Cristina Loi

On How Fiction Impacts our Self-Concept

My doctoral research was conducted within the ELIT network (The Empirical Study of Literature Training Network, funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant N. 860516), which was the first program designed to train a generation of scholars that investigates the narrative experience and its effects using empirical methods.

My dissertation investigated how engaging with fiction impacts readers' self-concept across contemporary reading practices. While previous research predominantly focused on literary print fiction, I adopted an inclusive, cross-media approach encompassing books, digital fiction (e.g., hypertexts and narrative games), and digital storytelling platforms (e.g., Wattpad). Using mixed-methods designs, I conducted four empirical studies with over 1000 participants in total.

Key findings include:

• Transformative reading experiences depend more on readers’ motivations and genre engagement than on the medium itself, with eudaimonic motivations and frequent engagement with psychologically oriented genres (e.g., drama) being the strongest predictors of perceived self-transformation across books and digital fiction.
• Fiction primarily impacts the present and desired dimensions of the self-concept, through the activation of "storyworld possible selves", i.e., self–character blends that emerge most strongly when readers feel emotionally engaged and transported into the narrative.
• Fiction resonates particularly strongly with readers who have a heightened “sense of possibility” as part of their personality: they are more likely to feel longing for alternative lives and to explicitly report reading fiction as a way to explore unrealized identities.
• The activation of the self-concept during reading is driven by personal relevance rather than textual cues (e.g., "SPS linguistic anchors") alone, with reader–character similarity facilitating storyworld possible selves, which in turn intensify transportation, emotional engagement, and affective empathy.

Download dissertation →

Related Publications:

• Loi, C. (2025). Is fiction a remedy for our wish to live many lives? Testing a popular assumption among contemporary readers. Poetics, 111, 102018. Open Access
• Loi, C., Scapin, G., Alber, J., & Martínez, M. Á. (2024). Measuring storyworld possible selves in depression stories: Linguistic features, personal relevance, and the narrative experience. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Open Access
• Loi, C., Hakemulder, F., Kuijpers, M. and Lauer, G. (2023). On how Fiction Impacts the Self-Concept: Transformative Reading Experiences and Storyworld Possible Selves. Scientific Study of Literature, 12(1), 44–67. Open Access
• Loi, C., Kuijpers, M., Ensslin, A., & Lauer, G. (2023). Paths to transformation across contemporary reading practices: The role of motivations and genre preferences. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Open Access

The "Sharing FutureS" Project

My first postdoctoral project (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, scheme: BRIDGE Proof of Concept, grant n. 222419) aimed at applying research findings to a societal context.

Drawing from research on Shared Reading and Empirical Ecocriticism, I developed a 6-weeks intervention program for young adults (18-24) called "Sharing FutureS".

This project emerged from multiple recent calls for action that are urging researchers to investigate how to target the global mental health emergency in the young adult demographic, particularly in terms of widespread hopelessness for the future and emotional distress due to the climate crisis. Sharing FutureS is a research-based method that uses the shared experience of narratives (books, movies, tv series, and social media storytelling) to enhance mental health and positive coping strategies in response to young adults' main hopes and worries for their future.

A total of 26 young adults from 18 to 24 years old participated in the first edition of the program.

Key findings:

Exposure to thematically relevant narratives can have several beneficial effects for young adults' wellbeing, social connectedness, climate emotions, and pro environmental behaviors. Further applications of this method on a larger scale are in development.

Visit project website →

Related Publications:

• Loi, C. (under review). Investigating the effects of a narrative-based program on young adults' well being, climate emotions, and pro environmental behaviors. Open Access
• Loi, C., Hakemulder, F., Kuijpers, M. (in press). The impact of "future narratives" and "climate fiction" on young adults. Applying content analysis to audiovisual transcripts of shared narrative experiences. Handbook of Qualitative Content Analysis. Edward Elgar.
• Loi, C., Lusetti, M., Kuijpers, M. (2025). Absorption and Impact on Self-Concept when Reading Climate Fiction. A case study in empirical literary studies using online book reviews. Routledge Companion to Literature and Cognitive Studies. Open Access

Developing the SPS Scale

My current project is titled "Narratives as an Identity Laboratory: Developing and Testing a Reliable Measure of Self-Concept Activation During Narrative Engagement". It has been funded by the Research Fund of the University of Basel (scheme: Excellent Junior Researcher, grant n. 4720688).

Building on the preliminary findings of my doctoral research and on Storyworld Possible Selves theory (SPS), the goal of this project is twofold:

Project Goals:

• Goal 1: To develop a reliable, openly accessible, and multilingual self-report questionnaire (the Storyworld Possible Selves scale) to measure self-concept activation during narrative engagement. Differently to the concept of Identification (which measures how deeply readers can "become" characters and thus involves a loss of self-awareness and self-referencing), the SPS scale will measure how readers/viewers maintain and actively engage their self-awareness by drawing connections between narrative content and their own identity across four temporal dimensions (present self, past self, desired possible self, and feared possible self), which can prompt them to reflect on and potentially transform their understanding of who they were, are, or could become.
• Goal 2: To use the newly developed scale in a controlled experiment, designed to test for the first time whether self-concept activation during narrative engagement mediates the transformative effects of narratives. In this context, the specific transformative effects under investigation are coping skills for future-related concerns in the young adult (18-25) demographic.

Stay tuned! The scale will be soon available for download in 4 languages (English, German, French, and Italian).

This project is a collaboration between myself, Victoria Pöhls (UCD Dublin) and Raymond Mar (York University).

Related Publications:

• Loi, C., Pöhls, V., Mar, R. (in preparation). The Storyworld Possible Selves Scale: Presenting a Measure of Self-Concept Activation During Narrative Engagement.