In some narratives one world is embedded within the main world of the story, which we refer to as the base world, and elements from one world can cross over into the other. This study explored the conditions in which readers perceive character crossover as being likely to occur. Participants read stories that set up the potential for a character…

This research examined readers' knowledge of popular genres. Participants wrote short essays on fantasy, science fiction, or romance. The similarities among the essays were measured using latent semantic analysis (LSA) and were then analyzed using multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis. The clusters and scales were interpreted by searching…

Although it seems plausible that people who prefer a particular genre would appreciate characters from that category more than those from other genres, this appears not to be the case. We devised a parsimonious reality-based genre taxonomy that differentiates nonfiction, realism, fantasy, and humor. In Study 1, evidence from film viewers' genre…