Univerzitetska Misao (Jan 2022)
Developing empathy in adolescents with the aid of film art
Abstract
Empathy is a very important prosocial behavior, a part of emotional intelligence and it is necessary for the formation of well-functioning relationships, so that we can work together with others. Empathetic children are more successful in their own social environment and make friends more easily. Empathy is not a fixed personality trait, although there are innate differences in people's social sensitivity. Empathy can also be developed, which requires the right environment and siblings and adults and time to develop. The atmosphere of the family and the wider environment, the behavior of the adults, their relationship with each other and with children is the key, which children also see and learn from it (Borba, 2018). In order to develop empathy in adolescents, we went towards the psychology of art, to see the impact, the relationship of film for developing empathy. Therefore, in the first, theoretical chapter of the work, the taxonomy of film reception by viewers is presented from the perspective of psychology of art, film and theoretical works, empirical results of literary aesthetics, psychological interpretation of empathy and mentalization. The goal of our research is to support the theory that empathy and affective influence are greater in viewers who can more intensely identify with the film's protagonists. We had other goals: to analyze the effects of character identification and to study the relationship between identification and empathy. The results of Vische and Tan (2009), support that the emotional experience is significantly determined by the genre of the film. Examining the collected data, we can conclude that there are statistically significant differences between genres in terms of identification with the male protagonist, and the identification with the hero of the film is stronger in individuals who watched the thriller.
