You Aren't So Smart Podcast - What Does Science Have to Say?

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

According to Nielsen the average citizen of the United States watches 34 hours of television a week That's about 73 full days of television per year. A person alive today on average will have watched between nine To 12 full years of television by age 65. There is a scientific answer and that is what we're going to talk about the day on the you are not so smart podcast. We explore another topic in the realm of self-delusion and then we interview an expert on that topic before Meeting a cookie.

In this episode we discuss the power of narratives to affect our beliefs and behaviors with Melanie C. Green, a psychologist who studies the persuasive power of fiction.

According to Nielsen, the TV ratings company, the average person in the United States watches about 34 hours of television a week. That’s 73 days a year. Over the course of a lifetime, the average American can expect to spend a full decade lost in the trance spell that only powerful narratives can cast over the human mind.

What is the power of all the stories we consume through television? What about movies and books and comics and video games and everything else? How does it affect our beliefs and behaviors?

We discuss all of that and more with Melanie C. Green who is a social psychologist who developed the transportation into a narrative worlds theory that helps explain total story immersion and how it translates into influence over our real-world behaviors. Green is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. You can find her on Twitter using the handle @NarrProf or her website.

After the interview I eat some chocolate orange cherry cookies sent in by Elliot Jones and then discuss how photographs can either enhance or dampen your memory depending on how you use them.

Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart