From Cara Murez
HealthDay reporter
FRIDAY, May 14, 2021 (HealthDay News) – A good movie can be more than just entertainment: it can also help you feel better prepared for life’s challenges and be a better person, according to a new study.
This may be why people sometimes choose films with difficult subjects or ones that make them sad, researchers say.
“Meaningful movies actually help people cope with difficulties in their own lives and help them pursue more important goals,” said lead author Jared Ott, a graduate student in communications at Ohio State University in Columbus.
Many studies have looked at how people react to films or film clips in a laboratory, said co-author Michael Slater, professor of communication. This is designed to see how movies affect people in the real world.
“We wanted to find out how people experience these films in their daily lives,” said Slater.
For the study, the researchers compiled two lists of 20 Hollywood films that were shot after 1985 and had received high audiences.
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One included films like “Hotel Rwanda,” “Schindler’s List,” and “Slumdog Millionaire” – which the film site IMDb described as poignant, inspiring, or meaningful.
The other films included what researchers called “less meaningful” such as “Ratatouille”, “Fight Club” and “Pulp Fiction”.
Almost 1,100 adults were recruited online to get one or the other list and then report on what films they had seen. They were then asked to conduct a poll on one of these films, which the researchers selected at random.
People who remembered a meaningful movie were more likely than others to say that the movie helped them understand difficulties in life. According to researchers, meaningful films are also more likely to help viewers accept the human condition.
Participants who remembered the meaningful films were also more likely to say that the film motivated them to be a better person, do good things for other people, and look for what is really important in life.
Key elements of these films have been their sharpness, the mix of happiness and sadness, their emotional reach, and their ability to make people feel exalted and inspired when they see them.
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The researchers said it was still possible to find meaning, even in fare, that should be entertaining rather than inspiring.
Participants were asked to select and rate the meaning of three values from a list of 16 values they saw represented in their film, including “Achievement and Personal Achievement”, “Love and Intimacy”, and “Courage and Valor”.
“We found that people felt better able to understand difficulties in their own lives when they remembered a movie that focused on values that were important to them,” said Slater. “It happened even when the film was classified as one of the less meaningful films.”
The results were recently published online in the journal Mass Communication and Society.
Ott said the results suggest why some people view movies as more than entertainment.
“Some films can help people navigate difficult times in their lives and grow,” he said. “And people can see that effect years after seeing a particular movie.”
More information
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Nature magazine did more research on films and psychology.
SOURCE: Ohio State University, news release, May 12, 2021
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