Research Bulletin: Are Meaningful Narratives More Likely to Promote Social Cognition?

Although a great deal of research has examined whether stories help to promote social cognition, most of this work has been on adults and not delved much into different types of stories. Hannah N. M. De Mulder and colleagues (2022) took it upon themselves to examine this question in adolescents, with a focus on comparing different modalities of presentation (i.e., books, television, film), and hedonic narratives to eudaimonic ones. Eudaimonic narratives prompt audiences to consider deep truths about the world, conveying a sense of meaning and often eliciting experiences of “being moved” by the story (Oliver & Raney, 2011). In contrast, hedonic narratives are focused on providing pleasure for audiences, such as positive emotions and excitement. The researchers asked 126 children aged 8 to 16 how often they read books (or watched television/film) that was hedonic or eudaimonic in nature, and also measured their social abilities in three different ways (self-report, emotion recognition, and the ability to infer mental states). Using a Bayesian approach to analyzing their data, they evaluated whether the data was more or less consistent with several different possibilities. In this population of adolescents, they found little consistent evidence that books, TV, and film predict better social abilities. However, they did observe that exposure to meaningful narratives was associated with better social skills, in particular for television and film. This work highlights the importance of studying a variety of populations, and types of media, when researching the relation between stories and social cognition.

References

De Mulder, H. N. M., Hakemulder, F., Klaassen, F., Junge, C. M. M., Hoijtink, H., & van Berkum, J. J. A. (2022). Figuring Out What They Feel: Exposure to eudaimonic narrative Fiction is related to mentalizing ability. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 16, 242–258.

Oliver, M. B., & Raney, A. A. (2011). Entertainment as pleasurable and meaningful: Identifying hedonic and eudaimonic motivations for entertainment consumption. Journal of Communication, 61, 984–1004.

Post by Raymond Mar
 
* For a copy of the original article, please contact R. Mar (see profile for e-mail).
 
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels

What Traits Allow Actors to Embody Their Character?

As you close your eyes, you begin to visualize, carry the weight, and conjure the emotion. For those who are fascinated by the ability to create seemingly real experiences from imagined ones, this particular study may catch your eye. In an attempt to gain a better understanding of how actors are able to become their character so convincingly, a group of researchers examined whether acting ability is related to traits linked to hypnotizability (Panero, Goldstein, Rosenberg, Hughes, & Winner, 2016). This connection was drawn from the fact that in both acting exercises and hypnotic induction, individuals draw on personally-experienced events. Actors draw on their emotions and experiences and then fit those events to the character they wish to play. In a hypnotic state, individuals also draw on real-life experienced that parallel the instructions delivered. For example, if the hypnotic suggestion was for an individual’s arm to feel heavy, this individual would likely draw on a time when they truly experienced their arm feeling weighed down (Panero et al., 2016). 

To examine this putative link between acting abilities and hypnotizability, this study looked at different tendencies associated with hypnotizability: imaginative suggestibility, absorption, and fantasy proneness. Imaginative suggestibility is the ability to recreate an imagine situation so that it feels real. Absorption is a state of focus completely dedicated to experiencing an object (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974). And, lastly, a fantasy prone individual is someone who spends a great deal of time fantasizing and daydreaming (Merckelbach, 2004). The researchers found that actors did indeed score higher than musicians and nonartists on all three tendencies. So it seems that actors do indeed rate themselves higher in traits that have been linked to hypnotizability. This study provides important insight into the abilities actors may possess that allow them to become their character. 

Posted by Michelle Vinitsky

Merckelbach, H. (2004). Telling a good story: Fantasy proneness and the quality of fabricated memories.
Personality and Individual Differences, 37, 1371–1382. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2004.01.007

Panero, M. E., Goldstein, T. R., Rosenberg, R., Hughes, H., & Winner, E. (2016). Do actors possess traits
associated with high hypnotizability? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 10(2), 233-239. doi: 10.1037/t10470-000

Tellegen, A., & Atkinson, G. (1974). Openness to absorbing and self-altering experiences (“absorption”),
a trait related to hypnotic susceptibility. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83, 268–277. doi: 10.1037/h0036681

Research Bulletin: Movie Genre Preference Influence Efficacy of Product Placement

When Lady Gaga and Beyoncé released a music video for their single, Telephone, the blatant and numerous product placements for brands such as Virgin Mobile and Hewlett-Packard incited backlash. These product placements, in which products are strategically placed or embedded within a medium for marketing purposes, has become increasingly prevalent (Russell & Belch, 2005; Wiles & Danielova, 2009). This increase may be unsurprising, as the strategy can be successful. But how does product placement work?

Product placement may be more effective when branded objects don’t appear centrally, but in the background of movies or TV shows. These products then become implicitly associated (unconsciously and gradually) with the emotional aspects of the viewer’s experience. This is known as evaluative conditioning, which can result in more positive implicit attitudes toward new stimuli (Cacioppo, Marshall-Goodell, Tassinary, & Petty, 1992).

With these ideas in mind, Christopher Redker (Ferris State University), Bryan Gibson, and Ian Zimmerman (Central Michigan University) conducted a study on background product placement to see if different variables affect implicit brand attitudes. Participants were first asked about their brand preferences towards Coke and Pepsi along with their attitudes towards the sci-fi genre. Those who had neutral attitudes towards Coke and Pepsi then watched a segment of a sci-fi movie. The experimental group watched a segment of the movie that included background product placement for Coke, with the brand appearing on a billboard in the background. The control group watched a segment of the movie that did not include any product placement for Coke. 

After the movie segment, participants were asked more questions about their brand attitudes. Explicit attitudes toward the four brands were measured using a 7-point Likert scale, disguised as a pilot study irrelevant to the first half of the study. Implicit brand attitudes were measured using Implicit Association Tests, in which Coke and Pepsi were paired with negative, positive, or self attributes.

Viewers who liked sci-fi had more positive implicit brand attitudes after watching the clip, compared to those who had other movie genre preferences. In addition, those who disliked sci-fi shifted their implicit brand attitudes to be more negative. Explicit brand attitudes, in contrast, were shown to be unaffected by product placement.

This study illustrates how implicit brand attitudes are affected by background product placement in a movie as a function of genre and genre preferences. 

Posted by Jennifer Ip

* For a copy of the original article, please contact R. Mar (see profile for e-mail).

Cacioppo, J. T., Marshall-Goodell, B. S., Tassinary, L. G., & Petty, R. E. (1992). Rudimentary determinants of attitudes: Classical conditioning is more effective when prior knowledge about the attitude stimulus is low than high. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28, 207–233.

Redker, C., Gibson, B., & Zimmerman, I. (2013). Liking of Movie Genre Alters the Effectiveness of Background Product Placements. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 35, 249–255.

Russell, C. A., & Belch, M. (2005). A managerial investigation into the product placement industry. Journal of Advertising Research, 45, 73–92.

Wiles, M. A., & Danielova, A. (2009). The worth of product placement in successful films: An event study analysis. Journal of Marketing, 73, 44–63.

Research Bulletin: Does Music Influence How we See Characters in Movies?

When watching a movie, music plays a significant role in how we interpret the story and its characters. Berthold Hoeckner, Emma Wyatt, Jean Decety, and Howard Nusbaum (University of Chicago) were interested in how music in film might affect empathy. They predicted that music will serve as a vehicle for the audience to better understand and identify with a character’s feelings. Ambiguous scenes were paired with either melodramatic or thriller music to investigate whether the type of music can influence the viewers’ reactions.  Participants were asked to either view several film clips accompanied by either melodramatic or thriller music (N = 16) or view the same clips with no background music (N = 16). Subsequently, the participants completed questionnaire about the how likeable the character was and how sure they were of their ability to pinpoint the character’s thoughts. Additionally, participants partook in a recall task involving the identification of the character’s emotions based on still images from the previously presented clips. What they found was that viewers who saw clips accompanied by music saw the character differently compared to those who saw clips without music. Moreover, different effects were observed depending on the type of music that was used. Melodramatic music led viewers to see the character as more likeable and gave them more confidence in knowing what the character was thinking, compared to no music. In contrast, thriller music made participants feel more uncertain about what the character was thinking and decreased how likeable they saw the character. Both genres of music also evoked certain emotions in the participants. Melodramatic music elicited feelings of love, whereas thriller music aroused anger. These emotions were highly related to the participants’ likeability ratings. Music helped the audience relate to the character by illustrating the character’s emotions and arousing those emotions in the participants. The results suggest that music can influence our ability to emphasize with characters. Although this study demonstrated a strong connection between film music and empathy, further studies are needed to investigate how the way we process film music can affect our emotional attachment. 

Posted by Lilach Dahoah Halevi.

** For a copy of this article, please contact RM (e-mail in About section)

Hoeckner, B. Wyatt, E. W., Decety, J., & Nusbaum, H. (2011). Film music influences how viewers relate to movie characters. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 5, 146–153.

Research Bulletin: Effects of Video Games and Television Series

Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues’ (2001) Mind in the Eyes Test has become a preferred way of measuring empathy and theory of mind in adults, and it has been extremely useful in research on effects of reading that we have discussed in OnFiction, see most recently our report of the study by Jessica Black and Jennifer Barnes (2015a) who found in an experiment that reading fiction improved social understanding, as measured by this test, but did not improve non-social understanding (click here). In the Mind in the Eyes Test a person looks at 36 photos of people’s eyes, as if seen through a letter box, and for each photo is asked to choose one of four terms to say what the person is thinking or feeling. This image is one of them, and for it the four terms from which to choose are “joking,” “flustered,” “desire,” “convinced.” The correct answer is “Desire.”

In exploring such effects, until now all the studies that I know had people read texts such as short stories or essays. I have been asked: What about films? What about video games? Usually I say that in principle they should be the same. Now Daniel Bormann and Tobias Greitemeyer (2015) have done a study that answers this question.

Bormann and Greitemeyer had people play a single-player, exploration video game in which a student comes home to her house after a year abroad to find her family missing. The researchers write that the game is played: “By analyzing different clues, such as voice records on answering machines, documents, books, and everyday objects that are distributed in the house, the player gradually reveals bits of the plot. Key elements of the story are narrated by the protagonist’s sister, in form of spoken diary entries. Gone Home was critically acclaimed, above all for excellence in narrative” (p. 648). There were three groups, each of 37 people. In one group the participants were introduced to the game by being given the game’s description from the developer’s website, and in this way, the researchers say, the participants would have in mind “in-game storytelling rather than superficial game characteristics.” Those in the second group also played Gone home, but they were introduced to it by asking them to “register, memorize, and evaluate technical and game play properties of the game as objectively and accurately as possible.” The third group was called neutral, and participants in this group played a different game, an adventure called Against the wall. People in the first group, the narrative condition, achieved better scores on the Mind in the Eyes Test than those in the other two groups.

A comparable effect has now also been found, using the Mind in the Eyes Test by Black and Barnes (2015b) with people who watched an award-winning television series.

So, the effect of fiction on improving empathy and theory of mind is not just due to the inferences of reading. It occurs with other media and, if I may say so, that is perhaps as it should be.

Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Hill, J., Raste, Y., & Plumb, I. (2001). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test Revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger's syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 241-251.

Black, J. E., & Barnes, J. L. (2015a). The effects of reading material on social and non-social cognition. Poetics, 52, 32-43.

Black, J. E., & Barnes, J. L. (2015b). Fiction and social cognition: The effect of viewing award-winning television dramas on theory of mind. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 9, 423-429.

Bormann, D., & Greitemeyer, T. (2015). Immersed in virtual worlds and minds: Effects of in-game storytelling in immersion, need satisfaction, and affective theory of mind. Social Psychological Personality Science, 6, 646-652.

Taking Up Space: Embodying Formations of Visionary Fiction

As I have noted in the past, I study with an organization that provides yoga training in the context of disability, and every year, they hold a month-long "Kiss My Asana" yogathon, which I take as an opportunity to explore embodied experience more deeply, particularly how every body can access the most experience. Following the lead of Matt Sanford, who runs MindBody Solutions, I'm organizing my yogathon practice around creating context where it is possible to try to take up as much space as possible -- a feeling I think can be easiest to access through poses that encourage you to push out like a star. 

Last weekend's amazing Formation video repeatedly featured this star-spaced theme -- combining the physical act of making space with attention to the social relationships that challenge or support this space making, something I'd like to stay a few more things about, given that moving the yogathon to February from its prior location in April has placed it squarely in Black History Month.

This child takes this space in front of a line of riot police, which gives a sense of how this act of reaching out can take different kinds of effort, since the star-reaching, dry-swimming, afro-maintaining dance formation in the pool is obviously not easy.

Beyoncé is obviously very powerful -- and part of what has made Formation rock the internet is not just the power of star poses, but their particular use: pitting that power in both powerful and vulnerable ways against oppression:

Splayed out on a police car as it submerges in a New Orleans flood, after asking "Stop shooting us," or restaging plantation representations, she enacts what Adrienne Maree Brown describes as important visionary fiction, showing possibility and what the space it inhabits looks like:

Research Bulletin: How Music Affects Film Appreciation

Music has always accompanied films in one form or another. Today, entire soundtracks are produced solely for movies. Moreover, many of these musical themes have become a part of popular culture, instantly recognizable and synonymous with certain movies. But music doesn’t just add to the aesthetics of the film and fill in the silent segments; it can also help to engage viewers. Drs. Kristi Costabile (Iowa State University) and Amanda Terman (University of California) conducted 2 experiments to help shed light on how music accompanying a film helps draw the viewer into the story. Specifically, they looked at the effect of music on whether a movie can shape our beliefs, and how strongly viewers identify with the main character.

Both studies found similar effects, but were slightly different in their structure. In the first experiment, 57 participants were randomly assigned to watch a film either with its original soundtrack or with this soundtrack taken out. There was no dialogue in the film. In the second experiment, the film originally had no soundtrack but there was dialogue. 110 participants were randomly assigned to watch this film in its original version, or with classical music looped in the background. This music was either emotionally consistent with the story, or opposite in tone.

The researcher found that when a soundtrack accompanies the film, viewers become more immersed in the story presented, both emotionally and cognitively. As a result, viewers were also more likely to agree with the beliefs expressed in the film. The main character in the story was also seen as more identifiable. However, these effects only appeared when the music was emotionally consistent with the story (e.g., sad music playing for a sad story). When the music was emotionally inconsistent with the film, these results disappeared or even moved in the opposite direction.

Music and narrative have a complex relationship, but these studies have helped to uncover some of its intricacies. Hearing a musical theme often conjures up memories of watching the movie it came from and the memorable scenes and emotional reactions to that movie. Music is more than just an accompaniment. In a film, the music becomes inseparable from the story. 

Costabile, K. A. & Terman, A. W. (2013). Effects of Film Music on Psychological Transportation and Narrative Persuasion. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 35, 316-324.

* For a copy of this article, please contact R. Mar (e-mail in About section).

Post by Helen (Hongjin) Zhu

Research Bulletin: Hating characters so much they seem real

People who read books often develop strong feelings towards specific characters. Avid readers feel as if they “know” Harry Potter and perhaps even view him as a friend. This strong sense of affiliation towards characters can develop into something of a relationship, known as a parasocial interaction. These parasocial relationships can occur across many types of media. We can, for example, come to feel that we know and trust Dr. House on television, even though he’s just a fictional character. Real people who we only know through media, such as Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, can also become targets of our parasocial friendships. Recently, however, researchers have begun to expand their thinking in this area, wondering if we can also form intensely negative relationships with people we don’t know personally or who are purely fictional. Drs. Jayson Dibble (Hope College) and Sarah Rosaen (University of Michigan) examined this idea by asking 249 undergraduate students to either report on a television character that they liked or one they disliked. What they found was that both groups reported evidence of parasocial behaviors, such as talking at the character on TV as if s/he could hear and heed what was being said. For example, in response to a liked character one person reported saying “Aww, that was so sweet, Jesse.” In contrast, a person who was reporting on a disliked character recalled saying “You need to get some professional help” toward the TV. The researchers found that characters who were disliked were just as likely to elicit these kinds of parasocial behaviors as liked characters. However, participants who reported on their feelings toward liked characters reported more intense parasocial feelings relative to those who discussed a disliked character. It appears that knowing a character that we dislike intensely makes that character seem just as real to us as one that we are deeply attracted to.

Dibble, J. L. & Rosaen, S. F. (2011). Parasocial interaction as more than friendship:

Evidence for parasocial interactions with disliked media figures. Journal of Media Psychology, 23, 122–132.

* For a copy of the article, please contact R. Mar (see the 'About' section)

Films and Facts

I recently reviewed for PsycCRITIQUES The imitation game (Oatley, 2014). It’s a film about the life of Alan Turing, founder of modern computing and artificial intelligence, and important contributor to cognitive science. The film is a good one, and it’s been well received. Many people will not have heard of Turing or the contribution he made during World War II at the British Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park (click here) to breaking German codes, and hence to defeating the Nazis and probably shortening the War, perhaps by as much as two years. It’s good that the film tells audiences something about this. But Turing is someone I happened to know about. I did not enjoy the film as much as many of my friends did because for me the misinformation in the film was irritating. Why, I think to myself, does the film industry use the caption “based on a true story,” as if this somehow implies that a film with this designation is better than one drawn from a novel, or short story, or written by a scriptwriter?  Documentaries have a dedication to truth, but why in movies are there no genres that correspond to history or biography in which filmed events are anchored in known facts and evidence?

In the New York Times Sunday Review section, of 15 February this year, Jeff Zacks, who has done very interesting research on events in movies (Zacks, 2013) wrote a piece for the column Gray Matter in which he discussed how people remember incidents and issues from historical films that aren’t true, and which don’t appear in histories or biographies. These incidents and issues are inserted by film-makers because they think that they make for a better story. In the New York Times piece Zacks cites, but does not give references for, two studies that relate to this issue. The references are below. In a study by Butler et al. (2009), students read a text on a piece of history and watched a film clip on the same subject. In a test, one week later, they better remembered events that were seen in the clip and had also read about, than those who recalled information from the text without having seen a film clip about it. When, however, the film’s information contradicted information from the text, subjects often recalled the false information from the film. Umanath et al. (2012) repeated the experiment but asked the students to monitor the films for inaccuracies. Even when they had done this, tests of recall often showed they had remembered not the correct information from the text but the misinformation from the movie. 

In his New York Times article, Zacks writes that what is going on here is that we are better at remembering events than at remembering the source of events, and that this usually makes sense as it’s the events themselves that are likely to be the most important. The trouble with inaccurate information in movies is that we may remember it, and believe it to be true, even when we don’t remember that the film was only “based on a true story.” Umanath et al. did however find one technique that helped. If the misinformation was identified at the time it was seen in the film then its influence was substantially reduced. 

So, if you haven’t seen The imitation game, and think you might go, here are some of its inaccuracies, so that you can recognize them at the time. Turing was eccentric but did not have a stammer. He did not suffer official opposition of the kind depicted in the film. He did not invent and build the machine to decode the Nazi Enigma code all by himself; he had important collaborators, who included Gordon Welshman (who does not appear in the film). The woman to whom Turing becomes engaged, Joan Clarke, did not apply to join Bletchley Park and be mistaken as a typist. She won a double first in mathematics at Cambridge and was recruited by Welshman. And so on. And so on. You can read more about the inaccuracies in an article by Caryl (2015) in the New York Review of Books.

In the Wikipedia article on The imitation game the following appears, in relation to the film’s inaccuracies.

In a January 2015 interview with The Huffington Post in response to general complaints about the level of historical accuracy in the film, its screenwriter Moore said: "When you use the language of 'fact checking' to talk about a film, I think you're sort of fundamentally misunderstanding how art works. You don't fact check Monet's 'Water Lilies'. That's not what water lilies look like, that's what the sensation of experiencing water lilies feel like. That's the goal of the piece.

Yesterday evening Graham Moore won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for his work on this film. Good for him. All the same, it sounds from his Huffington Post quote that if he were painting Monet’s “Water Lilies,” he might replace some of the lilies with orchids because they are more valuable.

Butler, A. C., Zaromb, F. M., Lyle, K. B., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Using popular films to enhance classroom learning: The good, the bad, and the interesting. Psychological Science, 20, 1161-1168.

Caryl, C. (2015, February 5). Saving Alan Turing from his friends. New York Review of Books, 42 (2), 19-21. 

Oatley, K. (2014) Coded messages. Review of The Imitation Game (2014) dir. Morten Tyldum, PsycCRITIQUES, 59 (52), pp. [np]

Umanath, S., Butler, A. C., & Marsh, E. (2012). Positive and negative effects of monitoring popular films for historical inaccuracies. Applied Cognitive Science, 26, 556-567. 

Zacks, J. M. (2013). Constructing event representations during film comprehension. In A. P. Shimamura (Ed.), Psychocinematics: Exploring cognition at the movies. New York: Oxford University Press.

Zacks, J. M. (2015, February 15). Why movie "facts" prevail. New York Times, p. SR 12. 

A storied life

Boyhood is an unusual film by Richard Linklater. It’s about a boy growing up from age six to age eighteen. It is a fiction film, but the scenes were shot at intervals over a 12-year period with the same principal characters, played by the same principal actors. The focus of the film is on a boy whose name is Mason. He has an older sister, Samantha, and parents who love their children but are divorced.

In the film's first half the scenes are not linked by a plot. They are about events, in almost haphazard order, of a kind that might happen to a young American boy as he grows up. So we see Mason with his mother and sister, the two children being looked after by their father when it is his turn for custody, Mason at school, Mason having to adapt to his mother’s new partner, and so on. Only in its second part does the film take on a structure that is easily recognizable as a narrative and—the film maker has this right—the narrative starts in Mason’s adolescence. It’s only in adolescence that people start to experience themselves in terms of a narrative in which they are the protagonist. The research on which this idea is based is by Dan McAdams (e.g. 1988). He proposed that people take on an identity by constructing a life story. Before adolescence, although children can remember events in their lives, and although they can talk of themselves in terms of their likes and dislikes, their cognitive systems have not yet developed so that they can relate remembered events to preferences and plans in a narrative sequence. 

McAdams and McLean (2013) have proposed that people choose and develop their life-stories principally in conversations with others. In the film’s second half, we see Mason making choices, and relating them to himself and others in conversations. The choices people make generally involve selections from themes that are easily available in a culture. In American culture such themes include choosing a sexual partner and being successful in a career of some sort. Also, of course, people can choose counter-cultural themes such as being a druggie, being hard-done-by, being a drop-out. In the film, we are aware of such counter-cultural themes in the background. But Mason doesn’t choose from them.

Mason starts the narrative sequence of his life when he is given a camera and takes up photography. It’s his first step towards developing a purpose in life. We see him becoming fascinated by photographs and working in a darkroom. He has started on his story of becoming a photographer. He has chosen the inviting theme of becoming a famous artist.

It is rare that a fiction film depicts so successfully a piece of psychological research. In this case, the film and the research by McAdams develop an important idea in the psychology of fiction.

McAdams, D. P. (1988). Power, intimacy, and the life story: Personological inquiries into identity. New York: Guilford.

McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 233-238.
 

Research Bulletin: Confusing Actors for their Characters

Although not explicitly focused on written narratives, Tal-Or and Papirman (2007) were intrigued by the concept of media consumers confusing events in a fictional universe with facts from the real world. For instance, one interesting aspect of watching a movie is how viewers perceive the actors portraying the various characters. Very often, fans of a TV show can come to confuse the traits of the character with those of the actor playing that character. Actors who play doctors on TV frequently get asked medical advice and those who play villains on soap operas often receive very negative reactions from fans in real life.  In real-life interactions, people tend to attribute others’ behaviour to their personality rather than their situation, making the fundamental attribution error (FAE) (Ross, 1977).  In two studies, Tal-Or and Papirman tested the theory that individuals would also make this error when evaluating actors, by improperly ascribing a fictional character’s traits to the actor’s personality, despite knowing the character is scripted and the actor is in a situation wherby he or she must behave a certain way.

In the first study, after reading a description of a male actor that included some accurate biographical information, participants were assigned to view a ten-minute scene from a movie in which this actor was either playing a positive character who was sympathetic and kind, or a negative character who was ruthless and brutal.  Afterward they rated the actor’s personality.  As predicted, participants who saw the actor playing the positive character rated him higher on positive traits than those who saw him playing the negative character.  There were no effects of participants’ gender or previous knowledge of the actor.

The second study took into account how being really absorbed with the narrative and observing the actor playing multiple roles might impact viewers’ likelihood of making the FAE.  Participants again read a description of the actor that included accurate biographical information.  Half were then randomly assigned to only view him in one scene (positive or negative), and the other half were assigned to view him in both scenes (positive and negative) with which scene was viewed first randomized.  Afterward, transportation into the narrative and perceptions of the actor’s personality were evaluated.  The results replicated those of the first study.  Additionally, participants who only viewed the negative character were more likely to make the FAE than those who only viewed the positive character.  As predicted, greater transportation into the narrative increased the FAE, whereas viewing more than one scene did not have an impact on its occurrence.  Nevertheless, the second scene participants watched had a stronger impact on how they evaluated the actor than the first scene.

These studies were able to show that the FAE might provide an account of how people perceive actors. It is an interesting finding because it highlights the strength of the FAE.  Even when viewers are aware that a character’s behaviour is scripted, they are still prone to making this error and inaccurately attributing the character’s behaviour to the actor’s personality.

References
Ross, L. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 10 (pp. 174-200). New York: Academic Press.

Tal-Or, N., & Papirman, Y. (2007). The fundamental attribution error in attributing fictional figures’ characteristics to the actors. Media Psychology, 9, 331-345.

Guest post by Elizabeth van Monsjou.

Research Bulletin: Harry Potter and the Reduction of Prejudice

Reading fictional stories may do more than entertain us. Researchers have found evidence that they may help to reduce prejudice against outgroups. Over a six-week period, grade five students in Italy were read passages from the Harry Potter novels that were either neutral (e.g., Harry purchasing his wand) or related to prejudice (e.g., Draco insulting “mudbloods”). The students completed self-report measures of their attitudes towards immigrants before and after this intervention. For students who identified with Harry Potter, there was a reduction in negative attitudes towards immigrants. In a second study, high school students in Italy were asked to complete two questionnaires. One asked about exposure to the Harry Potter novels and overall book reading and television viewing, and the second surveyed social attitudes with some items measuring contact with and attitudes towards homosexuals. Students who had both read more Harry Potter books and identified with its main character, had more favourable attitudes towards homosexuals. A third study used a college student sample and found that in the students who disidentified with the villain of the books (Voldemort), more exposure to the Harry Potter films was associated with better attitudes towards refugees. Although there are some limitations to the design of these studies, this research program lends support to the idea that fictional stories can supplement educational programs for reducing prejudice in youth.

Posted by Tonia Relkov.

Vezzali, L., Stathi, S., Giovannini, D., Capozza, D., & Trifiletti, E. (2014). The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

Visualizing Language Use in TV and Film Over Time: A Simpsons example

For researchers of narrative, one unique asset is the preponderance of examples that exist to be studied. Humans create a lot of narrative fiction, in the form of books, television shows and films, among other media. Access to these examples has become increasingly simplified, thanks to both the Internet and growing computing power. A number of researchers have created tools that allow for some rather interesting visualizations of available data. One example is the Bookworm Browser, created by Dr. Benjamin M. Schmidt, an Assistant Professor of History at NorthEastern. The Bookworm Browser allows users to search for the incidence of different words which are then visualized as a line-graph, showing how often the word appears in the selected text as a function of time. In a browser dedicated to television and film, for example, one can visualize how often the names of the main characters are mentioned in the TV show The Simpsons (i.e., Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie). There are interesting patterns that emerge from this visualization. Perhaps not surprisingly, Homer is mentioned most frequently, followed by Bart, then Marge, Lisa, and Maggie. However, the mentions of Homer, Bart, and Marge decreases rather steadily for the first twelve years of the show perhaps as viewers became increasingly familiar with the family. (Lisa and Maggie are mentioned infrequently, and their frequency of mention stays relatively stable). Another interesting twist is that in the past two years the name Marge has come to be mentioned more frequently than Bart, perhaps reflecting an increasing importance for this character in the show. For more information on this browser please see this blog post by Dr. Schmidt (warning: it contains swear words). To try it yourself, click here. 

Structure of a life

The film Boyhood, written and directed by Richard Linklater, offers interesting insights into how we construct stories of our lives. Filming took place a few days at a time, every year or so, over a twelve-year period, with the same characters, played by the same four principal actors. The film’s protagonist is Mason (played by Ellar Coltrane). He is six when the film starts. Then there is his older sister, Samantha (played by Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter). Then there are these children’s parents, who are separated: Olivia (played by Patricia Arquette) and Mason senior (played by Ethan Hawke).

The film seems in some ways like a documentary, but it's actually a fiction film. In its first half its structure is a series of episodes that all seem distinct, linked not by a plot but by a continuity of characters’ lives and relationships. So we see the affection between Mason and his mother, the children's squabbles, them being taken out by their father on days when he has custody, scenes in the class room, Mason being bullied by some boys who are larger than he is, Olivia introducing a man who will move into the family home, and become a stepfather to the two children.

In its second half, the film starts to take on a recognizable plot structure. This reflects psychological work of Dan McAdams (see, e.g. McAdams & McLean, 2013) on how people give themselves a sense of unity and purpose by remembering episodes in their lives and, from them, constructing narratives of selfhood: life stories. In the film, this narrative structure begins for Mason when he is given a camera and takes up photography. He starts to conceive his own aspirations, and to direct his own plans and actions. He wants to be an artist, and to go to college. Tilmann Habermas and Susan Bluck (2000) extend McAdams’s work by showing that, before adolescence, children’s cognitive capacities are such that they can remember events in their lives, but can’t yet link them together, or link such events to their current plans in a narrative way. The film gives a wonderfully seamless transition between its pre-adolescent episodic structure, and its adolescent narrative structure.

As Mason starts to make choices in his life, we see how he begins to influence his own character. He has been affected by his parents’ divorce, and not just by his first step-father who turns out to be a drunk and an abuser, but by a second step-father who is cold and rigid. Although Mason is attractive to others because he is temperamentally amiable and equable, in his identity-constructing conversation with his friends he takes on a stance that is cynical, and verges on nihilism. It’s another accomplishment of Boyhood that it leaves us wondering how this life might continue when the film stops.

Habermas, T., & Bluck, S. (2000). Getting a life: The emergence of the life story in adolescence. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 748-769.

Linklater, R. (2014). Writer and director. Boyhood. USA.

McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22, 233-238.

Morality at the Movies

Going to a feature film or watching a television drama is a moral activity. So says Carl Plantinga in a talk he gave to this year’s meeting of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image, and in a book he is writing with the tentative title: Spectator Judge: Affect and Ethics in Narrative Film and Television. The Society meets annually, and this summer the meeting was at Franklin and Marshall College, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was ably and agreeably hosted by Dirk Eitzen.

Plantinga argues that film and television narratives are ethically significant because they play a role in the construction of our systems of morality at both personal and cultural levels. First, his argument goes, narrative films cue us to judge, believe, and feel emotions in various ways. Second, they offer us representations that are particularly vivid, as to why we should make judgements, exercise beliefs, and experience emotions. Third, one of the ways in which films have this effect is by offering us various pleasures and enjoyments. Fourth, they invite us to transfer judgements, beliefs, and emotions from the realm of fiction to the real world.

Fiction films and television dramas, in other words, are persuasive devices. One might say that although analysis of film has largely been thought of as a branch of poetics, according to Plantinga’s argument it should better be seen as a branch of rhetoric. The spectator is typically invited by a film into the position of making judgements about characters and their actions, and this immediately makes film a moral activity. Film therefore offers a sentimental education, teaching people about emotional scripts and structures of feeling. It invites us into a state of transportation and engagement, and we are pleasurably rewarded by the moral and evaluative emotions we experience, carefully specified for us by writers and directors. For instance, we feel empathy and sympathy for a protagonist, and this will lead to relief and satisfaction in the promise of justice. In response to cruel or contemptuous behaviour of a character, we feel anger and disgust, and we are pleased to see wrong-doers punished. We recognize sacrificial acts, which induce states of admiration.

I think that Plantinga is right about film and television dramas being about moral and ethical matters. This is seen, for instance, by the reflection of values of the societies in which they are made. In the West, for instance, we place great value in individual experience and in each individual life. It seems to me, however, that, in film and television dramas that are art rather than just entertainment, room is left for us as spectators to make not just judgements that we are persuaded to make by writers and directors, but our own judgements. Here, perhaps, film and television dramas attain their most important moral significance.

Image of the Spectator Judge (from Carl Plantinga’s slide show).

Research Bulletin: Exploring the Colour Palette of Different Film Genres

Different genres of narrative cinema rely upon different tropes. In a romance film, we expect that the two protagonists will eventually end up together, no matter the obstacles that might appear. Similarly, in a horror movie, we know that peeking behind the forbidden door will never end well. But genre films rely upon more than just familiar plot points, they often share different aesthetic devices as well, such as the sound mixing, the style of editing, and the cinematography. A study by I-Ping Chen, Fang-Yi Wu, and Chih-Hsiang Lin (National Chiao Tung University) recently explored how colour is employed in different genres of film. They began by sampling 30 random films from five separate genres: Romance, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi, and Action. Random stills from these films were then sampled and analyzed with respect to colour, contrast, and brightness. What they found was that Romance and Comedy films tended to group together in their use of warm colours like red and yellow, whereas the other three genres tended to use cooler colours like blue and green. Comedy films also tended to be the brightness, followed by Romance, then the remaining three genres. A similar pattern was found with contrast, with Romance and Comedy being higher in contrast than Horror, Sci-Fi, and Action. The researchers were also able to explore the variability in these values among films within a genre. For example, there was little variability in contrast across different Comedy films, illustrating that films in this genre are consistently high in contrast. On the other hand, Horror films had the highest variability in contrast, which means that different Horror films were more likely to have different levels of contrast compared to other genres. Overall, this study provides an example of how innovative technologies can be applied to answer novel questions regarding narrative media. Although we might have had some intuitions regarding some of these findings, such as what colour choices were most common for certain genres, there are unique findings here that would have been difficult to predict based on lay intuitions, such as the amount of variability for these values for different genres. The application of automated computerized analyses to answer questions regarding aesthetics and narrative is becoming easier as a result of advances in inexpensive computing power. These approaches are a useful complement, and often starting point, for more in-depth investigations to determine whether these differences and similarities are psychologically meaningful. 

Chen, I., Wu, F.-Y., & Lin, C.-H. (2012). Characteristic color use in different film genres. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 30, 39-57.

* For a copy of the original article, please contact R. Mar (see profile).

Research Bulletin: Sadness in Response to Films and Real Life

It seems paradoxical that we intentionally expose ourselves to stories that cause us to feel negative emotions when in our own lives we try to avoid negative experiences.  Thalia Goldstein, a researcher at Pace University, has recently addressed this puzzling phenomenon with a study that examined the emotional reactions of individuals in three situations: (1) viewing a sad movie presented as based on a true story, (2) viewing a sad movie presented as entirely fictional, and (3) experiencing a sad event in one’s own life.  The participants in the study were asked to report on how sad and how anxious the movie or experience made them feel.  Interestingly, there were no differences in reported sadness or anxiety after viewing the movie clips thought to be fiction or non-fiction.  However, for those who had experienced an event in their lives that mirrored what they saw on screen, the negative emotions they felt while viewing were intensified.  Individuals also felt greater sadness and anxiety in response to a personally-experienced sad event compared to viewing a sad event on screen.  Finally, although there was no difference in level of sadness for either remembering a personal sad event or viewing a sad movie, there was greater anxiety reported after remembering the personal event.  Overall, this pattern of results suggests that we might intentionally seek out sad stories because they allow us to release sad emotions without the accompanying anxiety that we feel in our real lives. 

Posted by Tonia Relkov.
For a copy of the original article, click here.

Article reference: Goldstein, T. R. (2009). The pleasure of unadulterated sadness: Experiencing sorrow in fiction, nonfiction, and "in person." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 3, 232-237.

** To our Canadian readers, Happy Thanksgiving!

Research Bulletin: The Puzzle of Fiction

We have often discussed the idea of “transportation” in OnFiction, which refers to our tendency to become deeply immersed into the world of a particular story. Richard Gerrig (1993) invoked this metaphor to describe how our encounters with fiction lead us to be transported from the here-and-now into the world of the narrative, where the events and characters influence us much like events and peers in our real life. Transportation has become an essential concept in the world of fiction research, with the focus of many now turning to how this idea can better be measured and understood. Some have begun to look into whether some people are more likely to become transported into a piece of fiction than others. We all know people who are heavily influenced by whatever they happen to be reading or watching, crying at the drop of a hat. On the other hand, there are those who seem to have no difficulty withdrawing from a narrative world, seemingly unfazed by sad films and scary books. One interesting avenue of work has found that those who are intrigued by puzzles and enjoy complicated problem-solving--a trait known as “need for cognition”--are also more likely to be deeply engaged with a story. This has been demonstrated to be true for written texts in at least two different studies (Green et al., 2008; Appel & Richter, 2010). And recently, in the forthcoming issue of the Scientific Study of Literature, it has also been shown to be the case for film (specifically, the film Memento, Owen & Riggs, 2012). In other words, the complexities of a narrative appear to be just another puzzle that some people enjoy unlocking. 

Appel, M., & Richter, T. (2010). Transportation and need for aff ct in narrative persuasion: A mediated moderation model. Media Psychology, 13, 101–135.

Gerrig, R. J.  (1993).  Experiencing narrative worlds.  New Haven: Yale University Press.

Green, M. C., Kass, S., Carrey, J., Herzig, B., Feeney, R., & Sabini, J. (2008). Transportation across media: Repeated exposure to print and film. Media Psychology, 11, 512–539.

Owen, B. & Riggs, M. (2012). Transportation, need for cognition, and affective disposition as factors in enjoyment of film narratives. Scientific Study of Literature, 2, 128–150.