Who Connects with Narrative Messages? Empathic Concern and Identification as Individual-Level Pathways of Response to Narrative Messages in Cannabis-Impaired Driving Prevention

= 264-290), empathic concern was positively related to identification and transportation. Identification, once its overlap with transportation was accounted for, was negatively associated with DUIC intentions post-exposure and at follow-up, and with DUIC behaviors at follow-up. Empathic concern may shape responses to narrative messages about risky driving, through identification. Results illustrate who responds to narrative messages about DUIC, rather than whether narrative messages outperform expository ones, and indicate that empathic concern is related to, but conceptually distinct from, identification, with implications for message design and for narrative theory.