Usually we regard entertainment such as TV, movies, and novels as leisure time activities, enjoyable but not terribly important. I think this is incorrect; my view is that entertainment experiences are both powerful and consequential. In part, this is because entertainment engages the strong tendency for members of our species to imitate what we see and imagine.
When we use the word "imitation" in everyday speech we are referring to one person doing the same thing as someone else. I'm speaking about humans here, but in fact many animals imitate one another in this sense. For example, a whole flock of birds may take to the skies when one does so.
Recently scientists from a number of different disciplines have made great strides in understanding imitation. There is now general agreement that there is a level of imitation that goes beyond "doing what someone else is doing." In full imitation, A understands that B is a being like A who is pursuing a goal, and since A has a similar goal, A does what B is doing.
It may be that only humans are capable of imitation in this sense, although some would assert that there are some other mammals that can do this. That's not the point here, however. The point is rather that many cognitive scientists argue that this sort of imitation is the foundation of human cooperation in social groups. Humans can understand what other humans are up to and can thus join in with them on a wide range of complex projects. Perhaps the single most important of these projects is language, but there are a lot of others-hunting and warfare, roads and pottery, economic and legal systems, you get the picture.
This perspective on imitation can help us to understand how entertainment works on us. We are wired to imitate what we see, even what we imagine, and to easily adopt the perspective of others; in fact, we will do so automatically before we learn the skills of inhibiting such responses. Thus, to take a single example, when you watch a romantic movie, you will automatically tend to imitate the facial expressions of the actors on the screen, and as a result you may begin to feel-really feel-the emotions of tenderness or passion or frustration that are being skillfully portrayed. The goal of the actors becomes your goal-you are desperate for the couple to get together (or in an action movie, you really want the bad guy to get what's coming to him).
The result? Well, the obvious one is that this is an enjoyable experience, because even though we never lose track of the fact that it's a story, it feels real. In fact, it's so enjoyable that we will shell out good money to climb on this ride. But there is also another, less obvious, result. The experience we construct as we join into the film through our imitative capacities leaves us with a memory of some very powerful and pleasant feelings. These feelings can become an emotional standard for us, against which we judge our experiences in the real world. We know that romantic movies aren't real, but we may still bring emotional expectations from these movies into our real relationships. And this is one reason that many can't shake the feeling that their real-world relationships are flawed, that there is something better out there somewhere...
Learn more at Peter G. Stromberg's website. Photo by Patrick Byrne.
