Transportation into the text: An intersection of psychology and religion.

摘要

This study examined the effects of biblodrama (Pitzele, 1998) on transportation (Green & Brock, 2000) into a narrative. Because transportation has been shown to lead to attitude change, belief change, and behavioral change, higher transportation would be beneficial in Bible studies. Character identification, mental simulation, and/or self-referencing tend to increase transportation, and since bibliodrama uses the techniques of character identification and immersion into the narrative, it was hypothesized that a Bible study which used bibliodramatic techniques would facilitate higher transportation scores. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions and were asked either to read a simple passage of scripture or the same passage of scripture interspersed with bibliodramatic questions. All participants also completed a demographic questionnaire and the Transportation Scale (Green & Brock, 2000), measuring how highly readers are transported into a narrative. An independent-samples t-test was used to test the hypothesis. Transportation scores did not differ between the two groups. Future researchers should attempt testing more salient methods of communicating the principles of bibliodrama in Bible studies.