Abstract:

One of the most critical challenges of science popularization is how to engage people who are indifferent to science and how to create interest in and understanding of scientific findings for those people. One answer to this question could be edutainment.

This paper presents an empirical study on a special form of edutainment, namely so-called serious comics, that is, comics that aim to transmit scientific knowledge in an entertaining way. The focus of this investigation was on the role of emotional and cognitive affinities of the recipients and on the influence of the comic figures on reception processes. Experimental material was an excerpt from an already existing comic on quantum theory that explains the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat by the help of a dog (instead of a cat). As subjective affinities, we measured the participants’ liking for dogs and their need for cognition. Furthermore, we asked for the participants’ favourite comic figure and assessed several motivational indicators (liking the comic, liking the graphics, liking the textual presentation, interest in the story, and involvement) as well as the understanding of the narration (plot without scientific details) and the scientific understanding of the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat.

Our results indicated that the subjective affinities in form of the liking for dogs and the need for cognition influenced favouring one of the comic figures (dog, scientist, non-scientist) but had only minor direct impact on the motivational indicators of the reception process, with the exception of involvement. Also, the understanding of the narration and the scientific understanding of Schrödinger’s cat were not correlated with subjective affinities. However, for the chosen favourite comic figure, there were significant differences for understanding the scientific content: People who chose the scientist as their favoured comic figure – which had the closest connection with the presented scientific explanations – showed better scientific understanding.

These findings indicated that subjective affinities were rather a general entrance into the comic and defined mainly the preference for one of the comic figures. Afterwards, the favourite comic figure influenced the reception process. The closer a comic figure was connected with the scientific content the better the scientific understanding of the presented scientific content. A possible explanation could be that the favourite comic figure bundles the attention of the recipient. Another mediator could be the identification with the favourite comic figure. Future studies with additional measurements should clarify the underlying processes.

Overall, our study shows the crucial importance of comic figures for enjoyment and learning with serious comics. On the one hand, the comic figures should be created in a way that matches the emotional and cognitive affinities of the recipient. On the other hand, the role of the comic figures in the story should be closely related to the explained scientific content.

As an outlook, systematic investigations on the design of serious comics can provide the basis for an optimized design that also allows for science communication of complex themes to the broad public. We hope this study also inspires other researchers to look for the full potential of serious comics.

Keywords:

Serious comics, science communication, science popularization, comic figures, subjective affinities, quantum physics, instructional design.