Summary Gabriel and Young (2011) created a study in which they tested the hypothesis that reading a piece of story would lead to psychological assimilation of the information described in the story. There were 140 undergraduate participants, consisting of 68 women and 72 men, 69% of whom were White. The average age of participants was 19 years old. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay This is a correlational study because it seeks to find an association between two variables. It explains the relationship between reading a passage and acquiring the desire to belong to a group described in that story. Basically, supporting the hypothesis of collective assimilation; which describes how reading a story will lead to psychological assimilation into a group described in the story (Gabriel & Young, 2011). The independent variables in this study were the types of stories presented to participants. There were two types of readings, namely Twilight or Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Each reading had a designated chapter, with participants reading Twilight assigned to read chapter thirteen while participants reading Harry Potter were given either chapter 7 or chapter 8. The dependent variables were participants' scores; which determined whether or not they felt the need to belong to a group after reading the passage. The study was conducted by telling participants that the study aimed to better examine individuals' responses to books and films. They were separated into two groups. A group of participants had to read Chapter 13 of Twilight to see if the participants would want to become vampires. In this chapter, Edward gives Bella a vivid description of what it means to be a vampire. The second group had to read chapter 7 or 8 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, where Harry and his wizard friends complete wizard-related tasks. The purpose of reading this chapter was to see if the participants wanted to become wizards after completing the wizard-related tasks. while reading. After finishing reading, they took various tests. The first test was an implicit identity assimilation test in which participants had to go through two critical blocks comprising 40 trials each. In the first block, participants were given instructions to categorize words related to “me” and words related to “wizard” using the same response key. They also had to categorize the words “not me”, the words “vampire” using another answer key. In the second critical block, the pairings were reversed. The purpose of this test was to observe whether the speed at which individuals responded to the two stimuli using the same key would indicate inferred associations between the two categories (Gabriel & Young, 2011). Another device used was the Assimilation Scale from the Twilight/Harry Potter narrative collection. The purpose of this scale was to measure whether participants felt associated with vampires or wizards. They were asked three questions on each topic. The results of this study confirmed the hypothesis. Participants who read the Harry Potter chapters identified themselves as wizards, while those who read the Twilight chapters identified themselves as vampires. Participants satisfied their need to belong by going through the readings and identifying themselves within the groups of what they had previously read. Additionally, higher IAT scores demonstrated stronger associations between self and vampires, while lower scores demonstrated stronger associations..