Psychology at the Movies

by Skip Dine Young

  Further Reading

  Bryant, J. and Vorderer, P. (eds) (2006) Psychology of Entertainment. Lawrence Erlbaum, New York, NY.

  Fournier, G. (2007) Thelma & Louise and Women in Hollywood. McFarland, Jefferson, NC.

  Liebes, T. and Katz, E. (1990) The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.

  Nabi, R.L. and Oliver, M.B. (eds) (2009) Media Processes and Effects. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.

  Radway, J. (1991) Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, 2nd edn. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC.

  Staiger, J. (1992) Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

  Stokes, M. and Maltby, R. (eds) (1999) Identifying Hollywood's Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies. British Film Institute, London.

  Chapter 8

  The Movies Made Me Do It—The Effects of Film

  On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Using semiautomatic rifles, they killed 13 people and wounded 21 more before killing themselves.

  When they entered the school, they wore the black trench coats similar to the ones worn by characters of The Matrix, a movie which turned shooting sprees into mesmerizing, balletlike spectacles. Is it possible that Harris and Klebold wanted to emulate the transcendent coolness of Neo (Keanu Reeves), perceiving their victims to be little more than virtual icons, part of a tragic passion play they created for themselves?

  A trench coat was also featured in The Basketball Diaries, in which an addict named Jim (Leonardo Dicaprio) imagines entering his high school and shooting students and teachers. This massacre eerily resembles the events of Columbine. Could the shooters have used Jim's fantasy sequence as a model?

  Natural Born Killers is another movie in which a lot of people get killed—not in a school, but nearly everyplace else. While Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) cause plenty of devastation, the film also documents the abuse and hardship they experience, providing a hint of justification for their crimes. Harris and Klebold used the acronym NBK for the diaries and videotapes where they secretly recorded plans for their own devastation.1 Did they believe they were “natural born killers” waiting to get payback against those who they felt deserved it?

  Illustration 8.2 A still from a security video shows Dylan Klebold & Eric Harris on the day they killed twelve students and one teacher at Columbine High School, Colorado. April 20, 1999. © Reuters/Corbis.

  Did these movies cause the teens to go on a deadly rampage? Or are violent movies a reflection of cultural conditions that were already present? Or does the answer lie somewhere in between?

  The broader issue is what kind of impact movies have on the real world. Clearly, they arouse emotion and consume our time and money, but do they really affect the way people behave and think after they leave the theater? Beyond being fun to watch and talk about, do movies really matter?

  Ultimately I believe that the answer is yes. Or at least, some movies matter to some people some of the time. The psychological processes we have considered—perception, comprehension, and interpretation—are the mental means by which viewing films impacts people's lives. Figure 8.1 illustrates this relationship.

  Figure 8.1 Symbolic activity in film viewing: Function and effect.

  Occasionally the meanings viewers form about a film will be so powerful and relevant that they will have an influence on people's lives. This chapter considers research on the behavioral and cognitive effects of media which occur largely outside of viewers’ awareness.2 (Sometimes viewers are able to identify the influence a film has on them.3 The conscious functions of film are discussed in the next chapter.)

  In the late 1920s, investigations into the psychological impact of film led to a series of books with names like Movies and Conduct4 (concerning college students) and Movies, Delinquency and Crime (about teens in a juvenile detention center).5 Although they were not a blanket indictment, they did raise concerns about the potential hazards of movies. The focus on dangers has continued as we will see below, but a minority of studies has considered the possibility of prosocial effects.6

  Effects research entered another fertile period in the 1960s, with no signs of letting up. It has become a vast field, numbering thousands of articles and books. Over time, the primary target has shifted from film to television and, in recent years, videogames and computer use. Because of this broadening scope, such research is known as “media effects.”7 While I provide a broad overview of the scope and significance of effects research, I will refer to movie examples whenever possible.

  Effects on Behavior

  “Subliminal seduction” (subconscious media messages that influence our behavior) was a term popularized in the 1970s.8 Frequently referenced examples included “Buy popcorn” messages secretly flashed on the screen to prompt concession sales, innocuous sounds (waves on a beach) containing undetectable spoken messages meant to inspire success in business, and satanic voices on Led Zeppelin's song “Stairway to Heaven” that could only be understood when played backwards. Subliminal effects are sensory stimuli undetectable to conscious awareness which are nevertheless dutifully processed by the brain and subsequently influence behavior. While the claims regarding such stimuli are dramatic, laboratory research has been unable to confirm any significant impact on behavior or thought (at least at the level of buying more popcorn or becoming a success in business) as a result of seeing or hearing subliminal message in popular culture.9

  Most effects on behavior are outside our awareness, but it is not that viewers are being affected by things they can't see or hear. Instead, it is simply that they do not know that one thing (a violent movie) is causing another thing (their own aggression). When asked, most audience members will deny that media has anything to do with their behavior, yet there is considerable evidence that it does.10 And while effects researchers almost never use the term “subliminal,” they assume that many effects and the underlying cognitive processes are indeed “nonconscious.”

  Since most human behavior can be captured by media, it is theoretically possible that media can influence any given human behavior. Advertising has pushed this possibility as people are induced to buy soap, cars, beer, iPods, Chia pets, and so on. While commercial theatrical films are intent on selling themselves, they have clearly impacted consumer behavior at times (such as the boom in Reese's Pieces after being featured in E.T.). Despite all the possible behaviors that a researcher might study, a disproportionate amount of attention has been given to three domains—violence, sex, and substance use.11 Each domain is an area of social concern related to important public issues—crime, war, family planning, moral values, health problems, unemployment, and so on. The social mirror theory suggests that media merely reflect social behaviors, but there is considerable evidence to suggest that media can influence behaviors.

  The Copycat Phenomenon

  Sometimes it is clear that a movie has an impact on behavior based on parallels between film and real life so precise they could not be mere coincidence. Most of the time, the copycat phenomenon is relatively innocuous. Take the sale of undershirts which supposedly plummeted after Clark Gable appeared without one in It Happened One Night.12 “The Rachel” hairstyle became ubiquitous after Jennifer Aniston modeled it on Friends in the early 1990s. Catch-phrases like “Go ahead, make my day” have been uttered by millions of people based on Dirty Harry's cinematic inspiration.

  Other behaviors can be more dramatic and compelling. Some movies have inspired gross negligence. Several people were injured or killed after emulating a scene in the football drama, The Program, in which players lie on the median of a busy road.13 The Deer Hunter provoked as many as 30 imitations of the Russian roulette scene in the film, resulting in numerous deaths.14 A teenager set his friend on fire copying a stunt in Jackass. Numerous crimes have also
been associated with movies. Beyond John Hinckley's attempted assassination of Reagan and the Columbine shootings, other infamous examples include: women setting their abusive partners on fire after seeing the TV movie The Burning Bed; and a cross-country killing spree by an Oklahoma couple who had repeatedly watched Natural Born Killers.15 Incidents like these get a lot of attention in the news,16 but the frequency of copycat crime may be even greater than it appears. One study reported that one-fourth of the incarcerated adolescents they interviewed had attempted at least one copycat crime.17

  Copycats are aware of the impact of a movie on them to the extent that they can point to the film as their inspiration. At the same, there is a striking lack of critical reflection and reality testing. The influence of the film appears to start with a strong identification with the characters. Although such identification is a part of the normal viewing process, these incidents extend beyond the immediate viewing experience. The copycat's personality and external environment also have to support their actions, often in ways they are unaware of. 18 Fortunately, since most environments do not support destructive acting out, most people do not end up following through on their cinematic identifications.

  The significance of copycat incidents are sometimes downplayed, either because the behavior is trivial (adopting a popular hairstyle) or because the perpetrators of such atrocities/acts of stupidity display pre-existing mental, moral, or developmental limitations. In the case of Harris and Klebold, school bullying, psychiatric problems, negligent parenting, and other factors were implicated and debated as causes of the Columbine rampage. Yet even if Harris and Klebold were destined to commit murder anyway, the events at Columbine would probably not have been exactly as they were (no trench coats) if it were not for media. The movies likely affected how Harris and Klebold saw their world and colored their behavior, even if the seeds of that behavior were much deeper.19 Percolating movie images attached to destructive behavioral tendencies should not be dismissed out of hand especially since other effects have been identified that are subtler but perhaps more pervasive.

  Effects on Aggressive Behaviors

  More research has been conducted on the effects of violence in movies than any other area.20 This preeminence certainly relates to the frequency of media violence21 and concerns about violence in the real world. The typical American sees violence in the media on a daily basis, yet for most people, acts of actual physical violence are relatively rare. Media violence thereby calls attention to itself. When it comes to possible behavioral effects of violence (particularly those causing aggressive behavior), research has disproportionately focused on the effects on children, echoing public sentiment that minors are vulnerable and therefore more susceptible to media effects than adults.22

  The classic Bobo doll experiment performed by Albert Bandura and his colleagues has been one of the most influential studies with regard to the effect of media aggression.23 In a laboratory setting, children were led into a room one at a time, given some craft materials and told to wait. After a short period of time, the researchers came and escorted the child to another room that contained a variety of toys including an inflatable punching bag (a Bobo doll), toy guns, hammers, and dolls. Researchers observed the children's play and recorded any action they defined as aggressive—hitting the Bobo doll, shooting the gun, throwing objects, and so on.

  In another condition, an adult was in the room while the child waited. The adult pretended to get angry and began pummeling a Bobo doll with a toy hammer, saying things like “Sock him in the nose.” Afterwards, the children were taken to the playroom to be observed. In another condition, the researcher turned on a film camera that showed a scene of the adult hitting the Bobo doll.24

  While virtually all of the children in the experiment engaged in some form of aggression, those who witnessed aggressive modeling by an adult (either live or filmed) engaged in a significantly greater number of aggressive acts than children who were not exposed to an aggressive model. Some of the exposed children closely imitated the adult's behavior, right down to repeating the same phrases while beating the hapless plastic clown.

  Bandura interpreted the findings as evidence that children model behavior on what they see around them, especially when such behaviors are not punished. This effect occurs at the level of direct imitation (hitting the Bobo doll) and more general instigations of aggression (shooting a gun). There appears to be nothing magical about film's influence on the children, since live modeling had the same result. Consistent with social learning theory, Bandura claims that film is one of many forms of observational learning

  There were limitations to this study: only young children were observed, and even those who weren't exposed to modeling showed some degree of aggression. The definition of aggression the researchers used was broad and could not be characterized as violent since there were no other people in the room. The aggressive behavior occurred soon after exposure to the model and therefore might have been short-lived. Finally, the laboratory situation, as well as the film, bore little resemblance to the real world.

  These are all good qualifications, many of which Bandura addresses in the study's conclusion. Watching violent movies alone cannot make people violent, yet it would be a mistake to dismiss the study simply because of its limitations. No one experiment can look at all variables at once, just as no single film can capture all the important dimensions of cinema. Building on this study, other researchers designed further studies with additional variables of interest. As studies have accumulated, several patterns have been noted.

  Many people may not consider aggression toward Bobo dolls to be worrisome, but other researchers have inquired about whether a relationship between media exposure and real-life violent behavior exists. One study observed that boys who watched the most violent television programs were most aggressive at school.25 A large-scale longitudinal study followed children over 20 years and found that eight year-olds with the most exposure to violent TV were more likely to be involved in serious crimes (including murder, rape, assault, and robbery) by age 30.26

  Studies that only look at a relationship/correlation between two variables have a methodological limitation that constrains interpretation. Just knowing that the variables are related does not tell us which came first or caused the other.27 Thus, it's possible that watching a large amount of television caused violent tendencies, manifesting in crime. However, it's also possible that the children with violent tendencies were already drawn to violent media. Or it could be that other factors influenced both behaviors; for example, lack of parental guidance leading to both inappropriate viewing choices and lack of respect for the law. In real life, many factors affect any given behavior, leading some researchers to make a distinction between the media contributing to certain behaviors (along with other many factors) versus media single-handedly causing behaviors.28

  One of the ways that researchers explain how media can contribute to behavior but not directly cause specific behaviors is priming theory.29 Parallel to the way a well must be pumped a number of times before it actually starts producing water, psychologists believe that exposure to media provides a range of images and behavioral examples that remain dormant until a relevant situation emerges that matches the priming. Therefore, repeated exposure to bar fights do not necessarily lead men to go to bars looking for fights. However, if men happen to be in a bar and they are threatened, they have already been primed for how to respond in such a situation. They may then act aggressively, even if they are unaware of the source of the influence on them.

  Effects on Sexual Behaviors

  As a topic of great research interest, the impact of sexualized images on viewers is second only to violence.30 Both address social concerns, but depictions of sexuality seem to cause even more worry than violence. Why would an MPAA rating system that routinely gives R ratings to brutal depictions of torture (like the Saw films) saddle a critically lauded film such as Blue Valentine with an NC-17 rating for the depiction of marital
sex? This situation strikes many as misguided, but its rationale is based on American parenting anxieties. Most parents of teenagers are more worried that their children will commit acts of sexuality than violent crimes. The fear is that sexual depictions in movies that condone sexual activity will “give the kids ideas.”

  Does viewing sex in the media actually inspire teenagers to “do it,” as parents fear? While the results are far from definitive, some evidence suggests that it is a contributing factor. One study of nearly 2000 respondents indicated that the teens who watched a lot of sex on TV initiated sexual activity (including intercourse, heavy petting, and oral sex) at a significantly greater rate than those who did not.31 As a correlation-based study, the causal relationship between variables remains unclear (teens with greater interest in sex may seek it on TV).32 Other factors (parental disapproval, a two-parent household, a high degree of parental monitoring) also predicted the teens who would postpone sex. This finding exemplifies that while media may have a modest effect in the short term, it usually combines with other cultural and personal variables to have an overall influence on behavior.

  Demographic data has led to speculation that there might be a connection between media and deviant acts such as rape and other acts of sexual aggression. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the frequency of reported sexual assaults increased as sexually explicit material became more available. However, changes in attitudes toward sexuality during the same time may have led women to report assaults without fear of humiliation or public reprisal. Cross-cultural data leads to even more questions: much sexually explicit material comes from Japan, which historically has a relatively low rape rate.33 Some studies narrow the focus by comparing the consumption of sexually explicit material by men convicted of sex crimes with non-offenders. While it is difficult to find reliable findings on the typical man's pornography usage, these studies have found that sexually aggressive men are exposed to more violent pornography than non-sex offenders.34