John Tchernev is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication at Miami University. Before academia, Tchernev worked in Los Angeles on shows like Reba, Class of 3000, and Futurama. His research examines the persuasive power of narratives and satire, audience psychology, and media multitasking.
Episode Description
Tchernev is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication at Miami University. Before academia, Tchernev worked in Los Angeles on shows like Reba, Class of 3000, and Futurama. His research examines the persuasive power of narratives and satire, audience psychology, and media multitasking.
+Full Transcript
Rosemary Pennington
Researchers have spent decades trying to understand why some messages stick with audiences while others are ignored. They've experimented with humor and anger trying to figure out what emotions fuel engagement, narrative connection is increasingly seen as a conduit to persuasion. And that's the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories where we explore the statistics behind the stories. And the stories behind the statistics. I'm Rosemary Pennington. Stats and Stories is a production of Miami University's Department of Statistics and media journalism and film, as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me is regular panelist John Bailer emeritus professor of statistics at Miami University. Our guest today is John Tchernev is an assistant professor of strategic communication at Miami. Before academia, Tchernev worked in Los Angeles on shows like Rebbe, Class of 3000 and Futurama. His research examines the persuasive power of narratives, and sat our entire audience on psychology and media multitasking. John, thank you so much for joining us today.
John Tchernev
It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Rosemary Pennington
So how does someone go from working on shows like Futurama to suddenly like running experiments on whether shows like Futurama can be persuasive?
John Tchernev
You know, it's really weird. It's a strange career change. But, you know, I think one thing I read, I was actually kind of getting a little bit fed up of hot with Hollywood, which is just kind of, it can be tough it can be, you know, there's, I think a lot of the stereotypes are true about just like the pressure people being jerks. You know, it's also very fun and exciting. But I really kind of thought I was looking into possible other careers as kind of a backup, I actually thought to myself, I read something where people said that some of the most interesting people or the people who do the most interesting work are ones that have unusual career changes. And often having a completely different background allows you to kind of insight into something new. And so that kind of gave me some confidence in actually applying to grad school and wanting to kind of study communication. But really, my motivation was more that when I worked in Hollywood, I kind of felt like you have a big microphone, where you're basically communicating to a large body of people. And I felt like a lot of writers who I met and who I knew along the way, really wanted to kind of say something purposeful, meaningful, maybe showing a point of view, or kind of, you know, not necessarily political, but just maybe something of social relevance, or deeper than just like a kind of silly joke, or, you know, whatever. So, but a lot of them, either were not able to, because of the kind of, I guess, kind of the structure of the programs they worked on, like, you know, if you're writing, I don't know, for kind of a typical cop drama or something, you can't really go off on much of like an environmentalist rants unnecessarily or anything like that, you know. But also, I found that it was very interesting, because when people did try to approach something with some social significance in a kind of creative format, the effects were just kind of all over the place in terms of how well it was received. And I didn't know anything about media effects at the time, really, but just in terms of like, there were some people who kind of had projects where they would make kind of a very heartfelt story, often paying for it themselves. Sometimes big movie stars would even do this. One example was John Cusack made a movie about, that probably no one ever saw, and I'm blanking on the name of it, but basically, it was kind of making fun of like war profiteering. But it failed miserably at the box office. And often people who are passionate about making these kinds of things don't necessarily know the best way to do it. And I was kind of curious about how to kind of engage an audience but also maybe have a message of social relevance.
John Bailer
Yeah. So you said you left Hollywood because of the pressure, people being jerks, but it was kind of fun. Then you went and took an academic position to write tenure track?
John Tchernev
I don't know what– I'm just. Yeah, you're right. I went through it very carefully. Yeah.
John Bailer
No, no, we're lucky to you know, we're lucky to have you here. So let me follow up on the point that you were just raising, which was this idea that, that there's often this desire to through this work, this creative act of screenplay or production, to have this message that's, that's meaningful and deeper? And, you know, can you talk just a little bit about how that's accomplished in the context of this narrative structure?
John Tchernev
Yeah, well, I think there isn't a formula and there isn't a clear way to do it. And I think that writers often kind of feel like they have to figure it out for themselves. And I think a lot of them just as with most screenwriting in general, you're kind of going with your gut and you're kind of just doing what you think is good and you're often pitching it to friends or collaborators or your manager or agent and kind of seeing what they think and getting feedback, but you're not really like, you know, using a playbook per se. And the one exception is there are kind of guidebooks of creating a screenplay structure and so forth that are widely used in Hollywood, like a three act structure, beginning, middle and end. But in terms of like, figuring out how to put in something that might be against, like, honestly, socially relevant, but you know, something that might be, you know, have some sort of importance, whether it is like a message about, you know, something about healthcare, something about the environment, something about politics, I think people are kind of winging it in terms of doing that. And I found when I worked for, I wrote for this show called Class of 3000, on Cartoon Network, we wanted to make some jokes, that was also a kid show, and like, we didn't want anything too heavy. And we also kind of felt like, we have to kind of fit this very light tone where, you know, it wasn't appropriate to talk about lots of stuff. And sometimes also, the network would give us notes saying, Don't make this joke. It's not funny to kids, you know, we have songs, we have, like, kind of cynical jokes in there or something. And they would kind of say, you know, let's stay with just the fun stuff for the kids and stuff. So, yeah, people are kind of winging it as they do it.
Rosemary Pennington
As you're talking, this show I keep thinking about is the Simpsons, which is so long lived. And his at, you know, obviously traffics in the absurd often, but also does have stories where they do, you know, go after sort of social issues, and there was one, I think it's My pods and Broomsticks, where I think it's Bart makes friends with a young Muslim boy who moves into the neighborhood, right? And, like, you know, I'm assuming the narrative is like, if someone like Bart can make friends with a Muslim kid, any of us could do it. What do you think makes it possible for something like The Simpsons to be able to embed those messages? Is it just the history of that? Or is there something about the narrative structure that makes it more acceptable to audiences to have that stuff dropped in?
John Tchernev
That's a really good question. I think, well, first of all, the Simpsons is just brilliant, like I grew up loving it. And they kind of really, I think, set the bar in terms of having really smart, fun, social satire or commentary mixed in with also really good storytelling, really good drama, some actual heart, and just so many jokes, too, so many funny jokes. But yeah, I think that one reason they're able to do it is because I think part of the key is hitting a tone with satire, where you are able to elevate and heighten reality. And, in a sense, the Simpsons, because it's animated, and so forth, they have Homer doing things that are, you know, no human would actually do or survive, you know. And they're able to heighten and exaggerate and all the characters are kind of exaggerated. And because of that, I think they are able to sometimes put in some commentary, and then again, also, they have no continuity, in a sense that Springfield can literally get destroyed in one episode or just, you know, fall apart. And then the next episode just restarts. And, you know, the kids are always in the same grade at school, and you know, so they're able to show, playfully, playfully talk about issues, but I think the key thing is avoiding being preachy, and that's really hard to do. Yeah, so that, and that I think, is partly about the tone, it's about making sure that the story comes first. And the actual engagement with the characters comes first, as opposed to just feeling like you need to be lecturing someone about something that's important to, you know, after school special kind of language. Exactly, yeah. Write the kind of sitting down, you know, and be like, Okay, kids, we had a lot of fun today, but we really need to talk seriously about blah, blah, blah, you know, or, you know, exactly the kind of after school special thing. I think people now are sophisticated. They don't recognize that for what it is, and they typically don't like it.
John Bailer
You know, you look back to one of the things I was about to say, which was that it seemed like that the prerequisite is the effective storytelling, there has to be the story there that's engaging and compelling, and sets in his tone in such a tone that you can be brought in to this. You've mentioned the Simpsons is one kind of example where this has been effectively done. Are there some other examples that kind of stand out for you? Where the story and the message are both very strong?
John Tchernev
Yeah, that's a great question. What I find fascinating is that there are a lot of failures. And I should have made a list before this, but there are a lot of other episodes.
Rosemary Pennington
John, don't ask.
John Tchernev
Everyone's compelling, but–
John Bailer
The five
John Tchernev
Well, yeah, exactly. Thank you. But there are good examples. But often, I think also we kind of over-exaggerate how much we expect one narrative can have an impact in the age when audiences are just constantly watching streaming shows, just processing tons of narratives. And so the idea of like one quote, unquote, very special episode, for example of like a sitcom or something like that, you know, actually teaching kids to like not do drugs because they saw one character, like have a bad time on drugs in one episode TV show, it's like unlikely to have a permanent lasting effect. But I think that with, yeah, sometimes it can be, it can be effective examples that I've seen that I think people will kind of work with people. One is actually an episode of the show 30 Rock, if you've ever seen it, which was by Tina Fey, and it kind of is about behind the scenes at a show that's kind of like Saturday Night Live. But it's a fictional version of it. And they actually, we did a couple of experiments on it, because we thought it was such an interesting piece of writing, because NBC had what they call their Green Week of programming, which was basically, they would have a week every year. And I don't know if they still do it, but they would basically say we're going to make all our shows have an environmental theme this week, which the writers probably weren't thrilled about, because the network's telling them what they have to write about that week. But they all did it. And 30 Rock did an episode, which was very funny called Green Zone where they really did a very interesting job with it, because what they did was they had a, they had David Schwimmer guest star as a guy who's a struggling actor, who gets cast as a mascot for NBC Universal, and they kind of make fun of the network themselves in the show. And his name is Green. So he basically is like an environmentalist. And so he goes around kind of criticizing people on the show for not being environmental, like leaving the lights on when they're not in the office, or using Styrofoam cups that aren't recyclable for their coffee and stuff. So he's actually saying environmental things, but it's mixed into the story and kind of a fun way. And the story actually has fun with the idea that he becomes very full of himself. And instead of just the show, saying, these are things you shouldn't do that kind of starts there, and then goes into a really interesting place, where he starts thinking that he is like the savior of the environment, and becomes like this crazy, like ego maniacal jerk, and then eventually gets fired. And it turns into something where it's kind of making fun of environmentalists in a way, but not really, but also kind of saying Pro Environmental messaging. And we did an experiment with that where we actually showed students that episode. And we found that they had kind of conflicting interpretations of it, which is one thing that can happen, especially with satire. And so I think it was effective for some people, because they said, and we did some focus groups also to find out what they really thought of it and how they interpreted it. And we found they really thought a lot of them thought that it was reminding them of good environmental behaviors. But the show didn't feel preachy, because it kind of made fun of its own. Kmart kind of made fun of the idea of a network being preachy about the environment, which was ironically exactly what NBC was doing. But they were making a profit off the show 30 Rock, so they didn't really care if the show made fun of them on the network. So you know, everyone came out happy. But yeah, it can be effective. But it also can, if you're too subtle, people just come away with completely different impressions. And that's another thing we found there, too. Yeah.
Rosemary Pennington
You're listening to Stats and Stories. And today, we're talking about the persuasive power of narrative with John Tchernev. John, you started talking a little bit about this one study on 30. Rock, you are a quantitative researcher who is studying narrative, right? How do you do that?
John Tchernev
You're right. You have both pointed out some big foolish mistakes. I don't know. You know, I don't know why I left Hollywood. I don't know why I'm using quantitative methods to study storytelling, but I really, you know, I'm gonna have to call my wife and rethink things a little bit after this.
John Bailer
But hey, you just got tenure, man.
Rosemary Pennington
Yeah, no, no, no, you're not.
John Bailer
Good. You're good to go.
John Tchernev
So no, but I think that what I, first of all, I think of myself as method agnostic. And I really tried to, I mean, we did focus groups on this 30 Rock episode, for example. And I did that on purpose, because we did quantitative work on it first, and found really unusual results. But we were just kind of using just a post viewing survey of like, what did you think of this rate at one to five and so forth? And the numbers didn't really explain everything. In that case, I thought, right. Well, so the focus group worked well with the quantitative. But yeah, I think more broadly, just the question of quantitative work in narrative is relatively new. There's been a surge in communication research in the last 20 years or so where people have found that stories can have persuasive effects as well as entertaining effects. And some psychologists and then a bunch of people in communication have really tried to quantify that, but how to measure a story is almost an impossible question and how to measure the effects of it is something that psychologists have done with various things like just kind of ask you to self report how you did with things, but it's a whole, it's a big topic. But yeah, generally it's, it's tricky. And I think we're still kind of figuring out a little bit as we go.
John Bailer
Well, that's kind of exciting though. If it's early stages and the story, I find it really interesting that you know, some of your works appear in communications research, but others in media psychology. And you know, one of the, you're talking about the ways that you some of the things that you measure, you talk about using surveys, you talked about kind of this qualitative research paradigm, which I've really come to very much appreciate over the course of my career, says the stat guy. But I really do because I think that there's sort of insights and into that you will have from pursuing these different mixed methods, strategy. So you've studied identification and liking in narratives, and you had the students that were having almost a continuous monitoring or recording of their reactions. Can you talk a little bit about, sort of, set the stage for the experiment there? What is this? You know, so liking and identification is an aspect of an audience response to narrative. Yeah. So talk, can you say a little bit more about what motivated this? And then how you’ve dove in and studied it?
John Tchernev
Yeah. Thank you. That's a great question, I think, so liking, one thing we found is that there are kind of psychologically if you look at how people get engaged with a story, and that's kind of a broad term getting engaged, or really being into a story. There are a couple processes that like, psychologically, we've kind of separated, even though they overlap to some extent, once one is called transportation, or kind of just a sense of presence getting sucked into the story, and almost losing track of what you were doing, or the world around you. And just really focusing on a story, whether it's a movie or a book, or whatever. And that's kind of about being in a story. There's another process that's also been subjected to a lot of research lately called identification. And that, of course, is the idea of kind of empathizing with a character, seeing things through their point of view and connecting more with a character. Whereas transportation or presence is more about the story, in general, just feeling like you're part of a story. And so one is more person or character focused; one's more general to the story. But those are the two big areas of research. And what some research has found is that identification with a character can have really strong effects and kind of a meta with a meta analysis of some work on these types of things found that identification led to some of the biggest impacts. And so I wanted to study what is causing people to either identify or not, because it really seems to affect whether they like the story, whether they care about what's happening, as well as whether they may then take the character's perspective. And, you know, especially in a persuasive kind of situation, maybe the character has a point of view that's different with what your point of view was, when you started, let's say, in a political context or something, and you actually maybe get some empathy for another person experience, for example, seeing someone on screen who may be, you know, homosexual, or dealing with a difficult family situation, or something where you maybe never saw that side of an issue, you know. And so identification can be really important, as well as just kind of liking a character. So we started with that. And then I really wanted to look at moving into a real continuous Response Paradigm where people aren't actually giving real time data. So we basically set it up kinda like they're just turning a dial while they watch. And so they watch a show of computer monitoring, they can, at any moment, just kind of rate, it just kind of gives them a general question, how much do you like the main character right now? And they could just move it anytime they wanted to from zero to 100. And if they kind of didn't have a change, they could just keep it there. But they could move it whenever they wanted to kind of based on their own interpretations. And the first thing people say is like, well isn't it going to distract them from the show to have to focus on this dial and think about how much I like them? Well, maybe now that I'm not even paying attention to the story, we found that people, if you do a little practice ahead of time, they get used to it. And it's really not very hard, actually. So we kind of did that. And we also asked other people how much they liked the character. Instead of identifying with them thinking of liking as being more like a different person, you like that person as like a friend as opposed to feeling like you are them. And what's really interesting is that we found that story elements, such as things that I've taken from screenwriting, such as the idea of setting up a character's goals in a story and their motivations for doing things can be really important for increasing audience identification in those kinds of key moments as well as audience liking for a character so we like a character when we know what they want, what they are, are about and maybe what challenges they're facing. And that more than other information can really kind of get us absorbed into the character shoes. So there's a long answer to a simple question.
Rosemary Pennington
And I don't think it's simple. Okay. As you're talking about this particular experiment, it does sound like it highlights the importance of clear writing, right? Like you can't go Oh, a caregiver who said it like don't approach the blank page lightly like, you know, you have to be really thoughtful. Have you talked to people who are actually still in the business about the sort of research you found? Like is it has to be like it could translate like someone who's writing the next Star Wars film like, Hey, these are the things we found if you don't want your fandom to hate you, like–
John Tchernev
Yeah, well, I've been waiting for them to call. I've chatted with some friends and stuff who are still in the business. But I think that it's something where I don't feel like I have a lot of the answers yet. A lot of this is really new stuff. And people have not looked at it quantitatively in these ways. And so I think that if someone were to say, John, how do I make people, let's say, I want to have a narrative where I want people to learn about the importance of getting screened for mammograms, or getting a mammogram for breast cancer, right, which is actually something that people have tried to do in a story probably have a health message like that. And they say, How's the best way to integrate that into the story? I could give them, maybe a couple pointers, but I don't really feel like I can say this will work, whereas this other option will definitely not work. And there's some things that we have learned so far, but we're still figuring it out. So you're probably gonna say what are some of the things that work are really kind of making sure it's, it's a little bit subtle, but also that people can understand the character, and that they can kind of, again, identify with them. And we've also found that we actually did an experiment where we tried making something really quote unquote preachy, where it literally kind of slaps you in the face with the message of what you see, what they want you to, what the writers want you to do. And for example, that going back to like the NBC and their Green Week idea, they actually would have PSAs, also in the commercial breaks in between the episodes of their green themed programming, and the PSAs will be like NBC actors being like, you know, think about the environment, don't forget to do this and stuff. And so we actually did an experiment where we showed some people episodes, where the PSAs were in the commercial breaks, and other people were the PSAs were taken out. And it was just regular commercial breaks. And the PSAs, actually, on top of a show that was already about environmental messaging and stuff, they kind of got people annoyed. And actually, for people who were not big environmentalists, they actually backfired a little bit, they actually kind of got a little bit annoyed and just felt like it was telling them what to do or preachy. And they had something called psychological reactance, which is basically a fancy word for what a petulant teenager does, which is basically the opposite of whatever you ask them to do. So you know, you say, recycle your styrofoam cups, and they're gonna throw them in the trash on purpose, just to make you angry, you know?
John Bailer
Yeah, seems like, yeah, don't insult your audience is a big part of the story here, you know. So one of the things that I found myself wondering is, you know, so you do these experiments? Now, all of a sudden, you're gonna be kind of like this, you know, Dr. Frankenstein building scripts based on experiments that you're doing with captive audiences that, oh, wait, I've done this. Look, look what's happened? I mean, could you envision some future where these types of experimental insights and to, well, liking or identification might actually be then implemented in the course of a story being built?
John Tchernev
Right? And then would that be used for good or evil? You know, I mean, could it be used by someone who has a very specific political or political agenda to manipulate audiences into that point of view? And the answer, my answer to that are one, people are already trying to do that, whether we like it or not, yeah, there are lots of movies, especially kind of documentaries, but also they use narratives within them, trying to get people to have a very specific point of view, whether it's Michael Moore on the left, or a bunch of conservative filmmakers on the right, or other people in general. But the second question is, I think that do we actually see a way to, like, prescribe exactly what to do. And I think that is never going to be perfectly understood quantitatively. And some people in the humanities probably already think the idea of studying the effects of narratives with numbers is just a fool's errand. And my I kind of took and I kind of agreed to the extent that we're not gonna be able to quantify why one thing really hits an audience necessarily better than another. That's what studios spend tons of money and time developing and trying to find out and they do focus groups, they do pilot testing, they do, you know, all this stuff. And they don't have a great answer, obviously, based on the fact that lots of movies and TV shows fail. So I think we're not going to have a perfect answer, and I think that's okay. But I view what we do as kind of looking for patterns in human behavior, which is kind of the social scientific point of view and saying, if there is a pattern and it can be measured, so people for example, all seem to like this one type of story, then there is something may be worthwhile studying there, though it may not necessarily predict exactly how people will respond in all circumstances.
Rosemary Pennington
In the last couple of minutes, I'm going to ask you, John, you are someone who researches entertainment. What media do you consume that you enjoy for entertainment purposes that you would never research? Like? How do you because I always asked what I do, because I also research, you know, pop media and I try to separate the pleasure consumption from the study consumption. So I am curious, like, what do you cordoned off from, from the studies that you hold to yourself for fun?
John Tchernev
Well, yeah, okay. So first of all, my research does ruin some things for me. Because I do watch, I tend to, if I hear that something has a kind of like an environmental theme or political theme, I'll tend to watch it more than I wouldn't necessarily otherwise. And I'm kind of like, always analyzing it. But I would say one thing, my guilty pleasure is usually just action movies. Like, I'm excited to see the new John Wick movie coming out soon. They're paying me to plug it. But I mean, people actually do research action movies, and like, does the violence lead to children being more violent and stuff, which has not really been I don't think shown conclusively, but I don't want to study that. I just love it. I love a good Marvel comic book movie, I just, you know, I kind of want to have fun with those and then not worry always about entertainment, trying to necessarily give us an important lesson about society.
John Bailer
So Rosemary, what is yours?
Rosemary Pennington
Oh, that's a good question. I mean, right now, I'm watching a lot of Mando like Mandalorian. And we just finished Last of Us, and I will soon be starting Ted Lasso. So things that connect not at all to Muslim representation, which is what I generally study, I will say I am wearing a Bruce Lee t-shirt right now. And we used to watch Bruce Lee films when I was a kid, and my dad during commercial breaks when they were on TV would be like, Okay, guys, now you can fight. And then we would try to reenact what we saw on the films. So to speak, to John's point, it might not like long term, make you violent, but it might sort of jazz yet a little bit to make your eight upon
John Tchernev
–is actually reinforcing the message. Right, you know, so that would be a whole interesting setup.
John Bailer
So my grandfather, I talked him into taking me to see Enter the Dragon at the, you know, at the theater, which I thought just showed you how much he loved me. But it was brilliant. You know, as we start, as we're sort of sneaking in on landing this plane, you know, and the question that I have is, you were you're talking about media, multitasking is one of your areas of interest. When I heard that as part of kind of what you do, or what you're interested in, you know, you're talking to someone who used to have headphones on reading a book, watching TV when I was a kid, and I still have trouble doing anything without me, you know, bringing in multiple input sources. So tell me, what do you do when you're talking about studying media multitasking, what does that even mean?
John Tchernev
Yeah, well, that's okay. That's a big question. I actually was asked to write like a book chapter about kind of, what does the concept mean? And a lot of it was, I spent a lot of time trying to think about that. And we use it differently as researchers. But it's, I would say it's not directly connected to this other stuff as much, except for just the idea of, are we paying attention to stories when we watch them even, which is a big question, because people are often doing other things, texting on their phone, while they're watching something on TV, maybe only kind of nominally listening to what's happening. But the idea of media multitasking. So here's a fancy definition is basically the idea of using at least one media based technology, while doing at least one other task driven activity as well, which can also be immediate or not. So if you're doing laundry, while listening to a podcast, that will be media multitasking, because you've got a podcast on, if you are just doing too, you can also multitask in the real world without any media, like you can be talking to talking to your friend, you know, that you're out at lunch with, but then also get, you know, interrupted and tried to do something else, or he'd be taking a walk and talking to someone. But basically media multitasking means involving at least one mediated activity. And then kind of the really big finding is just that we are terrible multitaskers. Humans don't really have brains that work at multiple things at once. We really are just task switching back and forth. And every time we switch, even if it's rapidly, we lose a little bit of our place in what we're doing, and have to kind of reboot that. And so just the more distracted we are, the worse we are at everything. But the more satisfied we feel because we feel really busy and really productive. And so, you know, I think that's something I've tried to apply to myself though, I'm always getting distracted by trying to like actually, you know, turn off my phone or mute it when I'm trying to sit down and write a paper or something for a little bit because it just makes us a little bit dumber at everything. And we think we're getting smarter by multitasking.
Rosemary Pennington
Well, John, that's all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Stories. Thank you so much for being here today.
John Tchernev It's been a pleasure. Thanks, guys.
Rosemary Pennington Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University's departments of statistics and media, journalism and film and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter @StatsandStories, Apple podcast, or other places where you find podcasts. If you'd like to share your thoughts on the program, Send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu Or check us out statsandstories.net and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.