Movie Lovers, can you help me with my empathy research?
Dear Movie Lovers and Cineasts!
Have you got some time and joy in supporting some empathy research by sharing your movie expertise with me?
I am just starting my PHD Project on the topic of empathy and I am really eager to understand - what makes different people understand each other? What hinders them in understanding each other?
In a first step, we are going to use Eye Tracking to see what exactly people look at and attend in visual scenes and if/how it affects their understanding of the situation of the other. We kind of wonder, if empathy for other people starts with the way we look at them.
To do this, we need, well, visual scenes with an empathic context. In a broader sense, any context, in which person A experiences something and has an emotion about it, can serve as an empathic context.
We are aiming for situations that have a trivial, day-to-day character, in which person A experiences emotions because of some situation. Or, if the situation is not of a day-today character, then at least realistic (no aliens coming through the backdoor or dead people talking through the phone). This situations need to require some degree of perspective taking on the part of the observer (whose gaze behavior we are eventually interested in and are going to look at). Also, we need single scenes, not whole movies. So it should be clear from the scene (2-6 minutes) what the deal is all about.
What is important - A experiences something, has an emotion about it. The scenes should give away enough information so the observer has a chance to understand the situation.
Also, it would be really helpful, if you give me a hint at where to look for the scene or what happens in the scene.
I am really really excited about your answers, guys!