Docudrama can lead to more empathy towards people stigmatized in society, study finds

A new study found that after watching a docudrama about efforts to free a prisoner on death row from death row, people were more empathetic toward formerly incarcerated people and supportive of criminal justice reform.

The research, led by a team of Stanford psychologists, was published October 21 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“One of the hardest things for groups of people facing stigma, including previously incarcerated people, is that other Americans don’t perceive their experiences very accurately,” said Jamil Zaki, lead author of the journal and professor of psychology at the School of Psychology. Humanities and sciences (SST).

“One way to combat the lack of empathy towards stigmatized groups of people is to get to know them. This is where the media comes in, which psychologists have long used as a means of intervention. “

Study how the story persuades

The paper integrates Zaki’s previous research on empathy with the work of his co-author, Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt, who has studied the pernicious role of racial bias in society for more than three decades.

The idea for the study came from a conversation Eberhardt had with one of the executive producers of the film Just Mercy, based on the book by lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson.

Stevenson’s book focuses on his efforts within the Equal Justice Initiative to overturn the conviction of Walter McMillian, a black Alabama man who in 1987 was sentenced to death for the murder of a young girl 18-year-old white woman, despite overwhelming evidence demonstrating her innocence. .

The film vividly depicts systemic racism within the criminal justice system and illustrates the tragic impact of racial bias on the lives of marginalized, formerly incarcerated individuals and their families, particularly Black Americans, as they navigate in a flawed legal system.

It was around the time of the film’s release that Eberhardt, professor of health and safety psychology, William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, and faculty director of Stanford SPARQ, published his book, “Bias: Uncovering the Hidden Bias That Shape What We See, Think, and Do” (Viking, 2019), which addresses many of the same issues as Just Mercy.

During her book tour, she met many different people, including one of the executive producers of Just Mercy. He approached her with a question originally asked by former US President Barack Obama, who had recently watched the film at a private screening. Obama wondered if watching this could change the way neurons fire in people’s brains.

“I told this grower that we don’t have to wonder: This is a question we can answer through rigorous research,” Eberhardt said. “This article is a first step in that direction.”

Eberhardt teamed up with Zaki, and together they designed a study to examine how Just Mercy could change the way people view people who have been pushed to the margins of society.

To measure how watching the film might shape a person’s empathy toward formerly incarcerated people, the researchers asked participants, before and after watching the film, to also watch a series of one-to-one videos. three minutes featuring men who had been incarcerated. real life.

Participants were asked to rate how they thought these men felt when they shared their life stories. These scores were then measured against what the men actually told the researchers they felt when recounting their experiences.

Open minds and hearts

The study found that after watching Just Mercy, participants were more empathetic toward those who were previously incarcerated than those in the control condition.

Their attitudes toward criminal justice reform were also influenced.

The researchers asked participants if they would sign and share a petition in support of a federal law to restore voting rights to people with criminal records. They found that people who watched Just Mercy were 7.66% more likely than participants in the control condition to sign a petition.

The study highlights the power of storytelling, Eberhardt said. “Stories move people in a way that numbers don’t.”

In an early study co-authored by Eberhardt, she found that citing statistics about racial disparities wasn’t enough to get people to take a closer look at systems. In fact, she discovered that just presenting numbers could potentially backfire. For example, highlighting racial disparities in the criminal justice system can lead people to be more punitive, not less, and be more likely to support punitive policies that help create these disparities in the first place.

As Eberhardt and Zaki’s study showed, what changes people’s minds are stories – a finding consistent with a previous study conducted by Zaki that demonstrated how watching a live theater performance can have a impact on how people perceive social and cultural issues in the United States.

The psychologists also found that their intervention worked regardless of the storyteller’s race and had the same effect regardless of people’s political orientation.

“When people experience detailed personal narratives, it opens their minds and hearts to the people who tell those narratives and the groups from which those people come,” Zaki said.