How Movies Trick your Brain

"How Movies Trick Your Brain into Emphasizing with Characters"

by, Greg Miller

In this article, Miller stated that when people watch the, very emotional, last scene of the Black Swan, their brain is tricked into emphasizing with the main character, Nina. He wrote that "as Nina gets crazier and crazier, the audience experiences something like schizophrenia," (Miller 1). There are two types of empathy, mental and embodied. Research shows that your brain goes from mental empathy (mostly) to embodied empathy. This is a pattern that researchers have seen in schizophrenia patients. Miller concludes that embodied and mental empathy have a huge impact on a person's experience while watching movies.

As a big movie lover, I thought this article was very interesting to read. I never thought about why people emphasize with the characters in movies or TV shows. After all they are only actors and whats going on in the movie is normally not true. What if we didn't emphasize with characters? Movies would be so much more boring. Another reason I thought this article was interesting is that it relates to schizophrenia. Next time I watch a movie I am going to think about this article and how it affected me.

Miller, G. (n.d.). How Movies Trick Your Brain Into Empathizing With Characters. Retrieved from Wired website: http://www.wired.com/2014/09/cinema-science-empathizing-with-characters/