One of the key features of stories is the choice of narrative perspective. Previous studies have shown different effects of perspective and manipulation of demographic variables on the subjective experience of reading, where the first-person perspective and similarity between the reader and literary character increase identification with the character, absorption in the story, and emotional involvement. Despite their frequent study, no research has yet been conducted that simultaneously examined the effect of narrative perspective in the case of a matching condition between the character's gender and reader's gender. Furthermore, it remains unclear how identification, absorption, and emotion are related to one another. In the current study, participants (N = 208) were randomly assigned to read one of four versions of a short story. Versions differed in the grammatical person of the narrative perspective (1st or 3rd person) and gender of the main character (i.e. male or female pronouns). By conducting a 2 (narrative perspective) x 2 (reader's gender) x 2 (character's gender) experimental design, I wanted to check whether the first-person narrative and the matching gender condition evoked greater identification, absorption, and a change in emotions. The results showed that men identified more with the male character in the case of reading from the third-person perspective, while women identified more with the female character in the case of reading from the first-person narrative. Women were also more absorbed, although there was no effect of narrative perspective and character's gender. Contrary to expectations, there was no effect of independent variables on emotion, despite the obtained change in emotion before and after reading. In addition, identification indirectly and directly predicted absorption, which was also directly predicted by positive emotion and flow. These results underscore the specific processing of narrative perspective and suggest that reader characteristics may be more important than formal text features.
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