Joel Mire, Maria Antoniak, Steven R Wilson, Zexin Ma, Achyutarama R Ganti, Andrew Piper, Maarten Sap. Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2026.

This study investigates how different character perspectives (a main vs. supporting character) impact story-consistent attitudes and beliefs and how that effect varies as a function of modality (mobile phone vs. VR headset) in an immersive story for preventing binge drinking. Results of a controlled experiment (N = 147) showed that participants assuming the perspective of a binge drinker (the main character) reported less negative attitudes toward binge drinking and less perceived severity of binge drinking than those assuming the perspective of a non-binge drinking friend (the supporting character). Moreover, participants who watched the story in VR headsets (vs. phones) reported greater perceived susceptibility of binge drinking. A moderated mediation effect was found, suggesting that psychological reactance significantly mediated the effect of perspective on attitudes when the immersive story was viewed in phones. This study highlights the importance of character perspective and viewer’s modality when designing immersive stories for health.