Psychology at the Movies

by Skip Dine Young

  Effects on Substance Use

  Completing the sex, drugs, and violence triumvirate, significant research has looked at the influence of media on substance use, particularly tobacco and alcohol. Drinking and smoking have a long Hollywood tradition, often used to suggest rebellion and dangerous behaviors. The concern is that such adult behaviors might have an impact on children and teens.

  A recent study looked at the relationship between smoking in movies and smoking by children aged 9–12 (the age when nearly 20% of all children try cigarettes for the first time). The children most exposed to smoking in G, PG and PG-13 movies were more likely to try smoking than those with minimal movie exposure. This result was found one and two years after the study was initiated.35 This finding is somewhat surprising, given that in recent years, it was the “negative characters” who were most likely to be smoking.36 Some children may be influenced to try smoking precisely because of cigarettes’ negative images.

  A recent study considering the relationship between R-rated movie viewing and alcohol initiation found differences based on personality type. Though no relationship between R-rated movies and alcohol use was found among individuals classified as high sensation seekers (those who seek exciting/dangerous behavior), a significant relationship was established for people who measured low on the sensation-seeking scale. These individuals had less overall exposure to risky-decision making so movies appeared to leave a greater impression. For high sensation seekers, movies had a minimal influence compared with other variables regarding alcohol use, such as choice of peers.37

  Effects on Thoughts and Emotions

  Focusing on outward behaviors like hitting a blow-up doll or committing a crime is tempting since these behaviors are so vivid. However, cognitive psychology is just as interested in the thinking and emotion that underlie behaviors. Over the years effects research has shifted toward investigating the impact that visual media have on the ways viewers think about themselves and the world around them.

  Psychiatric Disturbances

  Movies often provoke powerful emotional reactions, but occasionally people will respond to a movie so strongly that they develop symptoms of trauma, depression, or psychosis. The psychiatric literature is sprinkled with case studies of these acute clinical reactions. After seeing Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a 12 year-old boy came to believe that a foreign entity had entered him and that if anyone touched him, their hands would go through him.38 Subclinical reactions to Jaws are common (such as refusing to swim in the ocean), but one 17 year-old girl experienced episodes of seizure in which she screamed “Sharks, sharks!” and briefly lost consciousness.39

  The Exorcist not only provoked strong opinions, it was the reported catalyst for seven different cases of psychiatric disturbance.40 One 22 year-old woman developed severe anxiety symptoms, including sleeplessness, abdominal cramps, and panic attacks. A teenage boy had intrusive memories of the movie, heard noises at night, and went on a drug binge in an attempt to eradicate memories of the film.41

  Reactions requiring psychiatric hospitalization are rare, but they are at one end of the emotional continuum that is part of the film experience. While movies do not have the power to make secure individuals into nervous wrecks, these examples exemplify the interaction between symbolic images presented in cinema and the psychological makeup of a particular individual. All the people cited above had experienced interpersonal stressors before watching the film in question, and some had histories of psychiatric treatment. Thus, the combination of symbols in the film ignited their existing personal issues. The theme of possession was particularly disturbing for an unmarried pregnant woman struggling with Catholic guilt when she viewed The Exorcist. Her borderline personality structure split off a part of herself that she considered evil. Demonic possession in the film symbolized this “evil part” as well as her anxiety about her unborn child.42

  Effects on Fear and Imagination

  Fear and anxiety are common emotions when viewing films, and they are central to the enjoyment of horror films and thrillers.43 However, sometimes fear is an aftereffect that lives on when the movie is over. The psychiatric disturbances already discussed are extreme, but in a milder form this phenomenon is common. Whenever I ask my students if they have seen a movie that severely scared them, most report at least one, citing horror movies like Saw, Final Destination, and The Exorcist, or reality-based war films like Hotel Rwanda or Saving Private Ryan. This finding is confirmed in formal surveys.44 Typical reactions include difficulty sleeping or intrusive memories of disturbing scenes. Some of these emotional reactions were of short duration, but many people have reported such fright reactions lasting over a year.45 Most reactions were not treated, but retrospective surveys suggest that the symptoms reported by a fourth of the participants appeared to be clinically significant stress reactions.46

  Strong fright reactions in children have been frequently documented.47 The most common is sleep disturbance, but other studies suggest that children avoid activities that they associate with a scary scene from a movie. For example, children who witnessed a house fire on Little House on the Prairie were less interested in learning how to build a fire in a fireplace than children who had not witnessed the scene.48

  The reason why children have greater fear reactions relates to their level of cognitive ability and developing sense of self. Children sometimes react fearfully to stimuli that adults would not find scary. Younger children are particularly influenced by vivid perceptual factors that override the subtleties of context and narrative. In one study, children were very frightened by television show The Incredible Hulk, despite the fact that the Hulk typically acted in beneficial ways. Older children did not find the character scary, but younger children reacted to the Hulk's bright green skin, oversized musculature, and angry facial expression to such a degree that nothing else mattered.49 Perceptual concreteness can also explain why children do not fear other subjects, such as the made-for-TV movie, The Day After, about a nuclear attack on America. While the film was disturbing to adolescents who comprehended the significance of nuclear devastation, younger children lacked any concrete images to associate with fear.50

  One reason why children are so vulnerable to strong emotional effects is that their imaginations are active and malleable. Visual images from the media leave a strong impression and take on lives of their own. This process, which can be both good and bad, has received considerable research attention.51 On one hand, children often integrate the characters and storylines they have been exposed to in movies such as Toy Story and use them in their imaginative play, telling additional stories and deepening characterizations. At the same time, children who are exposed to high levels of visual images on television and in the movies, often are less imaginative and display a diminished capacity to role play. They appear to become reliant on external media as sources of stimulation and are less able to access their own imagination.52

  Effects on Attitudes, Beliefs and Stereotypes

  Adults may not be as impressionable as children, but research has demonstrated that media affects how viewers categorize, understand, and evaluate their world. These critical cognitive processes touch nearly every aspect of life. Gender socialization, the process by which people learn what a society expects from boys and girls, is a central concern of social psychology, and many scholars believe media plays a fundamental role. If media depictions of male and female characters are skewed in a particular direction, viewers’ self-concepts and vision of the future will be similarly affected. A young girl may have difficulty imagining herself a lawyer unless she sees female lawyers on television and in movies.

  Survey and experimental research have identified a relationship between media consumption and sex-role stereotyping in how visual narratives get mixed up with the real world. At the same time, most studies have found that the relationship was relatively weak.53 This is not surprising if we consider that other factors (biological, environmental) factors may also play a role. Thus, movies
appear to be part of a cultural web of influences which reveal themselves not so much as solid patterns but rather as the shadow of such patterns.

  The documentary Killing Us Softly and its sequels highlight media depictions of women's bodies in a psychologically and physically unhealthy way. While the majority of examples were from advertising, images of excessively thin film actresses (Keira Knightly, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie) are readily available. The documentary contends that women and men are constantly bombarded by images of women whose body shapes are unhealthy, not to mention unattainable by the majority of the female population. Such unrealistic images can damage the psyches of women and men alike, but adolescent girls are thought to be a particularly vulnerable population. Survey and experimental research into the influence of media on negative behaviors and attitudes (increased personal body dissatisfaction, a distorted image of beauty ideals and unhealthy eating habits) supports the contention of Killing Us Softly. Since most of these studies looked at the impact of media exposure in general, the problem appears to be broader than watching too much Project Runway.54

  Concerns about racial stereotyping based on fictional characters predates effect research. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has always been a source of controversy. When readers praise the book for its progressive view on race relations, they focus on the escaped slave Jim's courageousness and wisdom. Whenever the book is criticized as racist, the focus is often on Jim's childishness and buffoonery. This debate is grounded in the belief that reading the book will strengthen pejorative stereotypes of African-Americans.

  This debate continues today. There was considerable controversy about the contemptible hyenas (voiced by Whoopi Goldberg) in the animated movie The Lion King which exhibited urban black dialects. Other movies are praised when they run counter to stereotype (a homeless man played by Will Smith becomes a successful stockbroker in The Pursuit of Happyness). Studies support the possibility that media contributes to stereotyping both positively and negatively. When white college students watched a lot of TV news disproportionately presenting African-Americans as criminals, they tended to underestimate the education level and socioeconomic status of African-Americans and attribute these conditions to a lack of motivation. However, when students watched more sitcoms, a genre in which African-Americans are represented relatively positively and proportionally,55 they gave higher estimates of the educational achievement of African-Americans.56 (Studies with younger children have also demonstrated that exposure to visual media have an impact on racial stereotyping.)57

  A variation on the concern that media causes particular thoughts and emotions is that media also has the power to diminish emotional response. For example, if people are exposed to excessive violence, they may become numb and stop feeling distress. This effect has been demonstrated on men who were exposed to a series of slasher films that paired sex and violence. When these men were subsequently asked to witness a videotape of a rape trial, they not only expressed feeling less upset than men who had not seen the slasher films, they were also less empathetic with the victim in the trial.58 Findings such as these raise concerns that people are becoming desensitized to violence and will therefore be less likely to try to prevent it in the real world.

  Propaganda and Effects on Culture

  Propaganda is designed to cause large numbers of people to think in a particular way. There have been many overlaps between propaganda and narrative film history. Battleship Potemkin is considered one of the greatest movies ever made, particularly in its use of montage (editing). It is also a propaganda film intended to celebrate the mutiny aboard the Potemkin as a critical event in the Russian Revolution. An infamous example of film propaganda is the technically brilliant Triumph of the Will. Directed by Leni Riefenstahl, the documentary commemorates the 1934 Nuremberg rally coalescing Nazi power, and is a stunning glorification of Nazi ideals of order, authority, and power. Hollywood filmmakers also engaged in propaganda efforts during World War II.59 Frank Capra made the influential series Why We Fight (1942--45). John Ford became head of the photography unit for the Navy. Even Hitchcock was commissioned by the British Ministry of Information to make short films in support of the French Resistance.

  Because propaganda is intended to have a diffuse impact, its effects are hard to measure. These films are usually created under dire circumstances, in which the emphasis is on action, not analysis. Whether Triumph of the Will had its desired effect cannot be known, but it certainly generated admiration and discussion and is forever connected with Nazism. Even movies not considered propaganda can become connected to particular ideas. Was Casablanca propaganda for American involvement in World War II? Is Avatar an argument in favor of the environmental movement? Perhaps all films are propaganda in that they are having a broad and cumulative effect on the way people think about the world? This process has been called the cultivation effect of media.60

  Many of the discrete effects we have considered can be imagined for the entire culture, creating a variety of nightmare scenarios: desensitization becomes zombification by technology—mindless viewers plugged into visual media that keep them passively entertained, falsely informed, and disconnected from real human intimacy (essentially the plot of The Matrix). Variations include concerns that the media makes people stupid, self-indulgent, narcissistic, flabby, and/or weak—a society of couch potatoes.

  The assumption behind such fears is that the media affect not only our thoughts and behaviors but an entire way of understanding the world. This brand of cultural critique can be traced to Marshall MacLuhan and his famous phrase, “The medium is the message”61—essentially, that the forms of media upon which a culture relies are more important than its content. Our thinking adjusts to new forms of technology as they are introduced. When we watch movies, we are more affected by the fact that it is a movie than by its genre (whether it is a comedy or a drama) or its overall quality (whether it is a good movie or a bad movie). The more movies we see, the more we begin to see the world like a movie.

  In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman observed that in the modern age, public discourse (the way information is communicated) must look and sound good on camera.62 Politicians, newscasters, preachers, healers, teachers, and so on must filter everything they say through the lens of what it will look and sound like. Along the way, the message can be altered, beautified, or even fabricated in order to give it the right visual appearance. The medium is determining what the message will be. The standards of entertainment, including those refined by Hollywood over many decades, are now applied to news or political rhetoric. Postman worried that the ultimate impact of this “dumbing-down” of information could spell the death of Western culture.63

  Closing Shots: The Great Debate over Media Effects

  Media effects research is not an example of a value-neutral pursuit of understanding. The media are often perceived as a public health threat, particularly to children, and are grouped with such medical and social dangers as cancer, crime, and racism.64 A noticeable aura of anxiety hangs over the field. Even though the Bobo doll study was central to the development of social learning theory and therefore more concerned with psychological theory than most studies in this area, Bandura chose to introduce it with the report of a teenage boy injured while emulating the knife fight in Rebel Without a Cause.65 Recognizing the real-world implications of his theory, Bandura used the incident as a provocative rhetorical device to capture the reader's attention.

  Many researchers believe that social scientific study of the effects of media can help mitigate its potential damage, and they take the role of concerned activists as they comment and advise on policy issues such as film ratings, the television V-chip, and government policy.66 Social scientists rarely advocate for censorship, but there is an emphasis on promoting “media literacy” (learning how to critically evaluate media) and on educating and supporting parents in their quest to protect their children. For example, Joanne Cantor's Mommy I'm Scared: How TV
and Movies Frighten Children and What We Can Do To Protect Them (1998) applies the research on the effect of frightening images on children to develop a guidebook for parents.

  Effects researchers feel confident in their advice because they believe the evidence is overwhelming that the media does indeed affect individuals and society:

  This [overview] is based on the assumption that the mass media do [italics in original] have effects … it is clear that mass communication is an agent or catalyst to a variety of shifts and changes in people and institutions.67

  The research results reveal a dominant and consistent pattern in favor of the notion that exposure to violent media imagine does [italics in original] increase the risk of aggressive behavior.68

  The results from [this] research … should [italics added] lead objective scientists to conclude that exposure to media violence increases a child's risk for behaving aggressively in both the short run and the long run.69

  But, despite an appeal to consensus, other scholars don't accept this basic premise:

  Many people are convinced that media violence is harmful … There is a considerable amount of research on the topic, and contrary to these claims, the results of the research generally do not demonstrate that exposure to media violence causes aggression.70