This episode of the you are not so smart podcast is brought to you by dr. Linda hinkle from fairfield university in canadicate and she has discovered something that she calls the photo taking impairment effect. She says whenever you take a photo during a moment that you would like to remember the photo Drastically alters your memory. And if you don't have the photos around to help you recall what you experienced Then it's better that you just don't take them at all But if you do have photos around they really really help you recall and they help you relive what you've seen what you did When you took those photos.
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.
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