Movies have a way of really sucking us in to the experience, whether it’s by superb visual effects, an intriguing story, or some actor’s performance that you just can’t take your eyes off of. However, some moves pull off an even bigger trick – they somehow get you to empathize with certain characters, depending on what’s happening.

Talma Hendler, a neuroscientist with the Tel Aviv University in Israel, spoke about such an occurrence during a recent event hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. One example Hendler used was with Darren Aronofsky’s drama Black Swan, explaining how Natalie Portman’s ballerina character is stressed beyond belief while competing against another dancer for a starring role in a play.

In that time frame, she hallucinates, thinking feathers are poking through her skin, meaning that she actually believes she’s becoming part of the play. “My suggestion to you is that as Nina is getting crazier and crazier, the audience experiences something like schizophrenia,” said Hendler.

Aronofsky was actually on stage with Hendler when she said this, but took it as a compliment. His films have always had some sort of emotional factor about them anyway, whether it was with a mathematician going crazy in Pi or Mickey Rourke’s character pushing himself to the breaking point in The Wrestler.

“We’re always thinking about how to get into an emotional state, moment by moment, and how to bring as much of the audience along with us,” Aronofsky said.

With the study, movies can actually be helpful when it comes to studying the fluctuating emotions in real time, and what’s happening with brain activity as a result. Empathy plays a big part in this, broken into two different halves.

The first is mental empathy, in which audience members step outside of themselves and think about what another person may be going through. The other kind is embodied empathy, in which someone feels a more sudden emotional punch if something is happening to a character on-screen.

Another clip from Chris Columbus’ Stepmom was also used, demonstrating the sadness felt for Susan Sarandon’s character at one point in the movie, with a lot of emotional activity running high.

With actual brain studies as being part of the report, audience members were able to see just what kind of impact was being made with these films, through both types of empathy. However, Aronofsky felt that there’s an alternative interpretation at hand, believing that audience members use mental empathy in terms of trying to contemplate what’s happening. “The audience is going, “What’s happening Is she really transforming into a swan ‘ and they’re slowly discovering that we’re really going to go for it,” he said.

Marketers should be able to see the implications here for creating marketing campaigns that create a greater impact and better engagement.

More details on the report can be found here.

Source: Wired