or film characters address the audience, has become common, yet its cognitive, affective, and perceptual effects remain unclear. Grounded in cognitive approaches to audiovisual narrative comprehension, this study investigates how direct address may shape viewers’ social-cognitive and narrative processing. We examined how fourth wall breaks influence viewers’ mental and emotional attributions, engagement, identification, affective valence, and enjoyment. Participants ( N = 50) watched scenes from movies and TV series that were experimentally manipulated to include or exclude a fourth wall break. After viewing, participants completed quantitative measures and provided open-ended scene descriptions. Scenes containing fourth wall breaks led to stronger identification with the target character and greater perceived narrative understanding. Open-ended responses also included more references to characters’ mental states when fourth wall breaks were present. The findings suggest that fourth wall breaks influence narrative comprehension and mental state attribution during film viewing, although further research is needed to clarify the mechanisms underlying these effects.