Research conducted by Maja Djikic, Keith Oatley, Sara Zoeterman, and Jordan B. Peterson suggests that art, to some extent, can transform its consumer (2009). Through the experiment conducted at the University of Toronto they “tested the hypothesis that art can cause significant changes in the experience of one’s own personality traits under laboratory conditions.” In the article Djikic and the others are discussing previous research done on how art is connected to personalities and mental health where they point to the lack of studies looking into “the impact of art on the personalities of those who appreciate it.” Bringing up the research done by Sabine and Sabine (1983) and Ross (1999) they found traces of evidence for their hypothesis in that devoted readers used books to learn more about themselves and possibly even experienced some form of transformation through reading.
The group also bring up studies done on personality and how different theories on that are conflicting in whether personality traits stays stable after they are fully developed by the age of 30, which they believe to be debunked. In talking about theories that would support their claim they bring up the work of Gerrig (1998) and his suggestion that the way we are interacting with others in our everyday lives is the same as the way we are interacting with art. This means that those interactions would have a similar impact on us. They go on referring to previous research done by Oatly (1999) that literature can be cognitively and emotionally stimulating through the way the characters are leading us around in their world. Lastly, they bring up the fact that the experiment takes place in a laboratory, which will create more controlled results, but it could possibly be limiting as well.
The experiment was conducted by having the participants take personality- and emotion related tests. Then, the participants would be randomized and selected to read one of two texts in the study, before retaking the same tests as well as having to fill out a manipulation check list. The personality test the participants had to take was The Big Five, which “measures the five personality factors that psychologists have determined are core to our personality makeup.”(Truity, 2022). These factors are:
· Openness - How open a person is to new ideas and experiences
· Conscientiousness - How goal-directed, persistent, and organized a person is
· Extraversion - How much a person is energized by the outside world
· Agreeableness - How much a person puts others' interests and needs ahead of their own
· Neuroticism - How sensitive a person is to stress and negative emotional triggers
The Big Five model of personality is widely considered to be the most scientifically robust way to describe personality differences. It is the basis of most modern personality research. (Truity, 2022)
For the emotional test, the participants received a checklist with 10 emotions where they were to fill out how much they experienced that emotion at each moment. The emotions were: sadness, anxiety, happiness, boredom, anger, fearfulness, contentment, excitement,
unsettledness, and awe.
The first text presented in the research was Anton Chekhov’s The Lady with the Toy Dog, a widely acclaimed short story about a man stuck in an unhappy marriage and his affair with younger married woman. The second text, and the baseline in the experiment, takes the content of the short story and turns it into a court document from a divorce proceeding with all the same information presented as in the short story. Both texts were controlled for length (text one 6367 words and text two 6358 words) and readability down to the sentence structure and even the average number of syllables per word.
The manipulation test conducted at the end of the experiment was a control checklist to look at how the differences between the texts were experienced by the readers, to make sure the short story was experienced as artistic while the control text was not.
The results in this study, which was conducted on 166 freshmen students with a mean age of 19,5 years, confirmed the hypotheses “that art can cause significant changes in self-reported experience of traits under laboratory conditions.” Changes in the personality test and the emotional test were significantly higher among the participants who read the short story. It is important to remember that these tests were conducted directly before and after the reading of the story, which does signify that they are directly impactful, but it says nothing about how long this impact lasts on the reader. Another interesting point, that is brought up in the discussion, is the distance between the characters in the story and the people reading it. The story is written in 1899 Russia, and talks about the life of an unhappy banker, which is very far from the reality of the undergraduate students that read this text in 2009. Yet, this short story managed to transform its readers, at least with an immediate effect. Further into the discussion the group debunks the fact that the experiment might be affected by the mood that the readers of the short story might have been transported into by bringing up that the entire personality test profile had changed in the participants, and not just the parts affiliated with mood, like extraversion. They therefore point to the fact that the changes in personality might be based on the quality of the art, rather than just the presence of it.
Through this study, I believe it becomes clear that art does have an impact on people’s behavior in that it can change their emotions and personality, if only for a short period of time. My work with changing perspectives on film would therefore be a possible way of giving the audience a new way of handling everyday conflicts and even alter their world view to some extent, to allow for more understanding. Even though this study is done on literature and its effect on the readers, Djikic and the others are referring to it as a representation for art in general. This might have to do with the transporting effect that art can have on its consumers, and how, as I mentioned earlier, the way we are interacting with others in our everyday lives is conducted the same way as we are interacting with art. Further research is needed into looking at how long the impact of the art stays with us, but that art can create a shift in one’s behavior is something I am bringing with me further into my studies on perspectives.
References:
Djikic, M., Oatley, K., Zoeterman, S., & Peterson, J. B. (2009). On Being Moved by Art: How Reading Fiction Transforms the Self. Creativity Research Journal, 21(1), 24–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400410802633392
Gerrig, R. J. (1998). Experiencing narrative world: On the psychological activities of reading. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Oatley, K. (1999). Why fiction may be twice as true as fact: Fiction as cognitive and emotional simulation. Review of Genereal Psychology, 3(2), 101–117.
Ross, C. S. (1999). Finding without seeking: The information encounter in the context of reading for pleasure. Information Processing and Management, 35, 783–799.
Sabine, G., & Sabine, P. (1983). Books that made the difference. Hamden, CN: Library Professional Publications.
Truity. (2022, March 15). The Big Five Personality Test. Retrieved April 17, 2022, from https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test
