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Article published In: Scientific Study of Literature
Vol. 9:1 (2019) ► pp.34–52

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The literary genre effect

A one-word science fiction (vs. realism) manipulation reveals intrinsic text properties outweigh extrinsic expectations of literary quality

 | Washington and Lee University
 | Washington and Lee University
Published online: 4 February 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.19010.joh
Abstract
We test the literariness of genre fiction with an empirical study that directly manipulates both intrinsic text properties and extrinsic reader expectations of literary merit for science-fiction and narrative-realism stories. Participants were told they were going to read a story of either low or high literary merit and then read one of two stories that were identical except for one genre-determining word. There were no differences between the science-fiction and narrative-realism versions of the story in literary merit perception, text comprehension, or inference effort for theory of mind and plot. Participants did, however, exert more theory-of-world effort (i.e., world-building) for the science-fiction version. The more inference effort science-fiction readers dedicated to theory of world, the more cognitively and emotionally engaged they were. These results contradict the assumption that science fiction cannot achieve literariness and instead demonstrate a “literary genre effect.”
Article outline
  • Current study
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Source and text manipulation
    • Questionnaires
    • Procedure
  • Results
    • Inference effort
    • Transportation
    • Literary quality perception
    • Comprehension
      • Differential relationship between inference effort and transportation
  • General discussion
  • Conclusion
  • References
References (32)
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