Marc Berman
Research Project
Understanding the Meaning-Making of Violence: Bridging Perception, Cognition, and Cultural Schema
Project Team:
2018 – 2020
Eye-tracking analysis presented by Preethi Vaidyanathan as part of the "Allure of Violence" conference at the Neubauer Collegium, October 12, 2018.
Project Summary
| This project mixed methodologies from psychology, neuroscience, and the performing arts to reveal how people are affected by violent images. |
This two-year project used an innovative mixed-methods approach in which the researchers combined eye tracking and interviewing to better understand how people construct meaning from violent images. The project explored the role of life experiences, such as exposure to community violence, as well as individual differences, such as trait empathy or aggression, on both visual and cognitive biases in perceptions of violence. The driving research questions were: 1) How do people make meaning from violent content? 2) How do people integrate the meaning constructed from violence into their existing cultural schema? 3) Can we predict the meaning that people extract and construct from a scene of violence based on how they direct their attention while viewing the scene? A better understanding of how visual biases interact with cognitive biases in viewing violence will lead to new research in several fields across disciplinary boundaries. Though this research methodology is grounded in psychology and neuroscience, the findings will also raise interesting research questions for scholars working in other social science disciplines and the visual arts. The project sought to engage with these other disciplines by offering possible insights on such questions as: How does violence in a piece of art or film influence narrative, meaning-making, and understanding of the piece as a whole?
Research Team
Kyoung whan Choe
Dario Maestripieri
Coltan Scrivner
Richard Shweder
Richard Shweder
Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Human Development
University of Chicago
Gabriel Velez
Project Narrative
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The Allure of Violence: Bridging Perception, Cognition, and Culture
Conference
The Allure of Violence: Bridging Perception, Cognition, and Culture
Why are violent movies and novels so popular? Why does so much art portray acts of violence? Why is the news so frequently filled with violent and tragic information? Why is violence such a common ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
The Allure of Violence: Bridging Perception, Cognition, and Culture
Conference
The Allure of Violence: Bridging Perception, Cognition, and Culture
Why are violent movies and novels so popular? Why does so much art portray acts of violence? Why is the news so frequently filled with violent and tragic information? Why is violence such a common ...
Reading List
Bartsch, A., Mares, M.-L., Scherr, S., Kloß, A., Keppeler, J., & Posthumus, L.
More Than Shoot-Em-Up and Torture Porn: Reflective Appropriation and Meaning-Making of Violent Media Content: Media Violence and Meaning-Making Journal of Communication, 66(5), 741–765 (2016) ReadFagan, G. G.
The Lure of the Arena New York: Cambridge University Press (2011) ReadFiske, A. P., & Rai, T. S.
Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships Cambridge University Press (2014) ReadGoldstein, J. (Ed.)
Why We Watch: The Attractions of Violent Entertainment Oxford University Press (1998) ReadHenderson, J. M., & Luke, S. G.
Stable individual differences in saccadic eye movements during reading, pseudoreading, scene viewing, and scene search Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 40(4), 1390–1400 (2014) ReadIbarra, F., & Maestripieri, D.
Assessing People’s Interest in Images with Violent or Disgusting Content: a Functional-Evolutionary Analysis Evolutionary Psychological Science, 3(2), 133–140 (2017) ReadMenninghaus, W., Wagner, V., Hanich, J., Wassiliwizky, E., Jacobsen, T., & Koelsch, S.
The distancing-embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40 (2017) ReadMolenberghs, P., Gapp, J., Wang, B., Louis, W. R., & Decety, J.
Increased Moral Sensitivity for Outgroup Perpetrators Harming Ingroup Members Cerebral Cortex, 26(1), 225–233 (2016) ReadSüssenbach, P., Eyssel, F., Rees, J., & Bohner, G.
Looking for blame: rape myth acceptance and attention to victim and perpetrator Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 37(15), 2323–2344 (2015) ReadWare, L. J., Lassiter, G. D., Patterson, S. M., & Ransom, M. R.
Camera perspective bias in videotaped confessions: Evidence that visual attention is a mediator Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14(2), 192–200 (2008) ReadExplore
