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Category: Project

Description: A common philosophical assumption is that art can open people’s minds. According to Aesthetic Cognitivism, art is valuable insofar as it provides new perspectives, reframing and reshaping our experience and perception of the world. However, this conceptual claim has not yet been explored empirically. To test this idea, the present study investigates the cognitive effects of watching films. We will test the hypothesis that narrative films embodying multiple perspectives on the same events enhance characteristics of open-mindedness relative to works embodying a single, dominant perspective. Participants will be asked to watch a segment of a film that includes the perspective of multiple characters on the same event (‘Jackie Brown’) either from a single perspective or multiple perspectives. Participants’ open-mindedness will be assessed through four empirical indicators (i.e., creativity, imaginability, cognitive flexibility, openness to new evidence). In addition, we will test whether attentional and affective responses modulate changes in open-mindedness. Allocation of attention to characters or parts of a scene will be established by eye-tracking; arousal will be measured by pupil dilation, electrodermal activity and heart rate. Finally, we also explore the relationship between the participants’ film expertise level and trait open-mindedness (openness to experience) as well as the four measures of open-mindedness and online measures.