Event overview
Complex Stories, Flexible Minds: Narrational Complexity in Film and Its Effects on Cognitive Flexibility, Tolerance for Ambiguity, and Political Polarization.
Complex narratives can provide a naturalistic context in which audiences confront ambiguity, uncertainty, and competing interpretations. This project investigates whether engagement with narrational complexity (NC)—arising from how a story is structured—can produce short- and longer-term changes in cognitive flexibility and tolerance for ambiguity, with downstream effects on political polarization. Our theoretical framework is the TENCo model (Cabañas et al., 2026; Triadic Engagement with Narrational Complexity), which takes formal narrative features as its starting point and models the processes through which complexity is experienced. Integrating media psychology and cognitive film theory, TENCo conceptualizes engagement with NC as a dynamic interplay of cognitive, affective, and appreciative dimensions, distinguishes among narrational complexity (formal disruption), complication (informational density), and perceived complexity (subjective experience), and emphasizes iterative meaning-making and emergent understanding.
Within this broader program, we first report findings from an interview study examining subjective experiences of narrational complexity, which inform the development of a dedicated measurement scale. We then present preliminary results from a preregistered experiment (N = 200) in which participants are randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) a nonlinear version of Memento, (2) a linear version, (3) a linear version with contextual scaffolding, or (4) a low-complexity control clip. Pre–post measures assess cognitive flexibility and tolerance for ambiguity, and post-film tasks index integrative complexity and affective polarization. The findings clarify whether complex storytelling can elicit measurable shifts in cognitive processes linked to integrative reasoning beyond the narrative domain, with implications for longer-term cognitive training interventions.
Bio
Cynthia Cabañas is a postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with a PhD in Psychology (Film Cognition) and an MA in Film and TV. Her research explores how film narratives impact cognitive processes in diverse populations and the filmmaking techniques used to shape these processes. Currently, she investigates the potential of complex films to improve cognitive and emotional skills for navigating real-world complexity. Email: cynthiacabanas@gmail.com | ORCID: 0000-0002-2920-3907
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Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Mar 2026 | 4:00pm - 5:00pm |
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