Could Acting Training Improve Social Cognition and Emotional Control?

McDonald, Brennan; Goldstein, Thalia R.; Kanske, Philipp

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2020.00348

Cited by 14 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…The more common performance arts that have been researched include music, dance, film, singing, and theatre, which have all been used successfully in wellbeing interventions (Fancourt & Finn, 2019). Theatrical arts interventions, for instance, have been used to foster better emotional control (McDonald et al, 2020), empathy and prosocial behavior (Kou et al, 2020), and a positive self-concept in children (DeBettignies & Goldstein, 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Supporting the psychological health of our students: An arts-based community magic workshop for adapting to university life.

Bagienski¹,

Kuhn²

2022

Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice

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The arts have long been intertwined with wellbeing and empirical attention is shifting back toward the wellbeing value of the arts. One art that has been applied in educational contexts but received limited empirical attention is that of achieving the impossible, namely, the art of performing magic. While research is young, reviews on the wellbeing-value of magic have revealed theoretical frameworks suggesting its potential to enhance self-processes and social aspects. These aspects are especially important for university students to have a psychologically healthy transition to university life as it involves integrating one’s adult identity with the self, which can challenge one’s self-esteem. Thus, the present study investigated how community magic workshops affect self-esteem, wellbeing, closeness, and sense of belonging for first-year university students in London. Students were allocated to either magic workshops where they learned magic tricks or mindfulness workshops during their first university term. Measures were taken at baseline, postintervention, and a 1-month follow-up. Both groups improved on all measures but students in magic workshops perceived greater benefits than the mindfulness group. Results provide preliminary evidence for using magic-based workshops as an appealing, preventative intervention that enhances the college experience for first-year students.

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confidence: 99%

Supporting the psychological health of our students: An arts-based community magic workshop for adapting to university life.

Bagienski¹,

Kuhn²

2022

Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice

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“…Using validated psychological scales and measures, scientists and scholars have demonstrated that theater-based interventions improve social cognition and engagement in participants with autism spectrum disorder through interactive performance ( Corbett et al, 2016 , 2017 ; Ward et al, 2018 ) and facilitate the understanding of social issues in general education ( Manzi et al, 2020 ; Massa et al, 2020 ). Indeed, a burgeoning number of scholars have been providing insights into the mechanisms underlying the simulation or experience of a character and its impact on social performance ( McDonald et al, 2020 ). Two studies reviewing theories from both practitioners and psychologists suggest that acting methods designed to instruct actors on how to understand and play a role are parallel to theories on the role of empathy in social relationships ( Verducci, 2000 ; Gallagher and Gallagher, 2019 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Interaction in acting training and its different manifestations in novice and professional actors

Jing-yan

Okada²

2023

Front. Psychol.

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This study aimed to identify the characteristics of interactions during acting training and the underlying intrapersonal changes evoked by a training process that emphasizes paying attention to a partner (the Meisner technique). This was operationalized by conducting a post-hoc analysis and categorizing the utterances made by novice and professional actors during acting training based on video and audio recordings. In Study 1, novice participants tended to change their way of communication as the course progressed, decreasing the number of utterances that simply described the partner’s behavior and increasing those that speculated about the partner’s inner state. We then used a different focus placed on the interaction, as implied by the different kinds of utterances used, to describe the divergences between novice and professional actors regarding their interaction characteristics. In Study 2, results showed that while professional actors devoted themselves more to the connection with their partner and demonstrated more balanced communication, novice actors relied on general inference to speculate about others’ affective states. By comparing the characteristics of the utterances between novice and professional actors as they played different roles or made switches (i.e., changing from passive to active utterance in communication), this study suggests that an important impact of acting training on social abilities relates to its potential to increase the levels of involvement in on-going interactions.

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“…There is, in addition, a growing interest in the potential for various art forms to improve social capacities, including literature (Dodell-Feder & Tamir, 2018), film (Castano, 2021), acting (McDonald et al, 2020), and music (Greenberg et al, 2015). For example, numerous studies have compared reading a passage of fiction (e.g., short stories/novel extracts) with either a nonfiction (e.g., newspaper articles) or no reading control group and have demonstrated both improvement’s in social measures (Black & Barnes, 2015; Djikic et al, 2013; Dodell-Feder & Tamir, 2018; Koopman, 2015) and short-term alterations to personality (Djikic et al, 2009) in the fiction condition.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…A recurring argument as to how these art forms evoke and potentially improve social capacities lies in their ability to produce powerful emotional and sociocognitive responses from the engaged individual, often involving relating with the narrative’s protagonist. Specifically, in the case of literature and acting, properties including character development, narrative content and structure, and the use of emotional and visual language are proposed to interact together to evoke emotional responses (Boyd, 2010; Gallagher & Gallagher, 2020; Mar, 2018a, 2018b; Mar & Oatley, 2008; McDonald et al, 2020). Importantly, music is also an art form that has the distinct ability to generate a wide range of emotional responses in the listener, ranging from sadness, to anger, to joy.…”

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confidence: 99%

Soundtrack to the social world: Emotional music enhances empathy, compassion, and prosocial decisions but not theory of mind.

McDonald¹,

Böckler²,

Kanske³

2022

Emotion

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Music is a human universal and has the ability to evoke powerful, genuine emotions. But does music influence our capacity to understand and feel with others? A growing body of evidence indicates that empathy (sharing another's feelings) and compassion (a feeling of concern toward others) are behaviorally and neutrally distinct, both from each other and from the social-cognitive process theory of mind (ToM; i.e., inferring others' mental states). Yet little is known as to whether and how these dissociable routes to feeling with and understanding others can be independently modulated. The goal of the current study was to investigate if emotional music has the potential to enhance social affect and/or social cognition. Using a naturalistic, video-based paradigm which disentangles empathy, compassion, and ToM, we demonstrate selective enhancement of social affect through music during the videos. Specifically, we found enhanced empathy and compassion when emotional, but not when neutral music was present during videos displaying emotionally negative narrations. No such enhancement was present for ToM performance. Similarly, prosocial decision making increased after emotionally negative videos with emotional music. These findings demonstrate how emotional music can enhance empathic responding, compassion and prosocial decisions as well as contribute to the growing evidence for separable processes within the social mind.

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Could Acting Training Improve Social Cognition and Emotional Control?

Cited by 14 publications

References 63 publications

Supporting the psychological health of our students: An arts-based community magic workshop for adapting to university life.

Supporting the psychological health of our students: An arts-based community magic workshop for adapting to university life.

Interaction in acting training and its different manifestations in novice and professional actors

Soundtrack to the social world: Emotional music enhances empathy, compassion, and prosocial decisions but not theory of mind.

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