ronburgundy
Contributor
It is common to hear people (including on this board) defend morally or factually questionable films, music, video games, and other art forms by saying something like "Its only fiction, and people know that." While I don't support censorship of such fiction, I have often argued against this defense because I am aware that the brain does not have a "fiction" lock-box in which it confines all fiction-based stimuli, and am aware of the mountain of psychological experiments that show that people's exposure to stimuli within fictional film are artistic painting alter how they feel and react to real world events.
A recent experiment takes the evidence a step further and shows that fiction can often impact what people believe about the real world, even moreso than non-fiction, factual information.
This experiment had people read a 20 page fictional story about a Professor getting kidnapped and several of his students set out to find him. During the story, the students casually discuss numerous topics, making objectively false claims without bothering to argue in support of them. The comments are not about things central to the plot, just topics that happen to arise in the details of the story. The claims contradicted beliefs that most people hold strongly and are objectively true / highly supported by current science. The false claims made in the story included things like:
Tooth brushing is bad for your teeth and gums.
Yearly health check-ups do not help to diagnose diseases early.
Unprotected sunbathing is good for your skin.
Exercising is bad for your heart and lungs.
Psychological disorders are are contagious.
Control group read a different 20 page fictional story that did not address any of these topics. After reading, all people reported their personal beliefs on each of these claims. The average beliefs of the people who read the control story served as the baseline measure, indicating what people believe who aren't exposed to false ideas about those topics in a work of fiction.
They found that people had about 5% weaker agreement with the objectively true statements after reading the fictional story that contradicted those claims than if they had read a story that had nothing to do with those topics.
What is even more interesting is that this weakening/change in their beliefs doubled in magnitude to about 10% after two weeks had passed and they were asked again without mentioning the context of the story. This makes psychological sense, because other evidence shows that people will remember info and ideas later on but forget the context and source from where they encountered it. The ideas as just activated in their brain and people cannot tell the difference between an idea they heard from fiction or real life. So, the impact gets stronger as people forget the connection to the fictional story.
In addition, they had a third group read the fiction story but they told them it was a real non-fiction account of events. When people read the story as though it was claiming something true, they did not change their beliefs, arguably because they read it with a more critical mindset and consciously evaluated and rejected the false claims. IOW, fiction can have more influence on beliefs than non-fiction because when people read fiction, they suspend disbelief and do not try to evaluate information that their real world knowledge says is wrong. As a consequence, their brain processes the ideas uncritically and they get stored and later activated in a manner that winds up subtly changing people's beliefs about the real world without them being aware of it.
The effect in this study was small and people did not switch to the opposite position on the issues, just weakened their prior belief. But this is just after reading one short story. Tons of fiction over many years could plausibly amount to a greater influence than the real life relevant experiences people have on some topics. Thus, it is plausible they could take a position promoted by fiction even though their limited real life experiences should tell them the opposite is true.
BTW, this is just one experiment. It references several other similar experiments that support the conclusion that fiction impacts people's beliefs about the real world.
A recent experiment takes the evidence a step further and shows that fiction can often impact what people believe about the real world, even moreso than non-fiction, factual information.
This experiment had people read a 20 page fictional story about a Professor getting kidnapped and several of his students set out to find him. During the story, the students casually discuss numerous topics, making objectively false claims without bothering to argue in support of them. The comments are not about things central to the plot, just topics that happen to arise in the details of the story. The claims contradicted beliefs that most people hold strongly and are objectively true / highly supported by current science. The false claims made in the story included things like:
Tooth brushing is bad for your teeth and gums.
Yearly health check-ups do not help to diagnose diseases early.
Unprotected sunbathing is good for your skin.
Exercising is bad for your heart and lungs.
Psychological disorders are are contagious.
Control group read a different 20 page fictional story that did not address any of these topics. After reading, all people reported their personal beliefs on each of these claims. The average beliefs of the people who read the control story served as the baseline measure, indicating what people believe who aren't exposed to false ideas about those topics in a work of fiction.
They found that people had about 5% weaker agreement with the objectively true statements after reading the fictional story that contradicted those claims than if they had read a story that had nothing to do with those topics.
What is even more interesting is that this weakening/change in their beliefs doubled in magnitude to about 10% after two weeks had passed and they were asked again without mentioning the context of the story. This makes psychological sense, because other evidence shows that people will remember info and ideas later on but forget the context and source from where they encountered it. The ideas as just activated in their brain and people cannot tell the difference between an idea they heard from fiction or real life. So, the impact gets stronger as people forget the connection to the fictional story.
In addition, they had a third group read the fiction story but they told them it was a real non-fiction account of events. When people read the story as though it was claiming something true, they did not change their beliefs, arguably because they read it with a more critical mindset and consciously evaluated and rejected the false claims. IOW, fiction can have more influence on beliefs than non-fiction because when people read fiction, they suspend disbelief and do not try to evaluate information that their real world knowledge says is wrong. As a consequence, their brain processes the ideas uncritically and they get stored and later activated in a manner that winds up subtly changing people's beliefs about the real world without them being aware of it.
The effect in this study was small and people did not switch to the opposite position on the issues, just weakened their prior belief. But this is just after reading one short story. Tons of fiction over many years could plausibly amount to a greater influence than the real life relevant experiences people have on some topics. Thus, it is plausible they could take a position promoted by fiction even though their limited real life experiences should tell them the opposite is true.
BTW, this is just one experiment. It references several other similar experiments that support the conclusion that fiction impacts people's beliefs about the real world.
