Paths to Transformation Across Contemporary Reading Practices: The Role of Motivations and Genre Preferences

Abstract

Transformative effects of reading, in terms of shifts in self-understanding and enhanced social cognition, have been the topic of a variety of theoretical and empirical studies recently (cf. Fialho, 2019; Kuiken & Sopčák, 2021). However, most studies on this topic focus on print (and literary) fiction, thus ignoring the multifaceted, transmedial reading practices of the digital era. The present study tackles this gap in research with a systematic comparison between readers of books (in print and e-books) and two digital-born reading practices: digital fiction (e.g., interactive fiction, hypertext) and Wattpad (the most popular digital storytelling platform), in which we tried to answer the question whether why we read and what we read leads to perceived transformative effects. An online survey measured participant’s (N = 814) eudaimonic and hedonic motivations for reading (Oliver & Raney, 2011), their genre preferences (M. M. Kuijpers et al., 2020) and whether a reader felt that they read a text, in the last 2 years, that left a lasting impact on them. Our study shows that eudaimonic motivations lead to perceived transformation for the book condition, and to a lesser extent for the digital fiction condition, but not for the Wattpad condition. Furthermore, engaging frequently with drama, further described to our participants as referring to texts with a focus “on character’s inner lives and psychological insight,” seems to be the main predictor of perceived transformation across groups. Overall, the present study gave us a more nuanced picture of what leads to transformative reading experiences in the digital era.