IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/palcom/v8y2021i1d10.1057_s41599-021-00793-y.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Art films foster theory of mind

Author

Listed:
  • Emanuele Castano

    (University of Trento
    National Research Council)

Abstract

Research shows that reading literary but not popular fiction enhances the Theory of Mind (ToM). This article builds on the symmetry between literary theory and film theory and investigates whether exposure to art films, but not Hollywood films, enhances ToM. Participants (N = 232) were randomly assigned to view either art or Hollywood films and then answered questions about the film and its characters before completing two separate measures of ToM (the Read the Mind in the Eyes Test and the Moral Judgement Task). Results showed that art film viewers scored higher on both ToM measures and that the effect was sequentially mediated by perception of complexity and predictability of the characters. The findings are discussed in the context of the emerging literature on the impact of fiction on social cognition.

Suggested Citation

  • Emanuele Castano, 2021. "Art films foster theory of mind," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-10, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:8:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-021-00793-y
    DOI: 10.1057/s41599-021-00793-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-021-00793-y
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41599-021-00793-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthew J C Crump & John V McDonnell & Todd M Gureckis, 2013. "Evaluating Amazon's Mechanical Turk as a Tool for Experimental Behavioral Research," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-18, March.
    2. Daniel Smith & Philip Schlaepfer & Katie Major & Mark Dyble & Abigail E. Page & James Thompson & Nikhil Chaudhary & Gul Deniz Salali & Ruth Mace & Leonora Astete & Marilyn Ngales & Lucio Vinicius & An, 2017. "Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 8(1), pages 1-9, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ronayne, David & Sgroi, Daniel & Tuckwell, Anthony, 2021. "Evaluating the sunk cost effect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 318-327.
    2. Gandullia, Luca & Lezzi, Emanuela & Parciasepe, Paolo, 2020. "Replication with MTurk of the experimental design by Gangadharan, Grossman, Jones & Leister (2018): Charitable giving across donor types," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Ciotti, Fabrizio & Hornuf, Lars & Stenzhorn, Eliza, 2021. "Lock-In Effects in Online Labor Markets," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2021014, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    4. Kate Farrow & Gilles Grolleau & Lisette Ibanez, 2017. "Designing more effective norm interventions: the role of valence," Post-Print hal-01680539, HAL.
    5. Schwaiger, Rene & Hueber, Laura, 2021. "Do MTurkers exhibit myopic loss aversion?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 209(C).
    6. Matthew Staffelbach & Peter Sempolinski & Tracy Kijewski-Correa & Douglas Thain & Daniel Wei & Ahsan Kareem & Gregory Madey, 2015. "Lessons Learned from Crowdsourcing Complex Engineering Tasks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-19, September.
    7. Fu, Yingzhu & Tietz, Matthias A. & Delmar, Frédéric, 2022. "Obsessive passion and the venture team: When co-founders join, and when they don't," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 37(4).
    8. Irene Maria Buso & Daniela Di Cagno & Sofia De Caprariis & Lorenzo Ferrari & Vittorio Larocca & Francesca Marazzi & Luca Panaccione & Lorenzo Spadoni, 2020. "The Show Must Go On: How to Elicit Lablike Data on the Effects of COVID-19 Lockdown on Fairness and Cooperation," Working Papers CESARE 2/2020, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, LUISS Guido Carli.
    9. Milton Mayfield & Jacqueline Mayfield, 2021. "Sound and Safe: The Role of Leader Motivating Language and Follower Self-Leadership in Feelings of Psychological Safety," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-30, May.
    10. Zhongming Lu & John Crittenden & Frank Southworth & Ellen Dunham-Jones, 2017. "An integrated framework for managing the complex interdependence between infrastructures and the socioeconomic environment: An application in metropolitan Atlanta," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(12), pages 2874-2893, September.
    11. Johannes G. Jaspersen & Marc A. Ragin & Justin R. Sydnor, 2022. "Insurance demand experiments: Comparing crowdworking to the lab," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 89(4), pages 1077-1107, December.
    12. Jasper Dezwaef & Emiel Cracco & Jelle Demanet & Timothy Desmet & Marcel Brass, 2019. "Beyond asking: Exploring the use of automatic price evaluations to implicitly estimate consumers’ willingness-to-pay," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(7), pages 1-16, July.
    13. Sebastian Fest & Ola Kvaløy & Petra Nieken & Anja Schöttner, 2019. "Motivation and incentives in an online labor market," CESifo Working Paper Series 7526, CESifo.
    14. Van Borm, Hannah & Burn, Ian & Baert, Stijn, 2021. "What Does a Job Candidate's Age Signal to Employers?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    15. Joseph A. Johnson & Jochen Theis & Adam Vitalis & Donald Young, 2020. "The Influence of Firms' Emissions Management Strategy Disclosures on Investors' Valuation Judgments†," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(2), pages 642-664, June.
    16. Daniel Borup & Jorge Wolfgang Hansen & Benjamin Dybro Liengaard & Erik Christian Montes Schütte, 2023. "Quantifying investor narratives and their role during COVID‐19," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(4), pages 512-532, June.
    17. Scott, Carol F. & Bay-Cheng, Laina Y. & Nochajski, Thomas H. & Lorraine Collins, R., 2024. "Emerging adults’ social media engagement & alcohol misuse: A multidimensional, person-centered analysis of risk," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    18. Nathan W. Chan & Stephen Knowles & Ronald Peeters & Leonard Wolk, 2024. "Cost-(in)effective public good provision: an experimental exploration," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 96(3), pages 397-442, May.
    19. Dato, Simon & Feess, Eberhard & Nieken, Petra, 2019. "Lying and reciprocity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 193-218.
    20. Burdea, Valeria & Woon, Jonathan, 2022. "Online belief elicitation methods," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:8:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-021-00793-y. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.