They entertain, excite, make people cry … and take away pain. This curious analgesic property of fiction films has just been revealed by a group of Oxford scientists, who have published the conclusions of their experiments in the journal Open Science .
As British researchers recall, storytelling has served to unite human communities since our species began to form hunter-gatherer tribes, although their evolutionary and biological bases had not been studied. Because no one is oblivious to this universal impulse : from children who ask to be told stories at night to couples in their forties who do not give up their dose of daily television series.
The experts put several volunteers to watch the movie Stuart: A Life Upside Down , the moving story of a beggar with a complicated childhood, while the rest watched a purely informational documentary. Then they were tested to measure their pain threshold and, therefore, their levels of endorphins , a neurotransmitter with narcotic properties.
The results left no room for doubt: those who had been touched by Stuart’s tribulations held an awkward posture – sitting up straight against the wall – longer than the documentary’s viewers. And, in addition, they felt more united to the group.
As the researchers point out, although the endorphin “rush” does not fully explain our fondness for stories, it does have to be taken into account as a weight factor that pushes us not only to watch movies, but also to engross ourselves in the pages. of a novel or not to miss any chapter of a soap opera .
