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Did You Know Movies Can Rewire Your Brain?
Movieguide® Contributor
Stanford research recently discovered that watching movies can rewire brains to be more empathetic.
“In 2019, producer Scott Budnick was meeting with Barack Obama in Washington after the former president screened an early cut of his legal drama JUST MERCY, in which Jamie Foxx plays an Alabama man who is wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death,” The Hollywood Reporter movies/movie-news/movies-stanford-research-1236042063/">said Oct. 23. “At the time, Obama was in the midst of setting up his production company, Higher Ground, and he mused to Budnick that perhaps ‘a film could literally change somebody’s brain matter,’ Budnick says.”
“Months later, Budnick casually shared Obama’s brain matter comment with Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt when the two were on a panel together, and the seeds of an intriguing new piece of research were planted. ‘Scott relayed the story as though it was this unknowable thing,’ says Eberhardt, who has received a MacArthur genius grant for her research on racial bias. ‘I’m like, ‘Well, you don’t have to wonder. You could actually study that.’”
Eberhardt’s book, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, highlights some of the same issues as JUST MERCY.
It took five years before she put the study in motion, and it’s still underway. Eberhardt and Stanford psych professor Jamil Zaki have conducted the first phase of the study. Participants watched clips of videos online before getting their brains scanned in an MRI machine. Those who watched JUST MERCY had increased empathy for incarcerated people and decreased favor toward the death penalty.
“The study is a test of what psychologists call ‘narrative transportation,’ the idea that when people lose themselves in a story, their attitudes change,” THR said. “It’s the academic version of the frequently shared Roger Ebert quote in which he called movies ‘a machine that generates empathy,’ and it’s a notion that many who work in the entertainment industry assume to be true but that no one has measured in such a scientifically rigorous way until now.”
“JUST MERCY, based on attorney Bryan Stevenson’s 2014 memoir, stars Michael B. Jordan as Stevenson and Foxx as Walter ‘Johnny D.’ McMillian, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1988. To evaluate how watching JUST MERCY might shape a person’s attitudes, the Stanford researchers asked 749 participants to watch video interviews with men who had been incarcerated, and to rate what they thought these men were feeling as they shared stories from their lives.”
The ratings were compared to what the prisoners told the researchers they felt. After watching the drama, people were able to more accurately identify the correct emotions of the formerly incarcerated.
“Participants were asked whether they would sign and share a petition that supported a federal law to restore voting rights to people with a criminal record. They found that people who watched JUST MERCY were 7.66% more likely than participants in the control condition to sign a petition,” CBS 19 News movies-may-actually-have-the-power-to-change-minds/article_f695b659-f1e9-5a93-b667-5245be4bbc1b.html">reported.
JUST MERCY has a strong Christian, moral worldview. There is an ongoing fight for justice and mercy, and a constant appeal to God for guidance and support.
“They were also 20 percent more likely to oppose the death penalty, a greater effect than political canvassing, which typically results in a 10 percent increase,” THR said. “(The movies CONCUSSION and MONEYBALL — which share the broad theme of a male protagonist who goes up against the system — were used as controls in the experiment to confirm that it is JUST MERCY’s specific storyline affecting study participants’ views on incarcerated people, not just the experience of watching a docudrama about an underdog.)”
The race of the formerly incarcerated people and the political party of the study participants did not influence the findings. Eberhardt said the movie impacted both Republicans and Democrats equally.
“It speaks to the power of the story, and maybe that’s something that we should consider. We’re such a polarized country right now. I just wonder if narrative is a way to reach each other again,” she said.
“The MRI scans began in the spring with the intention of examining how watching JUST MERCY affects empathy-related brain regions, an exploration of Obama’s original theory. So far, Eberhardt and Zaki have tested 60 people, and they are still analyzing their findings. Eberhardt says she is planning to conduct similar research on television shows, which she theorizes may have a longer-lasting impact on attitudes, because audiences engage with the stories over months and years.”
THR says empathy rating might become another metric when it comes to evaluating a movie’s success.
This information may be groundbreaking for the media. movies influence our brains. So that means if positive messages are spread, audiences can also be affected positively, as is the case in this study. Adversely, negative messages could also negatively affect people’s brain wiring.
So, how would you want your brain to be shaped then? Would you want to watch a dismal movie that’ll make you more sad or pessimistic, or a movie with a biblical, moral worldview that shines perspective into the needs of others or gives hope?
If you want a positive rewiring, then watch movies like SOUL SURFER, FACING THE GIANTS, insightful documentaries or something like THE LEGO MOVIE.
With the recent releases of dark projects like VENOM: THE LAST DANCE, TERRIFIER 3 and JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX, we need more Biblical worldviews in movies and TV. Our brains are the better for it.
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