FICTION, FAST AND SLOW:

NARRATIVE MEDIA AS A TOOL FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

by

Michael Chalom Bitton,

BA of Communication Studies

received from

Concordia University, 2010-2013

Major Research Paper

presented to Ryerson University

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

in the Program of

Media Production

Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2014

© Michael Bitton 2014

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Author’s Declaration

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this major research paper. This is a true copy of the major research paper, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my supervisory committee. I authorize Ryerson University to lend this major research paper to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I further authorize Ryerson University to reproduce this major research paper by photocopying or by other means, in total or in part, at the request of other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. I understand that my major research paper may be made electronically available to the public.

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Abstract Narrative media possess the power to influence audience attitudes, beliefs, and

behaviour. This influence can and does manifest itself in both positive and negative ways. Identifying reliable pathways to influence and exploiting these for altruistic ends is a potentially high impact health intervention. This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on models of mass communication, considers the role of narrative media in movements of positive social change, and applies ethical considerations to the production and value of narrative media. It argues that while most concerns with the impacts of narrative media are sensationalized, of much greater concern should be the possibility that this content possesses the potential to do more good than many of us imagine. This oversight is largely due to the fallibility of common sense paradigms of moral and artistic value not rooted in cognitive science or moral philosophy.

Keywords: narrative media, media effects, social change, mass communication, entertainment-education, consequentialism

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Acknowledgements

Over the course of the year, I received assistance from numerous individuals.

Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Henry Warwick, for challenging me,

especially in the early stages of my paper. My idea has evolved quite a bit since

September. I’d also like to thank Lori Beckstead for agreeing to be my second reader.

The person that may have had the greatest impact on my project’s development is

Kris Alexander. Kris was by far the most useful teacher I’ve ever had. Every week, he

renewed my enthusiasm for this topic.

I’d like to extend a special thanks to Brian Tomasik and Jeremy Miller for reading

and commenting on parts of this paper, and for providing advice throughout the year.

I also appreciate the help of some notable academics and professionals that took

time out from their days to respond to my emails: Steven Pinker, Joshua Greene, Keith

Oatley, Raymond Mar, Richard Grindle, Kalle Lasn, Nick Beckstead, and Luke

Muehlhauser.

Thanks to Aina Arro for always having the answers.

Lastly, thanks to Michelle Kuan for keeping me and my Oreos company at the

Study Table, to Chris Lacroix for all the love and support, and to Shayda Omidvar for

being my friend.

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Table of Contents:

 

Title Page i Author’s Declaration ii Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents v Introduction 1 Section 1 – Media, Culture, and Social Change 3 1.1. A Messy Situation 3 1.2. Theories of Mass Communication 5 1.3. Probabilistic Needle Theory 9 1.4. Biases and Heuristics 12 1.5. Agnotology and the Persistence of Misinformation 17 1.6. Summary of Section 1 20 Section 2 – Positive and Negative Effects of Narrative Media 23 2.1. The Beneficial Effects of Fiction 24 2.1.1. Fiction improves social skills and theory of mind 24 2.1.2. Fiction increases empathy for others and tolerance of other viewpoints 26 2.1.3. Fiction gradually alters personality traits 27 2.2. Narrative Persuasion 30 2.3. Moral Attitude Change 35 2.4. Entertainment-Education and the Sabido Methodology 37 2.5. The Effectiveness of Strategic Media Use 44 Section 3 – A Morally Grounded Understanding of Narrative Media 47 3.1. The History, Function, and Limits of Moral Intuitions 47 3.2. An Empirical Argument For the Practical Superiority of Consequentialism 50 3.3. Moral Responsibility and Distant Suffering 53 3.4. Narrative Media and Distant Suffering 56 3.5. New Priorities 59 3.6. Future Research 60 Bibliography 64

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Introduction

The goal of this paper is to improve existing discussions of the influence of

narrative media on groups and individuals. Not only do these discussions tend to

sensationalize minor and moderate risks and benefits of narrative media, they also ignore

the uses of narrative media that actually have strong evidence documenting their impact

on a large scale. Much of this confusion can be attributed to an overreliance on common

sense paradigms of moral and artistic value.

Section 1 of this paper introduces various theories of mass communication and

discusses the positive and negative roles narrative media can play in social change,

largely drawing from the social sciences. The discussion establishes the notion of the

“probabilistic needle,” arguing that narrative media reaching mass audiences can have

significant social effects even if the content in question barely affects most individual

viewers. Section 1 then connects ideas of media influence to well-understood

psychological phenomena from the field of biases and heuristics. These biases and

heuristics sometimes facilitate, but sometimes prevent, mass media influence. The

conclusion to draw from Section 1 is that the spread of memes throughout a culture is too

complex for there to exist a cheap, scalable, underfunded, and high impact media-based

treatment for cultural issues in first world countries.

Section 2 of this paper covers the positive and negative effects of narrative media

on groups and individuals. It attempts to definitively refute the view that narrative media

is powerless to influence society, as well as the view that this influence is purely positive.

This section summarizes and synthesizes the literature on the psychology of fiction, the

psychology of narrative persuasion, and the nature of narrative media effects on

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audiences. This section then introduces the genre of narrative media known as

entertainment-education, a genre that has been unusually successful as a social and health

intervention in developing nations. A well-known blueprint for making effective

entertainment-education is also discussed, as is an impressive organization that uses

fictional and non-fictional media content to save lives and reduce suffering. These

benefits outshine the documented benefits of other uses of narrative media. The

conclusion to draw from Section 2 is that the proper use of entertainment-education in

developing nations appears to be unusually successful, relative to other uses of narrative

media, as a force for positive social change. The charity evaluator GiveWell has

tentatively affirmed this conclusion.

Section 3 of this paper grounds discussions of the effects of narrative media in

cognitive science and moral philosophy. Drawing from material discussed in Sections 1

and 2, this final section covers the dual-process nature of moral judgment, the limitations

of moral intuitions, and how ideas from moral philosophy and psychology apply to

ethical issues concerning contemporary media use. In particular, this section points to a

moral blind spot toward the suffering of geographically distant individuals, arguing that

the contemporary world contains dilemmas for which moral intuitions did not evolve.

The conclusion to draw from this section is that while many of the most common

assessments of media risks and benefits are overestimated, of much greater significance

is the possibility that narrative media possesses more power than many of us imagine.

This power allows narrative media to save lives and lower rates of disease but it is

underappreciated due to the fallibility of common sense paradigms of moral and artistic

value.

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Section 1 – Media, Culture, and Social Change 1.1. A Messy Situation

It is widely believed that mass media content affects society (Davison 3). The

evidence is everywhere: the existence of huge marketing agencies (Vivian and Maurin

166), major corporations that pour millions into advertising campaigns (185), academics

that theorize about the dangers of media influence (249), and a general public that

worries about the levels of violence and sexuality in the media (257). In a recent survey,

70% of Americans admitted to being at least somewhat concerned that popular movies

and television programs are contributing to the erosion of moral standards (Wilson 97).

But the scope and nature of media effects garner far less consensus than the

notion that media content has effects. The heatedness of this debate can be partially

blamed on the politicization of some media issues. Politicization incentivizes bias, in turn

corrupting intellectual discussion. For example, climate scientists have long ago reached

an overwhelming consensus on the basic facts of global warming, but that consensus is

not reflected in the general public (Benestad et al. 454). This is a case of political capture

by vested interests incentivizing the deliberate spread of misinformation. More

importantly, communication theory is highly debated because the answers to its most

central questions are elusive and subtle. The field has even been argued to not qualify as

a full-fledged academic discipline due to the lack of consensus among various textbooks

on the basic theories, issues, and tenets of communication theory (Craig 119).

The true relationship between media content and audience behaviour change is

subtle, complex, and only partially understood:

For some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For other children under the same conditions, or for the same children under other

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conditions, it may be beneficial. For most children, under most conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial. (Schramm, Lyle, and Parker 1)

The above statement should not be the conclusion of a look into media-culture

dynamics, but rather the starting point. The difficulties of drawing absolute conclusions

about media influence that apply across all instances should simply be accepted from the

start. As a result, researchers have substituted the broader questions for smaller, more

answerable questions. Academics in various fields have amassed thousands of little

shards of information about how media affects individuals and society at large. In

synthesizing these findings, some general trends and principles can be discerned.

In short, mass communication theory is highly contested. There is widespread

agreement that the mass media can affect audiences – or else why do they exist? – but the

effects themselves are difficult to determine. One goal of this paper is to appraise these

contradictions. Another goal is to argue that it is possible to sidestep much of the

disagreement merely by challenging certain widespread assumptions. Most debates

surrounding mass media and social issues suffer from fundamental errors in reasoning. In

particular, there is an overreliance on common sense in situations where common sense is

an inadequate source of information. The theme of transcending the limitations of

common sense intuitions will resurface throughout this paper.

This section begins with an overview of recent models of mass communication.

This overview should clarify some of the basic points of disagreement that divide cultural

and communication theorists. These points of disagreement should in turn illuminate a

general approach toward thinking about mass communication. It should also illustrate the

importance of empirical data and the limitations of communication theory.

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1.2. Theories of Mass Communication

This subsection’s purpose is to briefly overview several historically important

theories of mass media influence. None of these theories successfully explains media’s

impact on society. As a collective, they illuminate the complexity of audience reception

and the tools that a theory of media influence needs to be equipped with in order to

comprehensively explain the relationship between media and culture.

In his essay, The Influence of the Mass Media, Denis McQuail makes a crucial

distinction between media “effects” and “effectiveness” (McQuail 8). “Effects” refer to

the quality of a media project’s impact on the world – whether it is net positive or net

negative. “Effectiveness” refers to the scope, strength, and last of a media project’s

impact on the world – whether it has large effects or small effects. A given work is likely

to have multiple effects of varying sizes. Positive effects should evidently be hoped to be

as large as possible, while negative effects should be reduced to the extent that they can

be. This subsection will rely heavily on Tony Bennett’s overview of theories of media

effects, as well as McQuail’s overview of theories of media effectiveness.

Bennett’s essay begins with the mass society tradition: a loose grouping of mid-

19th Century intellectuals that opposed the mass media’s political consequences. These

theorists thought the masses too irresponsible to be granted power over political affairs

(Bennett 33). As the utilitarian John Stuart Mill put it, the “tyranny of the prevailing

opinion” risked destroying the structure of society by destabilizing the sociopolitical

“centre of authority” (Mill 9; Bennett 35). Some intellectuals from this tradition feared

the mass media would enable totalitarian governments to brainwash and take advantage

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of the masses (Bennett 36). It was thought that in making people feel alienated, the mass

media would make people become hungry to join a mass movement of some kind

(Bennett 37). During this period, the mass media were assumed to have enormous power

over public opinion and behaviour (McQuail 9). This view was based on the formation of

mass audiences, but not on any empirical, scientific research on media effects, which did

not exist at the time (McQuail 9).

From the 1930s to the 1950s, the intellectual consensus on mass media effects

took a turn toward optimism, as American sociologists began testing the claims of the

mass society theories (Bennett 38). Their experiments revealed that the public was not

nearly as susceptible to top-down influence as was expected (Bennett 39). Audiences did

not interpret media as a homogeneous mass, but rather filtered media messages through

the lens of their respective experiences (Bennett 39). In famous experiments by

Lazarsfeld and Kendall on voting behaviour, voters were shown to be more affected by

their families, churches, business communities, and peer groups than by the mass media

(Katz and Lazarsfeld 273; Bennett 39). Media influence was found to be situated within a

constellation of social factors and structures. Klapper summarized this position with the

remark: “mass communication does not ordinarily serve as a necessary and sufficient

cause of audience effects, but rather functions through a nexus of mediating factors”

(Klapper 8). This was the beginning of the liberal-pluralist tradition of media effects.

Liberal-pluralists thought the mass media to be an important part of the democratic

process, allowing for a healthy circulation of opinions that would keep the public

informed (Bennett 39-40). Contrary to the fears of the mass society theorists, liberal-

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pluralists understood the mass media to empower the public and protect them from the

disproportionate centralization of power among an elite few (Bennett 40).

During this period of time, another school of thought was forming at the Institute

for Social Research, popularly called “The Frankfurt School.” These theorists attempted

to incorporate the mass society critique of the mass media into a Marxist framework.

They understood the mass media as not just transmitting information to the public, but

possessing the ability to frame one’s entire worldview (Horkheimer and Adorno 45;

Bennett 44). They accused society’s elites of using the mass media to shape the public’s

ideology (Bennett 42). The Frankfurt School theorists were particularly concerned with

the transformation of art from spiritual endeavor to business enterprise (Bennett 44). Max

Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno famously wrote about this issue in “The Culture

Industry.” They pointed to the increasing homogenization and standardization of cultural

goods, stripping the arts of all value (Horkheimer and Adorno 45-46; Bennett 44-45).

This model of mass communication ignores the empirical findings of American

sociologists like Lazarsfeld and Kendall demonstrating the limits of top-down media

influence.

More recently, theorists have tried to unify the Marxist theory of top-down media

influence with an understanding of the fragmented, active audience (Bennett 47). This

has typically involved concern with the process by which existing relations of class

domination are perpetuated, subverted, or challenged in the mass media (Bennett 32).

These theorists have reinvestigated media’s effects on society but with better methods,

more nuance, and lower expectations (McQuail 10). Purely top-down theories of media

influence were dubbed “hypodermic needle theories” because they envisioned the

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transmission of media messages to be direct and unstoppable, as if injected into audiences

by a needle (McQuail 10). But this is not how persuasion works. People often consume

media content without showing any noticeable effect afterward. Past theorists lacked an

understanding of how audiences actively decode media messages, reaching divergent

interpretations.

Most notably, Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model of communication focuses

on the way in which audiences arrive at divergent interpretations of and reactions toward

identical media messages. According to Hall’s model, there are three basic kinds of

readings: dominant/hegemonic, negotiated, and oppositional (Michelle 187). Dominant

readings occur when the message recipient understands the communicator’s intended

meaning of the message. Negotiated readings occur when the message receiver shares the

dominant reading to an extent but also modifies it in some way. Lastly, oppositional

readings occur when the message receiver understands the meaning of a message but

rejects it anyway. Hall’s categories have been accused of not being able to cover the full

range of possible readings audience members can adopt (Michelle 188). Although these

categories have been criticized and updated, they are an important departure from the

tradition of hypodermic needle theories, as they understand that audiences comprise

diverse individuals that do not respond identically even to identical messages. Further,

Hall’s model allows that the same person could have different readings of the same

message depending on the details of the communication act.

Several other theories of audience reception have been proposed over the course

of the 20th Century. In Modes of Reception: A Consolidated Analytical Framework,

Carolyn Michelle looks at the similarities between various proposed schemas of audience

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reception in an attempt to consolidate them into a single model with a single terminology.

These schemas try explaining how various people interpret the same message differently.

Michelle’s final model includes four modes of reception: transparent, referential,

mediated, and discursive (Michelle 213). Although these four modes do not cover all

possible interpretations, they at least “provide the grammar for a common, unifying

language within the field as a whole” (Michelle 213).

There will likely never be a complete model of mass communication. Media

theorists must use whichever theory happens to be useful for whatever aspect of

communication they happen to be researching. In many cases, this will mean combining

several theories together. For instance, many theories of media effects require both a top-

down theory of persuasion and a theory of audiences as active interpreters of media

messages. Just as to evaluate a sculpture or work of architecture, one must assume

multiple different vantage points and then combine the knowledge gleaned from all of

them, the study of media effects requires the synthesis of multiple theoretical

perspectives, none of which are complete on their own.

1.3. Probabilistic Needle Theory

Rather than purely top-down, media influence on a culture should be understood

as probabilistic. A Canadian has a certain probability, for example, of being a Christian,

of supporting capitalism, of liking hockey, and so on, while a Syrian has very different

probabilities of holding the same views. These probabilities apply at the level of the

culture, but not necessarily at the level of the individual. If 75% of Canadians like

hockey, then a randomly selected Canadian has a 75% chance of liking hockey, but that

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individual is not bound to any particular opinion of the sport. The Canadian is perfectly

capable of disliking hockey despite her cultural context. The hypodermic needle of past

mass communication theories should similarly be replaced with a probabilistic needle

perspective of top-down media influence. Upon this view, messages circulated by the

mass media have a certain probability of influencing a certain percentage of the public

within a certain range of possible effectiveness.

In health and behaviour change communication, this point is taken for granted.

The average health communication campaign in the United States only has an effect size

of about 5 percentage points (Snyder 33). But producers of an advertisement that say,

advises viewers to wear seatbelts are well aware of the fact that only a minority of

viewers will be influenced. Given that the behaviour change is potentially life saving and

that the message may reach millions of viewers, even a small effect size can do a lot of

good.

As a case study of the probabilistic needle in action, take by analogy what is

perhaps the most widely discussed ethical concern with narrative media content: the issue

of violence. There is a general impression among journalists and the public that the

academic consensus is split on whether exposure to violent media content contributes to

violent behaviour (Huesmann 3). This perception is somewhat mistaken. In 2000, six

major professional societies (the American Psychological Association, the American

Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of

Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the

American Academy of Family Physicians) signed a joint statement on media violence

stating that “the data point overwhelmingly to a causal connection between media

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violence and aggressive behavior in some children” (Bushman and Anderson 480). Most

meta-analytic reviews of the effects of media violence on aggression have found

significant evidence of impact (Krahe et al. 630; Bushman and Anderson 480; Gentile,

Coyne and Walsh 194; Szabo 1). This relationship is supported by a large body of

correlational, experimental, and longitudinal studies (Gentile, Coyne and Walsh 194;

Stavrinides et al. 73-74). Functional magnetic resonance imaging has demonstrated that

short-term exposure to media violence reduces empathetic responses to the pain of others

(Guo et al. 187). Recent neurological evidence confirms that the previously demonstrated

desensitization effect mediates the link between exposure to media violence and

aggression (Engelhardt et al. 1033). Yet some researchers dispute many of these claims,

arguing that the causal relationship between exposure to violence and aggression is weak

or non-existent (Ferguson and Kilburn 174; Huesmann 1-2).

None of this contradicts Schramm, Lyle, and Parker’s claim that,

“For most children, under most conditions, most television is probably neither

particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial” (Schramm, Lyle, and Parker 1). But even

weak media effects can be socially significant when content reaches millions of people.

Violent video games might not transform regular students into school shooters, or even

have noticeable effects on most gamers, but that does not mean the probabilistic needle

has not fired at a large enough audience to have tangible social consequences.

Fortunately, humans are not so gullible. A variety of psychological defense mechanisms

interfere with persuasive messages.

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1.4. Biases and Heuristics

In the 1970s, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky pioneered the academic field

of biases and heuristics by discovering a series of systematic bugs in human reasoning.

Human judgment comes down to two basic systems, which Kahneman refers to as

System 1 and System 2 (Kahneman 20-21). System 1 is the default mode, controlling

automatic, intuitive, and effortless processes, such as determining that one object is

farther away than another. System 2 controls effortful processes such as parallel parking

or calculating the answer to 17 x 24. Kahneman and Tversky found that in most

situations, humans are under the control of System 1 and that in this state, they are highly

susceptible to a specific suite of mistakes in reasoning. Some of these mistakes result

from systematic biases. Others result from an overreliance on heuristics, or rules of

thumb, employed by individuals when they lack an algorithm for some process. This

subsection will cover those biases and heuristics most relevant to the effects of mass

communication.

One of the most empirically grounded facts of media influence is that the mass

media possess the ability to alter estimates of the likelihood and frequency of specific

occurrences. Psychologists label this mechanism “the availability heuristic” because it

involves the availability of instances in memory as a rule of thumb for estimating

probabilities and quantities (Tversky and Kahneman 209). The availability heuristic

predicts that when individuals try to determine the quantity of some thing or the

probability of some occurrence, they search their memories for instances of that thing or

occurrence and then use the quantity of remembered instances and the ease of

recollection as evidence to support their estimation. Thus when asked to estimate the

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number of homicides compared to suicides, people answer that there are far more

homicides in the United States, even though the reverse is true (Johnson and Tversky 20).

The explanation of this is that the mass media report on homicides far more often than

they report on suicides, so people have more available instances of homicides in their

memories. This influences their beliefs about the real world. It is easy to see how this

false belief could then be politicized to influence mass opinions on, for example, gun

control policies. The priorities of a culture with a homicide problem are distinct from the

priorities of a culture with a suicide problem.

This is one concrete pathway to persuasion. Media can influence real-world

beliefs by shaping the qualities and quantities of events stored in memory. Of course, not

all viewers will have their beliefs changed. Instead, a probabilistic needle fires at a mass

audience, injecting only a certain percentage of viewers.

The availability heuristic is consistent with the theory of mass communication

called “cultivation theory.” Cultivation theorists understand the mass media, especially

television, as a system of coherent memes and messages reflecting a society’s dominant

ideology (Gerbner 178). George Gerbner, the father of cultivation theory, therefore

hypothesizes that exposure to television is likely to be positively correlated with status

quo beliefs and attitudes (Gerbner 178). In cultivation analysis, individuals with varying

degrees of exposure to television are asked questions about social reality (Gerbner 179).

Patterns in their answers should clue to the influence of television on viewer attitudes and

beliefs.

The cultivation analyst Markus Appel hypothesized that high exposure to fictional

television content would lead to just-world beliefs, while general exposure to television

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would lead to mean- and scary-world beliefs (Appel 62). In two cross-sectional studies,

the first done in Germany and the other in Austria, these hypotheses were confirmed

(Appel 76). Appel’s findings combine with the availability heuristic to explain the mass

media’s ability to influence attitudes regarding the nature of society and its problems.

Both malevolent and benevolent media producers could capitalize on the availability

heuristic to adjust mass estimates of society’s biggest problems, and by extension, mass

assessments of social priorities. Covering an event in proportion to its frequency of

occurrence is not always feasible because some rare events deserve more coverage than

more mundane events. Spending less time covering the 9/11 terrorist attacks would not

have been a realistic way for media gatekeepers to prevent Americans from

overestimating the likelihood of terrorist attacks occurring in the future.

Another source of miscommunication caused by agenda setting involves the

combination of two biases: the third person effect and pluralistic ignorance. The third

person effect is the occurrence of people overestimating the magnitude of the media’s

influence on other people (Davison 3). For instance, the third person effect may be on

display when someone claims that violent media content creates violent children despite

claiming to themselves be unaffected. Pluralistic ignorance occurs when a group falsely

assumes that a majority of people in the group believes in some norm. As a result, those

people all follow the rule, not knowing that none of them actually believe in it. Davison

argues that the combination of these two effects leads to a widespread misperception of

public opinion.

"Indeed, the tendency to perceive the media as being biased toward the "wrong" side of an issue, combined with the tendency to impute persuasiveness to the media insofar as others are concerned, creates a strong presumption that the attitudes of other people on any controversial issue that is in the focus of public

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attention will be widely misperceived." (Davison 11) Due to pluralistic ignorance, this misperception of public opinion manifests itself

as widespread behaviour based on norms that perhaps only a minority of people believes

in. Social proof has a strong pull on decision-making. Although when Davison’s essay

was written in 1983, he may have been correct about the “tendency to perceive the media

as being biased toward the ‘wrong’ side of an issue,” that statement does not ring true in

2014. Selective exposure, confirmation bias, the emergence of social media, and the

process of demassification have combined to create environments in which individuals

receive information from people already in agreement with them. Logically, this would

lead to an overestimation of the popularity of one’s ideas.

Framing refers to the impact of irrelevant factors influencing receptions of

messages with common meanings (Tversky and Kahneman 343). For instance, when

people are given a hypothetical situation in which they must gamble with lives, the

framing of the gamble influences which option people choose:

Decision 1: Option A: There are 600 people at risk and 200 of them will be saved. Option B: There is a 33% chance that nobody will die and a 67% chance that all 600 die.

When Tversky and Kahneman tested this experiment, 72% of people preferred

Option A. But this number dropped to 22% when the positive framing (“200 people will

be saved”) was substituted for the negative framing (“400 people will die”), as shown

below:

Decision 2: Option C: There are 600 people at risk and 400 will die. Option D: There is a 33% chance that nobody will die and a 67% chance that 600 die. (Kahneman and Tversky 343)

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Option A and Option C are identical: in both situations, 200 people should be

expected to survive, while 400 die. Yet individuals demonstrate very different

preferences depending on how the decision is framed, even though Options B and D are

also identical. Politicians and media outlets can make use of framing devices to influence

audience perspectives on news stories. A newspaper headline that claims, “public

condemnation of democracy should not be allowed” will receive more support than will

one that claims, “it is right to forbid public condemnation of democracy” (Bruine de

Bruin et al. 7). Similarly, a headline will have very different connotations if it describes

US activity as a “strike” or as an “invasion” or as a “bombing.” (And was it committed

against “soldiers” or “forces” or “rebels” or “terrorists”?)

Framing is also possible with moving images. During the 1920s and ‘30s, while

Soviet film theorists were experimenting with the language of cinema, a form of visual

framing known as the Kuleshov effect was discovered, named after its inventor, Lev

Kuleshov. The famous experiment had a Russian actor reacting to different images: a

bowl of soup, a little girl smiling, a funeral. After the image of food, the man’s face

appears to express hunger. After watching the little girl, he appears happy. After seeing

the funeral scene, he appears melancholic. But this is an illusion caused by the context in

which the reaction shots were placed. Kuleshov re-used exactly the same shot for all of

the reactions. This finding was important to the development of Soviet Montage cinema,

which emphasized the unique meanings combinations of shots could create, even when

that meaning does not exist in any of the shots on their own.

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1.5. Agnotology and the Persistence of Misinformation The literature on heuristics and biases can be exploited by media producers to

influence the spread and popularity of ideas within and across cultures. But many of these

biases also work to entrench the standing of previously held beliefs. Once an idea gets in

one’s mind, there are a number of psychological forces in place working to keep it there.

These defenses limit the impact of media content on individuals and on society at large.

These characteristics of communication and psychology are sometimes employed

by frauds to deliberately spread misinformation. Not only can media producers alter

estimates of the frequencies of causes of death, they can also alter estimates of the extent

of scientific consensus on empirical facts (Bedford 161). Common strategies of

disinformation are (1) to assert the absence of scientific consensus by citing the opinions

of a handful of dissenting scientists, often experts in completely unrelated fields, (2) to

point out past mistakes made by “scientists” that are actually taken from the popular

literature rather than from peer-reviewed journals, and (3) to emphasize the fringe parts

of the theory that are legitimately controversial rather than the fundamental parts of the

theory that are not highly contested by scientists (Bedford 161). These strategies have

been highly effective at infiltrating public opinion on anthropogenic global warming and

evolution by natural selection (Bedford 160). Despite an overwhelming consensus among

experts about these facts, huge portions of the public remain skeptical. Many of these

people also believe the scientific community to be very split on the issue of

anthropogenic global warming (160). The low levels of scientific literacy among the

general public contribute to the effectiveness of misinformation to spread. In particular,

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Bedford points to the widespread ignorance of the importance of peer review as a

lubricant for false controversy (160).

News programs can unintentionally contribute to this by trying to treat believers

and skeptics equally (Lewandowsky et al. 110). When a news program features a debate

between a single global warming believer and a single global warming skeptic, the

illusion of equal credibility is created. The two “experts” are taken as a microcosm for the

entire scientific debate, even when one of the guests is more credible or more moderate

than the other. Further, in attempting to make science palatable to mass audiences, the

mainstream media can inadvertently oversimplify, overdramatize, distort, or misrepresent

scientists, thereby spreading misunderstanding (Lewandowsky et al. 110). Lewandowsky

et al. provide four questions truth-seeking individuals should ask themselves in order to

defend against the absorption of false beliefs: (1) Is the information compatible with

what I believe? (2) Is the story coherent? (3) Is the information from a credible source?

(4) Do others believe this information? (Lewandowsky et al. 113)

The young field of “agnotology” studies the nature of and reasons for ignorance

(Bedford 159). Studying how misinformation spreads and persists throughout a society is

useful for two reasons: (1) it provides insight into how to prevent the flow of false

information and (2) it provides insight into effective ways of spreading factual

information. Improving critical thinking skills and scientific literacy are relatively risk-

free ways of limiting the spread of misinformation (Bedford 163).

Consistency theory offers an important consideration in understanding the top-

down spread of information across a culture. People are actively looking for confirmation

of what they already believe or what they want to be true (Vivian and Maurin 253).

  19  

Psychologists refer to this as the “confirmation bias.” It has been hypothesized to be

responsible for the rationalization of government policies (Nickerson 191), judicial

reasoning (193), and scientific conservatism (194), among other things. Media messages

do not only need to break through people’s general resistance against outside persuasion,

but also need to convince audiences of beliefs and attitudes that explicitly clash with their

worldviews (Lewandowsky et al. 118). There are four filters individuals can use to tune

out information that does not cohere with their prior attitudes and beliefs: selective

exposure, selective perception, selective retention, and selective recall (Vivian and

Maurin 253). These refer to four different stages in the process of communication. In

each stage, people are more open to certain kinds of information than to others and are

therefore more likely to encounter, perceive, store, and recall those kinds of information.

The channels to persuasion are therefore not straight and logical, but winding in

accordance with human biases. The trends of demassification and fractionation amplify

the effects of selective exposure on the entrenchment of misinformation (Lewandowsky

et al. 111). As media content becomes increasingly tailored to niche audiences, “cyber-

ghettos” are created in which only like viewpoints are exchanged and nobody’s mind is

ever changed (111).

The natural response to new information is belief, at least, until a correction or

retraction occurs (Lewandowsky et al. 111). Some research even suggests that belief must

coincide with comprehension (Gilbert 116). Even retractions usually fail to eliminate the

effects of prior statements (Lewandowsky et al. 114). A retraction will at most halve the

number of believers in a statement even when the retraction is clearly remembered

(Lewandowsky et al. 114). One reasonable explanation of this phenomenon is that

  20  

listeners form mental models of the stories they hear (e.g. Event A leads to Event B leads

to Event C) (Busselle and Bilandzic 323). When one of the events of the story is retracted

(“Actually, I lied: Event B never happened!”), the listener’s mental model is left with a

hole, as Event A would not lead to Event C without the occurrence of Event B

(Lewandowsky et al. 114). Studies show that filling this coherence gap with an alternate

account of events is a successful way to break the continued influence of misinformation

(Lewandowsky et al. 117). Lewandowsky et al. also recommend repeated retractions,

avoiding repetition of the misinformation, refuting the misinformation with only a few

simple arguments, fostering healthy skepticism, framing evidence in a way consistent

with the audience’s worldview, encouraging self-affirmation of personal values, and

explicitly forewarning people that they are about to encounter misleading information

(122). The human tendency toward automatic belief is discussed further in Section 2.

1.6. Summary of Section 1

Thus far, material from a range of disciplines has been discussed. It is time to stop

and draw some conclusions from the previous pages. The section opened with an

overview of various theories and models of mass communication. It was concluded that

none of these theories on its own is adequate for understanding media influence.

Nevertheless, the notion that the mass media can significantly affect culture was not

discarded, as the probabilistic needle view of communication suggests that effects can be

distributed across a large population.

The chapter then briefly examined the popular debate on the effects of exposure

to violent media content. It was found that the academic consensus favours the existence

  21  

of some kind of causal connection between exposure to violent content and undesirable

behaviours. Nevertheless, the complexity of this causal relationship makes it very

difficult to say for certain when a given act of aggression is caused by media exposure.

Most high profile incidents of local violence (e.g. public shootings) likely do not warrant

the attention to violent media content that they receive. There are many variables that

factor into a decision to open fire on a crowd of innocent people. Barring extraordinary

evidence of media involvement, it is not reasonable to blame violent media content for

any particular act of violence. The same holds true for other popular concerns with media

content such as the increasingly sexualized nature of popular film and television. There is

also no obvious solution to these issues that does not risk doing more harm than good.

Without such a solution in the wings, mass anxiety would be better placed in other areas.

Next, a series of biases and heuristics were discussed. Some of these biases

facilitate persuasion. Nevertheless, other features of human psychology make individuals

reluctant to change their minds, reducing persuasion. On the whole, it is not at all clear

that the persuasion facilitating biases dominate the persuasion preventing biases. In

particular, once an issue becomes politicized, individuals tend to trust information and

news source that share their political views, while contradictory evidence is ignored.

Additionally, for each message, there is likely to be others attempting to spread the

opposite message. In some cases, this is innocent. In others, there are powerful

institutions that deliberately spread misinformation for political reasons.

All of these factors make the resolution of cultural issues difficult. The spreading

of positive ideas throughout a culture is riddled with psychological, cultural, political,

and economic obstacles. Although narrative media very likely stirs the pot of cultural

  22  

evolution, the process is likely too messy for there to exist a cheap, effective, and

underfunded treatment of local issues. This is partly because the most widespread issues

in the Western world largely regard higher-level, rather than basic needs. Sections 2 and

3 cover the possibility of media programming achieving more good in the developing

world.

Much of Section 1 discussed the mass media in general. The rest of this paper is

more specifically about narrative media and the evidence of its effects. If the spread of

ideas throughout a culture is a difficult feat to accomplish, that does not render narrative

media useless. Perhaps narrative media has inherent benefits or risks that make media

production a cheap, effective, and underfunded method of making the world better. This

possibility will be discussed in Section 2.

  23  

Section 2 – Positive and Negative Effects of Narrative Media

In Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the Benefits of the Arts, an

important distinction is made between instrumental and intrinsic benefits. While

instrumental benefits include broad social and economic changes that advance public

interests, intrinsic benefits refer to the distinctive ability of art experiences to be enriching

(McCarthy, Ondaatje, Zakaras, and Brooks xi). Despite increasing interest in art’s

instrumental benefits, the authors argue that the evidence for these benefits is lacking and

largely dependent on weak research methodologies (xiv). Moreover, these claims often

ignore the opportunity cost of funding, producing, and distributing art. Many instrumental

benefits attributed to art might also be achieved by other means, such as by building

sports stadiums or investing in public transportation (xiv). The authors believe a strong

case for the value of art must point to intrinsic benefits that are of value to society as a

whole (xvi).

This section discusses recent findings in psychology that pertain to public

intrinsic effects of narrative media on individual viewers, listeners, and readers. These

include both positive and negative effects on attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour. Subsection

2.4 then describes a methodology for producing entertainment-education that has been

successful at resolving health and cultural issues in developing nations. Section 2 aims to

definitively dispel the view that narrative media is powerless to affect audiences and, in

doing so, shed light on a promising way to use narrative fiction as a tool for positive

social change.

  24  

2.1. The Beneficial Effects of Fiction

The view that fiction does not influence audiences relieves storytellers of blame but

also strips fiction of its power. If fiction does not influence audiences in any way, then

why make it? Presumably, media producers believe there to be positive effects of

engaging with fiction and presumably, if there can be positive effects, there can also be

negative effects. This section begins with the documented benefits of narrative fiction.

Oatley’s studies of the psychological functions and effects of fiction can be reduced

to three main findings on the impact of literature on readers: (1) fiction improves social

skills and theory-of-mind, (2) fiction increases empathy for others and tolerance of other

viewpoints, and (3) fiction gradually alters personality traits, usually toward Openness

(Oatley 64). These traits combine to make fiction, almost regardless of its artistic quality,

beneficial for society. This subsection digs further into the positive impact of narrative

fiction.

2.1.1. Fiction improves social skills and Theory of Mind

Theory of mind (TOM) is the ability to attribute alternate mental states to others.

Human children usually develop this ability around the age of 4. At this point, they can

correctly solve the following puzzle:

Max puts his chocolate bar in the cupboard and then goes to school. While he’s in

school, Max’s mother moves the chocolate bar from the cupboard to the kitchen table.

When Max gets home from school, where will he look for the chocolate bar? (Wimmer

and Perner 106)

  25  

Until the age of four, children answer that Max will look for the chocolate bar on

the kitchen table. These kids have not reached a stage in their development where they

can conceive of Max as having different beliefs about the world than they have.

Children incorrectly answering the Max puzzle will struggle to follow the plot

lines of narrative fiction, particularly written texts (Mar, Tackett, and Moore 70). Fiction

forces audiences to consider the motives, desires, and feelings of characters as they

interact with one another (Mar and Oatley 175). Readers and viewers of narrative fiction

use their knowledge of character traits and situations to forecast future events. Without

understanding what is at stake for the various characters, narrative fiction loses a lot of its

appeal and meaning. Engaging with narrative fiction is thus an exercise that develops

TOM.

In reading, people mentally simulate stories in their heads and create a situation

model, which is to say, a mental representation of story events, settings, and characters

(Graesser, Singer, and Trabasso 371; Kinnebrock and Bilandzic 2). Read words may

activate neural responses in the brain of the reader that are analogous to the would-be

activated neural responses in the brain of the person actually performing the described

actions (Zwaan 7; Speer et al. 1).

This close relation between narrative comprehension and experiential mental

representation explains the impact of reading fiction on social ability. In a study

comparing the effects of reading fiction and non-fiction on social skills, it was found that

reading fiction is helpful for both social ability and feelings of social support in ways that

reading non-fiction is not (Mar et al 705). The finding is easily explained by the fact that

  26  

fictional texts require readers to enter the minds of simulated characters and make sense

of their insecurities, motivations, habits, hopes, and fears. In contrast, non-fiction does

not usually require this of readers.

2.1.2. Fiction increases empathy for others and tolerance of other viewpoints

The ability to make sense of alternate viewpoints is not only useful for social

interactions. Fiction also builds empathy for those that might otherwise be labeled as

“other” (Mar, Oatley, and Peterson 408). Mar et al. found that readers of fiction

performed well on two empathy tasks while heavy readers of expository non-fiction

performed worse than average (Mar et al 408). Similarly, Hakemulder found readers to

show greater empathy for an individual when their story is presented as a novel, rather

than as a non-fiction exposé (Hakemulder 114; Pinker 590). In The Better Angels of Our

Nature, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker even partially credits the explosion of

literature in the 17th Century for the Humanitarian Revolution (Pinker 174). This  may  

also  apply  on  an  international  scale,  where  media  serve  as  a  mechanism  for  

transferring  ideas  across  cultural  boundaries.

Literature gave and continues to give people access to a diversity of cultures,

upbringings, social and emotional situations, and viewpoints. As readers simulate story

events and internal character conflict, their ability and willingness to empathize with real

people similar to those characters increases. These depictions do not just document

foreign situations, but also shed insight into how these situations inform the beliefs and

behaviours of the people inside of them. In portraying a wider range of beings as morally

  27  

and intellectually competent, literature fueled an expansion of the ethical sphere of equal

consideration (Singer).

One could also view this development as a taming of a particular cognitive bias

known as the fundamental attribution error (Tetlock 227). The fundamental attribution

error is committed when one attributes the behaviour of others to their personalities,

rather than to aspects of their environment. Committing this error leads to a less

empathetic and more dismissive attitude toward others. But narrative fiction improves

audience understanding of how environmental factors inform the decision-making of

others. It therefore makes audiences less likely to dismiss the viewpoints and actions of

others. This in turn leads to an increase in empathy.

2.1.3. Fiction gradually alters personality traits

Narrative fiction possesses the potential to change people’s attitudes and

personalities, but usually only a little at a time (Busselle and Bilandzic 327; Djikic,

Oatley, Zoeterman, and Peterson 28). When asked to take a personality test before and

after reading either a non-fiction report or Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Little Dog,”

those who read the short story show more personality change (Djikic, Oatley, Zoeterman,

and Peterson 27). Hakemulder likewise found that reading fiction causes shifts in the

reader’s self-concept (Hakemulder 142). The directions in which these shifts occur were

somewhat unpredictable, however. Narrative fiction, it seems, can change personalities

but not usually in any particular way. Oatley speculates that although a single artwork’s

effects are likely only temporary, that a repeated engagement with fiction probably has

replicable effects on reader attitudes, such as increased openness to experience (Oatley

  28  

67, in press). This is consistent with cumulative effects models of mass communication

that frame media messages as benign unless encountered repeatedly and often (McCombs

and Masel-Walters 7).

Fiction also holds the potential to affect ethical, political, and philosophical

attitudes. In one study, Mulligan and Habel documented audience reactions to the popular

film The Cider House Rules. The movie follows a victim of incest that faces external

pressure not to get an abortion. Importantly, the moral of the film seems to relate to the

idea of using gut feelings to solve moral dilemmas. The experimenters tested four

possibilities: (1) the film’s effects on views on abortion, (2) the film’s effects on abortion

in the case of incest, (3) the film’s effects on core ethical views, and (4) the film’s effects

on the belief in handling ethical dilemmas by following one’s conscience. They found

that the film did manage to affect beliefs (2) and (4) but was unable to affect beliefs (1)

and (3) (Mulligan and Habel 93a). They also found that viewers of the fictional film Wag

the Dog were more likely afterward to suspect the American government of constructing

a fictional war for political gain (Mulligan and Habel 17b). Mulligan and Habel attribute

these findings to the concept of “fictional framing,” which assumes that the way in which

fictional narratives frame issues will affect viewers’ beliefs on these issues (83-84a). As

discussed in Section 1, the phenomenon of frame-affected judgments is already well

understood within the heuristics and biases literature and has been applied to reactions to

media content. Along the same lines as Mulligan and Habel’s findings on the persuasive

effects of The Cider House Rules, longitudinal, controlled experiments found that

exposure to a specific in-story crime only corresponded with cultivation effects relating

  29  

to that particular crime and not to other violent crimes not displayed in the narrative

(Williams 69; Bilandzic and Busselle 525).

This ability of narrative fiction to alter beliefs and attitudes in divergent directions

is one of the key functions of art. While all the social and psychological forces discussed

in Section 1 work to entrench people in their ideologies, art acts as a rare social influence

that enables people to change in their own way. In fact, individuals with high exposure to

narrative fiction tend to score highly at Openness on the Big Five Personality test

(Oatley).

Due to these benefits of narrative fiction, the practice of bibliotherapy has

emerged. Bibliotherapy is the therapeutic use of literature for the inspiration and

rehabilitation of troubled individuals. Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) is an

organization employing recent knowledge on literary effects toward rehabilitating

criminals. It is a program that began in 1991 when a judge and a professor of English

literature agreed to let some offenders become sentenced to probation rather than jail on

the condition that they take a seminar on literature. CLTL is based on the assumption that

literature has positive effects on readers strong enough to turn them from criminals to

law-abiding citizens.

In 1998, Jarjoura and Krumholz evaluated the program. The researchers divided

72 repeat offenders that were on probation into two groups. 32 of the offenders were

placed into CLTL programs. The remaining 40 men did not take the program. During the

study, six of the men from the program group (18.75%) committed further offences

compared to 18 from the other group (45%) (Jarjoura and Krumholz). Other

bibliotherapy groups such as those that introduce literature to teen mothers have also

  30  

been successful (Oatley). The success stories of bibliotherapy further confirm literature’s

positive influence on individuals and demonstrate the potential of creative uses of

literature to improve society.

Narrative literature has value for both individuals and societies but the positive

effects are somewhat diminished by occasional negative effects. Subsection 2.2 covers

the literature on narrative persuasion: the ways and degrees to which audiences,

particularly readers, unconsciously absorb information from fictional texts. As the

shifting of audience beliefs and attitudes is perhaps the most obvious way for media

content to have mass effects on society, a strong enough false-belief effect could be

significant enough to cancel out most or all of fiction’s positive influence.

2.2. Narrative Persuasion

ANNE: All this literature talk is making me want to read a book. BEN: I was never really into novels myself. ANNE: It’s great. I learn so much when I read: about people, about cities, about the world. BEN: When I read I don’t really feel like I’m learning. I mean, it’s all fiction, isn’t it? Can I really learn important life lessons from a story somebody made up? ANNE: Of course! A great novel has so many insights into life. It forces you to simulate life experiences in your head and empathize with the characters. It can offer wisdom and philosophy, and even teach you facts about the real world. Like, if the main character is a welder and I don’t know anything about welding, I can learn about that job, or if the story takes place in Nazi Germany, I can learn about that specific historical period, or about what it’s like in a country I’ve never even been to. BEN: I guess so. But how do know which parts are real and which parts are fake? Maybe fiction can also convince people to belief false things about the world. You know, like propaganda.

  31  

ANNE: Propaganda is one thing. Literature is another. People are just natural born experts at distinguishing artistic fact from fiction. I’ve listened to Eminem since I was 10 and I still haven’t murdered anyone yet. When reading, people momentarily suspend their disbelief and in doing so, they can absorb whatever useful lessons they like from the text, while maintaining the ability to tell fact from fiction. BEN: That’s really cool. I’d love to hear more about how people learn from fictional narratives.

Unfortunately, the framing of the above information as a fictional dialogue may

have made Anne’s argument all too convincing to readers of this paper. In fact, when

consuming fiction, readers lower their cognitive defenses and become more likely

to passively accept false statements about the real world such as “mental illness is

contagious” and “tooth brushing is not good for your teeth and gums” (Green and Brock

703; Fazio and Marsh 180; Appel and Richter 115; Gerrig and Prentice 340). As a result,

readers are more likely to reproduce in-story errors as facts on later tests (Fazio and

Marsh 180; Wheeler, Green, and Brock 136). Fictional knowledge is incorporated into

real-world knowledge during reading and the two streams may remain entangled

afterward (Marsh, Meade, and Roediger 520). The familiar metaphor of “suspension of

disbelief” must be replaced with a more accurate concept: the “willing construction of

disbelief” (Gerrig and Rapp 268). The default human reaction to new information is

acceptance (Gilbert 116). Questioning whether this information is true only comes

afterward. Note how easily Anne convinces the reader of the opposite. Disbelief is an

active process of rejecting previously accepted information.

In fact, fictional messages can be as persuasive as factual ones (Green and

Donahue 14). More important than whether a message is described as fictional or factual

is whether it is perceived as plausible or implausible (Green and Donahue 14; Dal Cin,

  32  

Zanna, and Fong 178). A fictional story is not real but it may draw a viewer’s attention to

an outcome that could plausibly happen in real life. An implausible story, however,

cannot refer to truth regardless of whether it is labeled factual. There are also reasons to

expect fictional narratives to outperform explicit nonfictional appeals. This subsection

covers the psychological literature on narrative persuasion.

In mentally simulating fictional stories, read statements are vaguely stored in

memory. Two weeks later, readers continue to store that information but no longer

remember whether it derived from prior knowledge or from a fictional source (Marsh,

Meade, Roediger 520). The false information can feel even truer after a two-week

gestation period than it does immediately after reading (Appel and Richter 127; Jensen et

al. 522; Kumkale and Albarracin 23).

This is not to say that fiction transforms humans into passive recipients of

fictional content, enabling a hypodermic needle effect. But narrative devices such as

suspense eliminate the additional careful attention audiences typically apply when they

encounter information that runs counter to their real-world beliefs (Rapp 695). Melanie

Green and Timothy Brock identified transportation into a narrative as the process by

which people’s high levels of engagement override their caution, and they become “lost

in the story” (Green and Brock 701; Busselle and Bilandzic 324). During transportation,

while narrative engagement among audiences is high and counterarguing is low,

individuals are especially likely to be persuaded to story-consistent attitudes and beliefs

(Busselle and Bilandzic 327; Bilandzic and Busselle 512). This phenomenon is closely

related to “optimal experience” or “flow,” but while non-narrative flow experiences entail

  33  

a loss of awareness of one’s surroundings, narrative flow experiences result in a loss of

awareness of oneself (Csikszentmihalyi 58; Busselle and Bilandzic 324-325).

Narrative transportation is an exception to classical dual-mode theories of

persuasion (Green and Brock 702). The elaboration-likelihood model (ELM) of

persuasion proposed by Petty and Cacioppo acknowledges two routes to persuasion:

central and peripheral. The central route to persuasion is taken when a reader is highly

attentive and motivated by self-interest to analyze the quality of arguments and the

strength of the evidence supporting those arguments (Petty and Cacioppo 6; Petty,

Cacioppo, and Schumann 135). The central route is often taken when people are

persuaded by philosophical arguments, for example. The peripheral route to persuasion is

taken when a less attentive reader relies on heuristics and cues as shortcuts for coming to

a conclusion (Petty and Cacioppo 4; Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann 135). The peripheral

route to persuasion requires less strength of argument, but information believed through

the central route is generally longer lasting and more resistant to counterarguments (Petty

and Cacioppo 21; Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann 136).

Slater and Rouner argue that the elaboration-likelihood model of persuasion

(ELM), as traditionally conceived, is incomplete because of its inability to account for

how, in narrative transportation, information obtained through the peripheral route can be

durably integrated into prior knowledge (Slater and Rouner 175). The researchers

propose an “extended elaboration likelihood model” (E-ELM) that accounts for the

documented effects of entertainment-education and persuasive narratives (177). The E-

ELM also recognizes identification with fictional characters to be a strong pathway to

persuasion, given the strength of the literature on identification as a powerful method of

  34  

reducing counterarguing (Slater and Rouner 177; Cohen 245; Busselle and Bilandzic

324).

Identification is usually understood to refer to the psychological attachment of a

viewer to a fictional character leading to the adoption of character goals, the

comprehension of story events in relation to those goals, and the vicarious experiences of

characters as they fail or succeed at achieving their goals (Cohen 251, Oatley). Buselle

and Bilandzic refer to this emotional and cognitive process of mirroring the emotional

experiences of characters as “perspective taking” (Busselle and Bilandzic 324). In this

altered state of experience, audiences temporarily forget their surroundings and believe

themselves to be inside the diegetic world. Transportation is therefore necessary in order

for identification to occur. In three studies, identification was shown to correlate with

enjoyment of a film (Igartua 359), to be associated in greater cognitive elaboration and

greater intensity of vicarious emotional experience (363), and to play a role in a film’s

incidental persuasive impact (368). Identification may coincide with, but is distinct from,

parasocial interaction (PSI), liking, and imitation, though all of these ways for viewers to

interact with characters combine to make up the broader category of involvement with

characters (Moyer-Guse 409).

Perhaps the most obvious way for media content to have mass effects on society

is through the persuasion of large numbers of people to new beliefs that stimulate new

behaviours. As Foy and Gerrig say, "Those works of literature that most effectively

immerse their readers have the greatest potential to do both good and harm" (Foy and

Gerrig 176). It is important to understand the ways that benevolent, malevolent, and

merely indifferent media producers can plant information into readers’ heads. Rate of

  35  

false-vs-true belief absorption might be one of the best criteria for determining whether a

given artwork’s effect on society is largely positive or negative.

2.3. Moral Attitude Change

As mentioned in subsection 2.1.3, narrative fiction possesses the potential to alter

the moral attitudes of audiences. Some researchers suggest that such forms of popular

communication are even “often among the most effective sources of moral persuasion”

(Pizarro, Detweiler-Bedell and Bloom 94). The case study of The Cider House Rules is a

valuable demonstration of the ability and limits of fiction to accomplish this. While the

film did affect views associated with the specific conflicts depicted in the story, it failed

to affect broader moral outlooks. Similarly, exposure to the dangers of a particular crime

in an online video game only affected attitudes toward that one crime and not to other

violent crimes (Williams 69). This subsection covers other studies of fiction induced

moral attitude change, as well as the literature on the mechanisms that mediate this

influence. It excludes entertainment-education and other fictional narratives deliberately

intended to influence, as this will be covered in subsection 2.4. As one might expect, the

same basic elements that lead to the unconscious absorption of story-consistent beliefs

are responsible for the unconscious absorption of moral attitudes.

The effects of historical films on audiences have been measured on beliefs and

attitudes in viewers of The Day After, JFK, and the Michael Moore documentary,

Fahrenheit 9/11 (Igartua and Barrios 516). All three of these films were found to affect

audience stances on contested subjects such as whether to engage in antinuclear

behaviour or whether to believe the American government’s stated purpose for invading

  36  

Iraq (Igartua and Barrios 516). Upon studying audience reactions to Fahrenheit 9/11,

Koopman suggested that a documentary film could have “significant immediate effects in

the direction intended by the film’s creators on political beliefs about war, voting

intentions, and mood” (Koopman et al. 139-140). Slater et al. found similar results in an

experimental study of a Law and Order episode’s effect on attitudes toward the death

penalty (Igartua and Barrios 517). A negative correlation between identification and

counterarguing has also been observed in studies of A Day Without A Mexican (Igartua

and Barrios 518), If These Walls Could Talk II (Igartua 351), and an episode of The OC

(Igartua and Barrios 518).

Igartua and Barrios investigate the effects of the controversial fiction film

Camino, which negatively portrays the Opus Dei and religion in general. The researchers

seek to determine Camino’s ability to influence beliefs on Opus Dei and religion, but also

how identification with the main character interplayed with this influence, as predicted by

Slater and Rouner’s E-ELM model of narrative persuasion. The researchers found that

ideas such as “Opus Dei is an organization harmful for society” and “religion is an

obstacle to living a full life” were cultivated in viewers by the film (526). Viewers that

were ideologically furthest from the film’s central messages were impacted the strongest

(526-527). Less surprisingly, identification with the lead character increased general

agreement with the film’s messages, such as a critical attitude toward religion’s role in

society (527).

Igartua and Barrios’s findings are consistent with the E-ELM model of narrative

persuasion. The E-ELM frames identification and counterarguing to be incompatible and

inversely correlated (517). Identification triggers a suppressing effect on counterarguing,

  37  

eliminating the influence of ideology on reactions to stories (517). In reducing

counterarguing, identification decreases resistance to persuasion (527). There are two

reasons for this: (1) narrative engagement drains the cognitive resources required for

counterarguing and (2) involvement with a fictional narrative or character reduces the

desire to criticize that narrative or character (527). This suppressing effect is evidently

powerful enough that a controversial film like Camino can fail to activate the cognitive

defenses of those least sympathetic to its message (527). This provides reason to believe

that centering fiction films on characters from stigmatized groups may improve attitudes

toward that group. Batson et al. suggest that this may be the case, demonstrating that

empathy, which fiction can cultivate, successfully predicts more positive attitudes to

people with AIDS, the homeless, and convicted murderers (Batson et al. 116-117). Given

previously discussed findings on (1) the power of identification with characters and on

(2) the ability of narrative fiction to cultivate empathy, it should be expected that fiction

films do indeed harbor this potential.

2.4. Entertainment-Education and the Sabido Methodology

If the clearest way for media content to have hugely significant consequences on

the world is to influence audience beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour through narrative, then

perhaps those works with the intention to persuade and educate are those most likely to

be high impact. In contrast to typical works, these programs explicitly target attitude,

belief, and behaviour change. If these programs really work, then perhaps their social

value is superior to more conventional or artistic work with motives such as self-

expression, philosophical insight, beauty, originality, or entertainment value. The success

  38  

of these programs likely depends on execution, audience, timing, context, and choice of

lessons. For example, a television show successfully convincing children to look both

ways before crossing the street may be assumed to be more valuable, at least in this one

area, than a television show successfully convincing children that chocolate is better than

vanilla. There is simply nothing at stake in the latter example, thus successful persuasion

accomplishes nothing of importance.

Entertainment-Education (E-E), as the name suggests, is media content attempting

to both entertain and educate audiences. Unlike health communication, social marketing,

and Communication for Social Change, E-E is a form of persuasive communication

centered on fictional narratives and characters. Messages are typically inserted into the

storyline, where they are overshadowed by plot events and drama. Thus while audiences

engross themselves in the story, they also take away moral lessons and useful

information. In the Western world, these programs are often targeted at children, but this

does not need to be the case. In developing nations, E-E is widely used to inspire healthy

behaviour such as contraception use.

Approaches to E-E are typically rooted in social cognitive theory (SCT). SCT

posits that individuals learn through observing the actions of similar others (Moyer-Guse

412). This influence is mediated through four variables: attention, retention, production,

and motivation (412). Of these four, motivation is the key variable that drives behaviour

change. It is in turn a product of outcome expectancy and self-efficacy (412). According

to Bandura, behaviour that is rewarded is positively reinforced while behaviour that is

punished is negatively reinforced (412). Fictional characters serve equally well as models

as do real people. Like the E-ELM, SCT predicts that media exposure can lead to

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behaviour change (412). But while the E-ELM expects in-story beliefs and attitudes to be

absorbed during processes of identification and transportation, the SCT understands this

absorption as observational learning through the actions and fates of fictional characters.

Self-efficacy refers to an observer’s confidence in his or her own ability to change

behaviours. It has been identified to be highly important in motivating behaviour change

(Noar, Benac, and Harris 674; Multon, Brown, and Lent 34; Zuffiano et al. 2; Bandura

13). When an individual lacks confidence in his or ability to accomplish some task, that

individual’s odds of succeeding are significantly reduced. Self-efficacious students work

harder and longer, participate more, and experience fewer negative emotions when facing

setbacks (Zimmerman 86; Zuffiano et al. 2; Bandura 13). They also are more likely to

take on difficult tasks (Zimmerman 86), get high marks (87), and solve conceptual

problems (87). SCT holds that media exposure is particularly likely to affect self-efficacy

when stimulating involvement with self-efficacious characters (Moyer-Guse 412). This

means engagement with a fictional story in which a protagonist is rewarded for good

behaviour or an antagonist is punished for bad behaviour is especially likely to provoke

pro-social behaviour from audiences (Moyer-Guse 412),

One place where both SCT and the E-ELM converge is on the point of

unobtrusiveness. According to the E-ELM, transportation into a narrative reduces

counterarguing, thereby facilitating persuasion. While in the context of absorbing false

beliefs this was framed as a negative, reduced counterarguing is a goal of E-E producers.

Psychological reactance theory assumes that individuals prefer to change their minds on

their own terms. Perceived pressure to change therefore produces negative reactions

(Moyer-Guse 414). The more an audience is engaged in the story and with the characters,

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the less likely are they to perceive an attempt on the part of the filmmakers to persuade.

Parasocial interaction (PSI) and “liking” characters are similarly proposed to correspond

with a reduction in reactance because peers are seen as less threatening (Moyer-Guse

416). These effects may be even more pronounced when the behaviour in question is

counter-normative due to the strong influence of perceived norms on social behaviour

(419-420). Identification with a vulnerable character can also facilitate persuasion as it

counteracts the commonplace “optimistic bias,” where individuals perceive themselves to

be invulnerable to statistically probable dangers (418).

The basic idea behind The Sabido Method is for character actions to have direct

consequences. In these stories, good characters tend to do good things and get good

results, while bad characters do mainly bad things and get bad results. Meanwhile, there

are transitional characters that gradually reform toward story-consistent values as the

show unfolds. Audience members are meant to model their own behaviour after these

transitional characters. This is based on research suggesting the consequences of in-story

outcomes affect reader attitudes toward and expectations of the real life outcomes of

comparable actions and situations (Hakemulder 121).

In the 1970s, the Mexican researcher, Miguel Sabido, developed a method of

producing entertainment-education rooted in social psychology. In particular, Sabido

utilized ideals from social cognitive theory about observational learning. A series of

highly successful television dramas were then created based on this methodology. For

instance, the first show using The Sabido Method was the Mexican telenovela

Acompaname (“Accompany Me”). The Mexican government’s national population

council (CONAPO) credited Acompaname with (1) boosting contraceptive sales by 23%

  41  

in one year, (2) convincing more women to serve as volunteer workers for the national

program of family planning, (3) getting 33% more women to enroll in family planning

clinics, and (4) increasing the number of phone calls to the CONAPO requesting family

planning information from 0 to 500 per month (Ryerson 3). From 1977-1986, when

Sabido’s soap operas aired, Mexico experienced a 34% decline in population growth.

There are several impressive success stories on the resume of entertainment-

education. Alongside the original Mexican soap operas are several international

television and radio series, many of which rank among the most popular programs in

their respective countries. The Rwandan radio soap Urunana reaches a staggering 74% of

the country’s population twice a week. Just under half of these listeners rely on Urunana

as their main source of health information. Similarly, 82% of surveyed listeners of the bi-

weekly radio soap opera Twende na Wakati claimed to have changed their sexual

behaviour as a result of the program (Ryerson 5). Regions that broadcasted the program

saw a 153% increase in condom distribution, while a control area in Tanzania receiving a

music program saw only a 16% increase during the same time period (Ryerson 5).

Additionally, in the months following the show’s start, a sample of 21 clinics suggested

that there was a 32% increase in the average number of family planning adopters (Ryeson

6). 41% of these new adopters cited the show as a reason for their coming to the clinic. In

the control region, there were lower increases to the contraception prevalence rate and to

the percentage of women using a family planning method (Ryerson 6).

Ryerson also discusses the success of a serial drama produced by Population

Media Centre for radio in Ethiopia. The program, Yeken Kignit dealt with issues of family

planning, reproductive health, and gender equality. From June 2002 to November 2004,

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45% of women and 47% of men identified as regular listeners of the show (Ryerson 7).

Over the time period during which the program aired, the local fertility rate dropped from

5.4 to 4.3, demand for contraceptives increased by 157%, listeners of Yeken Kignit were 5

times more likely than non-listeners to know at least 3 family planning methods, female

listeners were 3 times more likely than non-listeners to seek HIV testing, male listeners

were 4 times more likely to seek testing than male non-listeners, spousal communication

about family planning more than doubled, there were large increases of men and women

believing in girls’ education and that women are fit to hold office, and so on (Ryerson 7).

These are changes of the sort without precedent in Western mainstream media. Ryerson

discusses other results like these from radio and television programs in India and Kenya.

Other encouraging results have been found in countries as diverse as Brazil, Niger,

Nigeria, Rwanda, and St. Lucia, among others (Ryerson 1).

Although these examples, and many more like them, are striking, they are not

representative of the good accomplished by the average soap opera or kids show, just as

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is not a good representative of the value of the typical novel.

Although the very best works of education-entertainment are astonishingly effective and

cost-effective, one must factor in the elements of risk and uncertainty. Producing a

television show is a pricey investment without any guarantees of either financial profit or

positive social effects. These criticisms likewise apply to other forms of narrative media.

But unlike other narrative media, entertainment-education is able to evade certain

commonplace difficulties that limit attitudinal and behavioural benefits. At a meeting

hosted by the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, the

sociologist Paul DiMaggio listed three fallacies regularly made by those researching the

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effects of art on communities: (1) the fallacy that the myriad forms of artistic

participation, education, and creation have similar effects on individuals and

communities, (2) the fallacy that an art program has uniform effects across various

individuals and communities, and (3) the fallacy that effect sizes scale linearly such that

more artistic exposure equals a larger effect size (DiMaggio). In sum, because the effects

of art are so complex, it is nearly impossible to make broad statements of effectiveness

that apply in all situations. E-E has the advantage of not needing to make such broad

statements. Organizations producing E-E typically (1) do not attribute effects to any one

particular approach but instead use many mediums and approaches in tandem with one

another, (2) specifically target at-risk communities most ripe for influence, and (3) do not

depend on linear relationships between exposure and effect size (dose-response effects).

Most notably, because E-E is tailored to influence particular behaviours in order to

combat particular health and social issues in particular societies, it is significantly easier

to predict and monitor effectiveness.

This section began with the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic benefits

of art. While nothing prevents E-E from having the same instrumental and intrinsic

benefits of other art, its primary intended benefit is of an altogether different sort:

persuasion. Rather than create stories for the sake of increasing math skills (instrumental

benefit) or for audience enjoyment (intrinsic benefit), E-E is concerned with direct

behavioural changes. The benefits of fiction discussed earlier do not fall into this

category. As covered in subsection 2.1, exposure to narrative fiction is correlated with

effects such as increased capacity to empathize and improved social ability. But these

effects are unlikely to rival those of fictional narrative that explicitly endorse specific

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actions (“wear a seatbelt,” “donate more to charity,” “don’t hit your kids”) to the

audiences most in need of those messages. In this sense, E-E takes a similar mindset to

advertising, behaviour change communication, and social marketing campaigns, which

seek to trigger specific behaviours in audiences. In fact, many organizations that produce

E-E also produce non-narrative health communication.

2.5. The Effectiveness of Strategic Media Use

The success stories of entertainment-education are evidence that persuasive

narrative media can be used for social influence other than propaganda. Yet questions

remain about how even the most effective uses of media compare to the opportunity

costs. Perhaps the funds used on Sabido-like melodramas would be better spent feeding

the homeless, going toward medical research, or toward some other cause. Recently, new

information has surfaced suggesting entertainment-education may be a highly effective

cause capable of rivaling the best alternative philanthropic interventions.

The charity evaluator GiveWell examines non-profit organizations in search of

giving opportunities that are “cost-effective, scalable, underfunded, and outstanding”

(GiveWell). Their mandate is to identify the charities where a donor’s money achieves

the most good. Despite evaluating thousands of charities, GiveWell currently only

recommends three: (1) GiveDirectly – an organization that does direct cash transfers to

poor individuals in Kenya and Uganda, (2) Schistosomiasis Control Initiative – an

organization that treats people for parasitic worm infections in sub-Saharan Africa, and

(3) Deworm the World Initiative – an organization that likewise treats children for worms

in developing nations. This list is far from static. Until very recently, GiveWell’s number

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one recommended charity was the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF), a charity

distributing insecticide-treated bed nets in sub-Saharan Africa to combat malaria. AMF

was dropped as a GiveWell recommendation because the charity evaluator felt that

further donations would no longer achieve the same amount of good that they would have

in the past, when AMF was less popular.

On May 2, 2014, GiveWell co-founder Holdern Karnofsky published his updated

impression of Development Media International (DMI), an organization using radio and

television fiction and non-fiction programming to change behaviours and save lives in the

developing world. Believing in the necessity of repetition, DMI’s programming mainly

comes in two formats: short 60-second advertising spots aired multiple times a day and

longer dramas aired daily. Partnering with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical

Medicine, DMI has developed a statistical model capable of predicting cost-effectiveness

and impact by behaviour, disease, and location (DevelopmentMedia.net).

DMI believes its content can save lives at the rate of $2-10 per Disability

Adjusted Life Year (DALY), a standard measurement of effectiveness used in health

research. If true, this rate would make DMI rival the most cost-effective known health

interventions. DMI also claims to have evidence for a “dose-response” relationship where

higher exposure to their content is positively correlated with greater behaviour change.

DMI is currently in the process of further confirming the effectiveness of their

programming with a large-scale randomized controlled trial in the Burkina Faso. After

reviewing midline results from this study, Karnofsky wrote that,

“Because of the strong study design, the degree of thoughtfulness and analysis we’ve seen so far from DMI, and the strong claimed cost-effectiveness and basic plausibility of the claim, we believe there is a substantial chance that DMI will eventually become a recommended charity, and that there is also a (smaller)

  46  

chance that we will end up estimating substantially higher ‘bang for the buck’ for DMI compared to our current top charities” (GiveWell.org).

Coming from an organization known for its rigorous and quantitative evaluation

style, this is a rather resounding endorsement of the possibility of narrative fiction to

create positive social change in a reliable, quasi-scientific way. The next section will

cover some of the resulting philosophical and moral questions that arise as a result of this

surprising finding. For instance, if entertainment-education can reliably lead to positive

social change that regular narrative content cannot, then what is our responsibility toward

the former?

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Section 3 – A Morally Grounded View of Narrative Media

Section 2 made the case that it is possible to use narrative media strategically for

positive social influence and that in fact, this already takes place with impressive results.

The present section is more philosophical in nature, advancing arguments that there is a

weak moral obligation for content creators to place very high value on the social effects

of their work. But first, it is essential to ground human moral machinery in evolutionary

biology. This description will illuminate why and how moral intuitions are good at

solving certain issues but inadequate at solving other, more contemporary dilemmas that

evolution could have not “predicted.” The use of narrative media will then be placed into

this category of issues that moral intuitions are not well suited for. Finally, this section

will offer a more reliable approach to reasoning about these issues.

The descriptive parts of this section draw very heavily from Joshua Greene’s

Moral Tribes. The more philosophical parts will largely draw from the work of the moral

philosopher, Peter Singer and the arguments outlined in his books, The Life You Can Save

and The Expanding Circle, and in selected essays such as Famine, Affluence and

Morality. Toward the end of the section, much of the content is original, as ideas from

moral philosophy have rarely been applied to the production or value of narrative media.

3.1. The History, Function, and Limits of Moral Intuitions

The thesis of consequentialism is that the moral rightness or wrongness of an

action is dependent on the goodness or badness of the consequences it leads to. This

differs from, for example, deontological theories of ethics that posit rules individuals

ought not violate unless they come into conflict with other rules. Philosophers have long

attempted to formulate such theories in ways that could satisfactorily resolve moral

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disagreements, with some progress. Yet the academic consensus remains split and the

public is generally unaware of these academic disputes (Chalmers 7). Most people

instead rely on common sense amalgamations of these and other theories that reliably

lead to inconsistencies. In the famous trolley problem, study subjects display willingness

to flip a switch that would let a trolley run over a single person instead of five people, but

the same participants express an unwillingness to push a fat man onto the track in order to

block the trolley from reaching the five endangered people. In a third scenario, most

respondents expressed a willingness to hit a switch that drops the fat man on the track,

sacrificing him for the five. The many different formulations of the trolley problem

elegantly demonstrate the inconsistency of common sense moral intuitions.

When people make moral judgments they are likely blending reasoned arguments,

culturally learned values, and innate human intuitions. This subsection focuses on the

latter: why individuals have the moral intuitions that they do. It is first essential to

understand the evolved nature of the moral sense. From an evolutionary perspective,

preprogrammed emotional responses toward harmful and helpful individuals are useful

survival tactics by enticing individuals to cooperate with others within their tribe (Greene

62). For example, without innate urges toward kin and reciprocal altruism, our ancestors

would have been unlikely to stave off extinction (Greene 65). As a result, humans

experience social emotions such as guilt and shame that nudge them toward prosocial

behaviour (Greene 60-61). The evolutionary process has therefore equipped humanity to

forsake some individual interests for those of the collective, to everyone’s benefit. These

trade-offs are what Greene labels “Me versus Us” problems (Greene 14). These are the

problems that our moral intuitions are generally well suited for.

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But there is more than one kind of moral dilemma. In the modern world, there is

increased interaction among individuals from various moral tribes or cultural

backgrounds via the Internet, high-speed transportation, the mass media, intercontinental

ballistic missiles, large-scale global economies, and other technologies that life on the

Savannah has not equipped humanity for. As a result, there are current issues that require

more than intuitions (Greene 66). Our moral intuitions are useful for maneuvering in our

respective environments, but other groups of people have their own moral intuitions that

are good for their environments (Greene 81). When moral tribes clash, there often is no

obvious way to resolve their differences because the two groups lack common values.

Greene terms these clashes “Us versus Them” problems (Greene 14).

This is a dual-process theory of moral psychology because it suggests that the

brain contains two competing subsystems: one fast and impulsive, the other slow and

thoughtful. (Notice the parallel with Kahneman and Tversky’s dual-process

understanding of human judgment discussed in subsection 1.4.) Greene compares these

two systems to the automatic and manual modes on a digital camera. In everyday life,

individuals can get by with simple “point-and-shoot morality,” but certain tricky

situations require the individual to enter manual mode. These two types of moral thinking

utilize different regions of the brain. Greene and colleagues found that consequentialist

decisions were associated with brain activity in areas associated with cognitive

processing and control (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), whereas deontological

decision-making is associated with more emotional processing (the ventromedial

prefrontal cortex) (Greene 20-21). Because consequentialist thinking often requires the

brain to override a competing impulse, it uses a region of the brain better suited to

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effortful reasoning (Greene 20). When the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is damaged,

individuals provide more consequentialist answers to trolley dilemmas (Greene 124).

3.2. An Empirical Argument For the Practical Superiority of Consequentialism

There are two types of moral problems: Me versus Us problems and Us versus

Them problems. There are also two types of moral thinking: the automatic mode and the

manual mode. For best results, the automatic mode should be matched up with Me versus

Us problems, while the manual mode should deal with Us versus Them and other

contemporary problems. Oversimplifying quite a bit, there are two main moral theories:

deontological, rules- and rights-based morality and consequentialist, consequences- or

outcome-based morality.

There is one piece missing to this puzzle: how people actually make moral

judgments. According to recent research in cognitive science, most moral judgments

from most people are automatic, emotional reactions followed by post-hoc

rationalizations (Greene and Haidt 517). First, individuals have intuitions, and afterward

they come up with justifications for those intuitions. In effect, most of the moral

arguments individuals make are mere rationalizations of previous emotional reactions.

Here is the argument: because deontological ethics are biologically rooted in the

automatic, emotional regions of the brain, they play perfectly into our biases and make us

slaves to our moral intuitions. If one feels an intuition that something must be done, then

she could proclaim that there is a “duty” to act. If one feels an intuition that something

must not be done, then she could proclaim that the action violates somebody’s “rights.”

But there is no impartial way to resolve disagreements about which rights and duties exist

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or which rights and duties override others. Each individual believes in the existence of

those rights and duties that align with his or her moral intuitions. There is nothing

empirical evidence could do to resolve these disagreements. If one believes capital

punishment violates a right to life, then she will continue to oppose capital punishment

regardless of the evidence on, for example, its effectiveness to reduce crime. If one

believes capital punishment is the state’s duty in order to uphold justice, then she will

similarly continue to support capital punishment regardless of the evidence of its

effectiveness.

In contrast, consequentialism asks us to value wellbeing. Although the concept of

“wellbeing” requires some clarification, it is a physical concept that can be empirically

verified and that is common to all cultures. Consequentialist disagreements can be

resolved by appealing to evidence: does capital punishment reduce crime? Does it save

money? What else could that money be used for? What are the costs and benefits? While

deontological ethics play into innate human biases, granting our somewhat automatic

moral intuitions veto power, consequentialist ethics provide an opportunity to surpass the

limitations of our automatic settings by engaging the manual mode.

One need only point to the founders of these two theories for evidence of their

effectiveness. The earliest utilitarians were centuries ahead of their time. In the 18th and

19th centuries, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill were among the earliest opponents

of slavery and racism, and the earliest advocates of worker’s rights, women’s rights, gay

rights, animal rights, free speech, free markets, etc. In 1785, when sodomy was

punishable by hanging, Bentham wrote a controversial essay claiming that, despite his

strong intuition that homosexuality was wrong he could not justify it being banned.

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Bentham writes, “I have been tormenting myself for years to find if possible a sufficient

ground for treating them with the severity with which they are treated at this time of day

by all European nations: but upon the principle of utility I can find none” (Bentham 1).

This is Bentham’s manual mode talking. In that passage, he recognizes that his intuitions

do not deserve veto power, and that his reasoning can override them.

In contrast, deontological ethics are most commonly associated with the 18th

century philosopher, Immanuel Kant. While Bentham’s views would be seen as

progressive even today, Kant’s ethics were subservient to ancient human prejudices. In

effect, Kant derived elaborate and esoteric arguments in order to justify the automatic,

emotional reactions of himself and his peers. In many of his early works, he argued that

blacks were stupid, vain, untalented at art and science, incapable of learning anything

other than how to be slave, and he supported thrashing and whipping blacks (Greene

301). He presented many explicitly sexist views in Observations on the Feeling of the

Beautiful and Sublime and other works. In Lectures on Anthropology, he argued that

animals do not have interests worth valuing (Kant 127). It is not a coincidence that the

rejection of these prejudices (racism, sexism, and speciesism) is culturally learned, with

no basis in evolutionary biology. Kant is an illustration of how rooting ethics in our

automatic mode, rather than in our manual mode, may lead to the rationalization of innate

prejudices, a common enemy of moral progress.

The above says nothing about the absolute ethical truth of the matter. It more

closely resembles arguments about which political or economic system works best. It

makes no appeal to fundamental values, but instead looks for what works. Until there is a

reasonable argument that rights and duties can be determined in a non-arbitrary way that

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does not grant our intuitions veto power and that allows for groups with different

intuitions to resolve their disagreements, then deontology seems, empirically, to be

unlikely to generate cooperation among clashing moral tribes. Consequentialism, on the

other hand, is better positioned to do so because it makes falsifiable arguments that can

be proven or disproven with evidence, it deals in a currency common to all cultures, and

it utilizes a region of the brain less prone to rationalization.

3.3. Moral Responsibility and Distant Suffering

The clearest example of a modern world issue that cannot be resolved with

intuitions is global poverty. Singer’s argument from The Life You Can Save takes the

following form:

(1) “Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. (2) If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without

sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so. (3) By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of

food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important. (4) Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing something wrong.”

(Singer 15-16)

According to this argument, if one can spare a small amount of money that would

make a large difference in a poor individual’s life at little cost to oneself, then one is

morally obligated to donate the money. Singer’s argument is deductively valid: if all

three premises are true, then the conclusion must be as well. All three premises are also

quite plausible. In order to reject the first premise, one would almost have to reject the

very notions of “good” and “bad,” even in the cases of extreme suffering and death. The

third premise is uncontroversial, assuming the donor knows where to donate (see:

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GiveWell.org). The second premise, while somewhat intuitive, is the only premise in the

argument that makes a bold claim by implying the notion of moral obligation.

With its use of the words “should” and “wrong,” the argument seems to imply the

existence of morally obligated behaviour. But if there are no ethical truths, then there is

nowhere for ethical obligations to come from. One can only say that, given a particular

set of values, X is better than Y. Additionally, from the viewpoint of consequentialism, it

is difficult to justify the existence of a hard line between “obligatory” and “non-

obligatory” actions. There is only a continuum of actions, some better than others,

according to a given set of values. For example, according to classical utilitarianism,

individuals “should” act in such a way that maximizes happiness but, if they do not, all

that will happen is that there will be less happiness in the world. That outcome bothers

some people more than others. Donating $1000 is better than donating $100, which is

better than donating nothing – but there is no hard line dividing the immoral from the

righteous. Given the above, if actions can be referred to as “morally obligated,” it is only

in a weak sense: that some actions have better consequences than others and that it is

better to choose the actions with better consequences. But despite the non-existence of

absolute moral truths and despite the non-existence of moral obligation, some sets of

values still make more sense than others. A moral theory prescribing torture, starvation,

and death would simply fail to be useful at resolving disagreements. Everyone would

ignore it unless it somehow helped people get more of what they want.

Singer’s argument can be reformulated without the notion of moral obligation:

(1) Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad. (2) Preventing something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything

nearly as important, would result in a better outcome than not preventing that bad thing from happening.

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(3) By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly as important.

(4) Therefore, donating to aid agencies results in a better outcome than not donating.

Whether or not one accepts that there is a moral obligation to donate to aid

agencies, it is difficult to deny the fact that most people can, at very little cost to

themselves, make somebody else’s life much better. Given Greene’s research on moral

intuitions outlined in subsections 3.1 and 3.2, it also easy to understand why common

sense morality does not suggest that donating is, in this scenario, morally obligated.

Singer uses the analogy of walking by a shallow pond to find a child drowning in it. Most

would agree that there is some kind of imperative to save the child’s life, even if doing so

requires jumping into the pond and ruining your expensive outfit. Our intuitions evolved

with just this sort of scenario in mind: direct, immediate suffering within plain view. But

consider that over a billion people currently live on $1.25 per day or less

(WorldBank.org). These people live in abject poverty, often dying from preventable

causes. If one could save one of their lives at any moment by donating to an overseas

charity, then why is one not faced with the same moral imperative as the individual

walking by the pond that has to pay for a new outfit?

Consider also this experiment conducted by Greene and Musen. Respondents

were asked to imagine themselves on holiday in a third world country where suddenly, a

natural disaster occurs. In their sample, 68% of respondents believed they would have a

moral obligation to help the villagers in this situation. In a second scenario, participants

were asked to imagine that they were at home watching the disaster via cell phone

footage taken by a friend on holiday in that country. In this scenario, only 34% of

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respondents felt a moral obligation to help, despite all variables being held constant aside

from geographical proximity. By this point, the root of the inconsistency is obvious: the

human moral sense evolved to deal with immediate disruptions, not to help those

suffering on the other end of the world (Trout 53). In the modern age of the Internet and

online transactions, there are methods of helping the world without basis in evolutionary

history and thus without the gut feeling that these actions are necessary. Because our

manual modes know that geographic distance is not a morally relevant consideration, our

gut feelings should not be granted veto power in this instance. This act is representative

of a category of moral actions displayed in the figure below.

Figure 1 Reasonable Unreasonable

Intuitive

Counter-intuitive

3.4. Narrative Media and Distant Suffering

The previous subsection discussed global poverty as an ethical issue whose

solution clashes with intuition but aligns with consequentialist thinking. This subsection

returns to the topic of narrative media as a tool for social change, arguing that it falls into

that same category of acts displayed in the bottom left corner of the figure above. In fact,

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the two situations are quite analogous to another. Below is Singer’s argument adapted to

compare two types of narrative media use:

(1) Suffering and death are bad. (2) Preventing something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as

important, would result in a better outcome than not preventing that bad thing from happening.

(3) All things being equal, by funding entertainment-education in developing nations instead of funding narrative media targeting first world audiences, you can prevent more suffering and death, without sacrificing anything nearly as important.

(4) Therefore, all things being equal, funding entertainment-education for developing nations would result in a better outcome than would funding narrative media for first world audiences. This is not a very exciting argument. It can basically be reduced to the form of

“charity X > charity Y.” The first two premises are almost consequentialist tautologies,

while the third premise makes an empirical claim that can be researched and found either

to be true, false, or unclear. Section 2 made a case for the effectiveness of entertainment-

education in developing nations, citing the documented success of The Sabido Method,

GiveWell’s endorsement of Development Media International, and other research on

narrative fiction and behaviour change. Given this evidence and the lack of similar

evidence supporting narrative media for first world audiences, there is currently no

comparable case for thinking more good could be accomplished by targeting the first

world, or by prioritizing “more artistic” and less educational narrative media. To be fair,

much of the evidence brought up in Section 2, such as the research conducted by Oatley

and The Mar Lab, applies to all narrative fiction, with a sample biased toward Western

literature, cinema, and television. But the discussed benefits, although noteworthy, are

trivial when compared to reducing death, disease, and suffering. Even in Western

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societies, the largest discussed benefits of classic literature resulted from bibliotherapy –

another form of narrative media specifically targeting the underprivileged.

An observation: entertainment-education does not make it onto Western lists of

all-time great films and television shows. It is generally not taught in film studies or film

production courses. It is not widely discussed on film and television websites. And

entertainment-education funding comes almost entirely from those wishing to support

global health, rather than those looking to support the arts. Apparently, there is some

aspect of E-E that places it in an entirely different category of narrative media, distinct

from art. A Sabido-like soap opera that saves lives is an achievement, but it seems that

most do not consider this to be an artistic achievement. Someone that values the intrinsic

and instrumental benefits of art may have little interest in E-E despite it sharing many of

the same benefits.

A hypothesis: E-E is deprioritized because it is judged to be of relatively low

artistic value. Because E-E’s primary benefits are orthogonal to the primary benefits of

great art, the juxtaposition is perceived as comparing apples and oranges. This is only

true if artistic value is irreducible to other properties, however. From the perspective of

consequentialism, with its lack of a hard line dividing the obligatory from the

supererogatory, there is no reason for art to be exempt from ethical considerations.

Indeed, for a consequentialist, it is almost impossible to justify the existence of artistic

value beyond art’s ability to, in the broadest possible sense, make the world better. This

demystified concept of artistic value places art on equal footing with the rest of human

behaviour. If art is evaluated with the same criteria with which a consequentialist

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evaluates everything else, which is to say, in terms of how significantly it improves the

world, then organizations such as DMI produce some of the greatest art of all time.

To review, the early consequentialist philosophers identified that human values

share the common currency of wellbeing. This allows for the impartial consideration of

each group’s interests by transcending the limitations of moral intuitions. But

consequentialism also suggests that there is nothing intrinsically valuable outside of this

common currency. Thus everything from entertainment to honesty to taxes to religion is

valuable only insofar as it, in the broadest possible sense, makes the world better. All of

these values can be reduced to how they contribute to the wellbeing of interested parties.

There is no reason to exclude art from this line of thinking. Art is likewise valuable

insofar as it entertains, inspires, educates, and generally improves society. The art that

best accomplishes this goal may clash with common sense intuitions of artistic quality

because those intuitions did not evolve for a world where art’s persuasiveness could

accomplish more than its other characteristics. This overdependence on moral and artistic

intuitions impedes the resolution of large-scale global issues that could be combatted with

narrative media.

3.5. New Priorities

Research on media effects has primarily examined possibilities for narrative

media to increase or reduce in-group cooperation. But there have been tendencies to

sensationalize both the positive and negative effects of narrative media on mass Western

audiences. Further, even where moderate to strong evidence exists of local media impact,

there is no cheap, effective, scalable, and underfunded action that could be taken in

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response to this evidence. For instance, the fact that media violence contributes to

aggression does not clearly imply strengthening censorship laws or anything else. There

is simply not much that the average person could do with this information that would

have a large-scale impact. More effective, cost-effective, scalable, and underfunded

media uses exist but they are ignored for only imperfectly aligning with common sense

paradigms of moral and artistic value. While the value of narrative media is usually

discussed in terms of artistic virtues, intrinsic benefits, and instrumental benefits, a much

greater and more concrete source of value is its persuasive power to save lives, reduce

suffering, and improve social conditions among the populations it reaches.

Ironically, due to overconfidence in the reliability of intuition and in reasoning

processes that lead to the rationalization of intuitive judgments, our attitudes toward

entertainment-education show a distinct neglect of the very skills that narrative media

helps to cultivate. As discussed in Section 2, more art for one’s personal enjoyment could

result in him or her increasing his or her ability to empathize, to take the perspective of

others, to tolerate other cultures and lifestyles, and to become more open to change. What

exactly are those capacities worth unless one ever actually uses them? In glorifying our

evolved intuitions instead of utilizing a common currency for moral trade-offs with other

cultural groups, we misuse our moral progress on moderately improving first world

countries rather than on significantly improving those nations that are most in need.

3.6. Future Research

Due to the popularity of common sense paradigms of artistic value, there has been

no investigation into how successful the traditional criteria of artistic greatness (things

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like originality, emotional impact, profundity of ideas, etc.) are as predictors of a work’s

positive social effects. This is a glaring oversight in a tradition of thinking about art that

spans millennia. It may be possible to empirically investigate this relationship using a

collection of fictional narratives. Participants could be both tested for media effects and

asked to rank the stories according to their level of appreciation. Because the

persuasiveness of a narrative is so heavily mediated by audience absorption, there is

likely to be at least a moderate degree of overlap. This sort of study could determine the

usefulness of artistic and aesthetic intuitions in creating narratives that are socially

valuable. Testing audience attitudes toward the artistic quality of entertainment-education

may also clarify the degree of overlap between social appeal and social impact.

Social impact can be roughly assessed using a qualitative method that substitutes

the large, difficult question of “How does X impact the world?” with smaller, more

answerable questions. The proposed method consists of 8 basic questions that measure

two characteristics: Strength of Impact (SoI) and Quality of Impact (QoI). Firstly, the

most important projects are those with the greatest, broadest, and most lasting impacts.

Secondly, these impacts can be either positive or negative. If the effects of an

intervention are largely negative, then we should hope for the SoI to be as small as

possible. The greatest media interventions will have a large positive impact, scoring

highly on both SoI and QoI.

How might one evaluate the strength of a media project’s impact? This can be

broken down into five questions:

1. How many people does the project reach? 2. How significantly does it impact the people it reaches? 3. How likely are the people it impacts to spread this impact? 4. How long lasting is its impact?

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5. How grave is the issue prior to impact? The first four questions refer quite clearly to the effect an event has on society. The fifth

question is more controversial, implying that reducing suffering should take priority over

the maximization of wellbeing. Although a maximin principle such as this may not be a

moral Truth, it is likely to be a useful rule-of-thumb for identifying high impact media

projects. Answering each of these questions with a 3, 2, 1, or 0 provides a rough method

of quantifying SoI.

How might one evaluate the goodness or badness of a media project’s impact?

This can be broken down into three questions:

1. How much does the project increase the accuracy of people’s models of reality? 2. How much does improve people’s quality of life? 3. How much more likely does it make people to act altruistically toward others?

In short, media projects can have positive value by spreading true information, by

causing increases in audience wellbeing, and by provoking pro-social habits in audiences.

In answer to each question, one can choose from a 7-point scale: -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3. This

is because the goal is not just to distinguish between very good and slightly good

projects. It is also important to distinguish between good and bad projects. The major

weakness of this approach is that it weights the answer to each question equally. In

practice, some of these answers may be far more important than others.

Additionally, research into the history and nature of social movements could

allow media producers to approach socially conscious work with more control over their

impact on culture. Which factors determine whether a social movement succeeds or fails?

What kinds of social movements have the best historical track records? These answers

would prevent activists and media producers from trying to push public opinion in

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directions where it is unlikely to go. It could easily be the case that some social

movements are doomed from the start because of psychological, cultural, and political

shortcomings that they do not understand. Further research on social movements would

reveal to media producers where and how to wield their influence.

Despite being relatively obvious to the consequentialist, the many-thousand-year history

of thinking about art has excluded the notion that artistic value reduces to morally

relevant consequences. Dual-process theories of higher cognition have likewise not been

applied to artistic tastes and judgments. These ideas have powerful ramifications on how

art should be understood and how it should be investigated. By appealing to the

philosophy and cognitive science of subjective and objective judgment, the study of art

may follow in the impressive footsteps of the study of morality, as well as the study of

linguistics before it. More than likely, there are many analogies that can be made between

the psychology of artistic judgment and recent findings in the cognitive science of moral

judgment.

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