Summary: A new study shows that after watching a docudrama about a wrongfully convicted prisoner, participants became more empathetic toward formerly incarcerated individuals and more supportive of criminal justice reform. Research has revealed that personal stories portrayed in the media can change attitudes, encouraging viewers to reconsider their perceptions about marginalized groups.
Participants who watched the film were more likely to support petitions for changes in criminal justice, demonstrating the power of storytelling in promoting social change. The study highlights that narratives, rather than statistics, are more effective in changing mindsets on social issues.
Key facts:
- Watching a docudrama increased empathy toward formerly incarcerated people.
- Viewers became 7.66% more likely to support criminal justice reform petitions.
- Personal stories in the media are more effective at changing attitudes than statistics.
Source: Stanford
A new study found that after watching a docudrama about efforts to free a wrongfully convicted death row prisoner, people were more empathetic toward formerly incarcerated people and supported criminal justice reform.
The research, led by a team of Stanford psychologists, published October 21 in Annals of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“One of the hardest things for groups of people facing stigma, including formerly incarcerated people, is that other Americans don’t perceive their experiences very accurately,” said Jamil Zaki, the paper’s senior author and professor of psychology in the School of Humanities. and Sciences (H&S).
“One way to combat this lack of empathy for stigmatized groups of people is to get to know them. That’s where the media comes in, which has long been used by psychologists as an intervention.”
Studying how narrative convinces
The article incorporates Zaki’s previous research on empathy with the studies of his co-author, Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt, who has studied the pernicious role of racial bias and prejudice in society for more than three decades.
The idea for the study came from a conversation Eberhardt had with one of the executive producers of the film Just Mercy, which is based on the book by lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson.
Stevenson’s book focuses on his efforts at the Equal Justice Initiative to overturn the sentence of Walter McMillian, a black Alabama man who in 1987 was sentenced to death for the murder of an 18-year-old white girl, despite overwhelming evidence showing his innocence. .
The film vividly portrays systemic racism within the criminal justice system and illustrates how racial prejudice has a tragic impact on the lives of marginalized individuals and their families, especially Black Americans, as they navigate a flawed legal system.
It was around the time of the film’s release that Eberhardt, who is professor of psychology at H&S, William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, and director of the Stanford SPARQ faculty, published his book, Biased: Discovering the hidden bias that shapes what we see, think, and do (Viking, 2019), which addresses many of the same issues as Just Mercy.
On the book tour, she met many different people, including one of the executive producers of Just Mercy. He approached her with a question originally posed to him by former US President Barack Obama, who recently saw the film at a private screening. Obama wondered if watching this might change the way neurons fired in people’s brains.
“I told this producer that we don’t need to sit around and think – this is a question we can answer through rigorous research,” Eberhardt said. “This article is a first step in that direction.”
Eberhardt connected with Zaki and together they designed a study to examine how Just Mercy can change the way people think about people who have been pushed to the margins of society.
To measure how watching the film might shape a person’s empathy toward formerly incarcerated people, the researchers asked participants, before and after watching the film, to also watch a set of one- to three-minute-long videos that featured men who had been incarcerated in real life.
Participants were asked to rate what they thought these men were feeling as they shared their life stories. These ratings were then measured against what the men actually told researchers they felt when recounting their experiences.
Opening minds and hearts
The study found that after watching Just Mercy, participants demonstrated more empathy toward those who were previously incarcerated than those in the control condition.
Their attitudes toward criminal justice reform were also influenced.
Researchers asked participants if they would sign and share a petition supporting a federal law to restore voting rights to people with criminal records. They found that people who watched Just Mercy were 7.66% more likely than participants in the control condition to sign a petition.
The study highlights the power of storytelling, Eberhardt said. “Narratives move people in ways that numbers cannot.”
In an early study that Eberhardt co-authored, she found that citing statistics about racial disparities is not enough to get people to take a closer look at systems—in fact, she found that presenting numbers alone can backfire.
For example, highlighting racial disparities in the criminal justice system may lead people to be more punitive, not less, and more likely to support the punitive policies that help create these disparities in the first place.
As Eberhardt and Zaki’s study showed, what changes people’s minds are stories — a finding consistent with a previous study conducted by Zaki that found how watching a live theater performance can impact the way people perceive stories. social and cultural issues in the USA.
The psychologists also found that their intervention worked regardless of the storyteller’s race and had the same effect regardless of people’s political orientation.
“When people experience detailed personal narratives, it opens their minds and hearts to the people telling those narratives and the groups those people come from,” Zaki said.
About This Psychology and Empathy Research News
Author: Melissa White
Source: Stanford
Contact: Melissa De Witte-Stanford
Image: Image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Search: Open access.
“Cinematic intervention increases empathetic understanding of formerly incarcerated people and support for criminal justice reform” by Jamil Zaki et al. PNAS
Summary
Cinematic intervention increases empathetic understanding of formerly incarcerated people and support for criminal justice reform
Differentiated representations of stigmatized groups in the media have been shown to reduce prejudice. In an online experiment (N = 749), we tested whether a film depicting the experiences of people incarcerated in the criminal justice system can increase a) empathic accuracy and compassion toward people who have been incarcerated and b) support for justice reform criminal.
We measure basic empathic accuracy through a well-validated task where participants infer the emotions of people who share stories about difficult life events. All storytellers were previously incarcerated and students. However, in half of the videos we label them as “ex-convicts” and in the remaining half as “college students.”
Next, we surveyed people’s basic attitudes toward criminal justice reform. We then assigned participants to watch one of three films. The intervention film chronicled true stories of black men on death row.
Two docudramas of similar length served as control films. Finally, participants again completed the empathic accuracy task and survey and were given the opportunity to sign a petition.
Compared to those who watched a control film, participants who watched the intervention film more accurately inferred the emotions of storytellers labeled as “formerly incarcerated” and increased their support for criminal justice reform.
These effects held true for both conservative and liberal participants. However, the film had no effect on feelings of compassion.
Together, these results demonstrate the power of narrative interventions not only to increase the empathic accuracy of members of a severely stigmatized group, but also to increase support for reforms designed to improve their lives.
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