Can Watching Movies Rewire Your Brain?
ILLUSTRATION BY KEITH NEGLEY
Revealing new Stanford research finds that when people lose themselves in a story, they become more empathetic. Here’s how it works.
New Stanford research reveals how storytelling in
films like Just Mercy can change our minds and foster empathy.
In 2019, producer Scott Budnick met with Barack Obama in Washington after the former president watched an early screening of Just Mercy, a legal drama featuring Jamie Foxx as an Alabama man wrongfully sentenced to death. During their conversation, Obama mused that a film could have the power to "literally change someone's brain matter." This passing remark planted the seed for a unique research project.
Months later, Budnick shared Obama’s comment with Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt while they were on a panel together. Eberhardt, a renowned researcher on racial bias, was intrigued and responded, "You don't have to wonder—we could actually study that." This idea set into motion a groundbreaking study on how films can affect the human brain.
Fast forward five years, and participants are now stepping into an MRI machine in the basement of Stanford's psychology department to understand how watching Just Mercy can literally change their brain function. This research is the first to use a specific film to measure empathy through brain imaging.
The initial phase of the study, which involved participants watching online videos, suggested that storytelling can indeed influence empathy. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on October 21, the study revealed that watching Just Mercy enhanced participants' empathy towards individuals recently incarcerated and reduced their support for the death penalty.
The concept behind this research is called "narrative transportation," the idea that immersing oneself in a story can change one's perspective. It’s an academic approach to Roger Ebert’s iconic claim that movies are “empathy machines.” While many in the entertainment industry have long believed in the power of storytelling to evoke empathy, this study aims to provide the scientific evidence to back it up.
The film, Just Mercy, tells the true story of attorney Bryan Stevenson’s fight to save Walter “Johnny D.” McMillian, a man wrongly convicted of murder. To evaluate the film's impact, the researchers asked 749 participants to watch interviews with formerly incarcerated men and assess their emotions. After watching Just Mercy, participants were significantly better at accurately recognizing these emotions, a measure known as "empathic accuracy."
Moreover, the film also shifted participants' views on the death penalty, increasing opposition to it by 20%. This effect was even more substantial than typical political canvassing, which tends to yield a 10% change in views. Controls like Concussion and Moneyball, both underdog docudramas, were also used to verify that Just Mercy’s specific storyline was responsible for the results.
Notably, these findings held true across political lines. Whether participants identified as conservative or liberal, their empathy levels increased after watching the film. "We’re such a polarized country right now," says Eberhardt, "but perhaps narrative is a way to reach each other again."
In spring 2024, researchers began using MRI scans to examine the brain regions associated with empathy while participants watched Just Mercy. The goal was to determine whether Obama’s theory—that storytelling could physically change brain matter—holds scientific weight. Stanford plans to extend this research to include television shows, which may have an even longer-lasting impact on attitudes since audiences engage with them over extended periods.
This data could ultimately add a new metric to how we measure a film’s value, beyond box office numbers and critical acclaim. While Just Mercy earned a modest box office total of $51 million, its cultural influence extended far beyond its initial release, especially after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, when Warner Bros. made the film widely available for free as part of a push for racial justice.
But as Budnick, founder of production company 1Community, notes, for movies to make an impact, people need to see them first. "It’s the entertainment industry—we need to entertain," says Budnick. "If we succeed in capturing an audience, only then can we start measuring the impact of that story."
source: This story first appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter
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