If you count yourself among those who lose themselves in the lives of fictional characters, scientists now have a better idea of how that happens. Researchers found that the more immersed people tend to get into 'becoming' a fictional character, the more they use the same part of the brain to think about the character as they do to think about themselves.
Researchers at The Ohio State University released a study of how closely fans identified with characters on Game of Thrones.
Researchers found that the more immersed people tend to get into "becoming" a fictional character, the more they use the same part of the brain to think about the character as they do to think about themselves.
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The study involved scanning the brains of 19 self-described fans of the HBO series "Game of Thrones" while they thought about themselves, nine of their friends and nine characters from the series. (The characters were Bronn, Catelyn Stark, Cersei Lannister, Davos Seaworth, Jaime Lannister, Jon Snow, Petyr Baelish, Sandor Clegane and Ygritte.)
Participants reported which "Game of Thrones" character they felt closest to and liked the most.
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For the study, the participants' brains were scanned in an fMRI machine while they evaluated themselves, friends and "Game of Thrones" characters. An fMRI indirectly measures activity in various parts of the brain through small changes in blood flow.
The researchers were particularly interested in what was happening in a part of the brain called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), which shows increased activity when people think about themselves and, to a lesser extent, when thinking about close friends.
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As expected, the vMPFC was most active when people were evaluating themselves, less active when they evaluated friends, and least active when they evaluated "Game of Thrones" characters.
But for those who were high in trait identification, the vMPFC was more active when they thought about the fictional characters than it was for participants who identified less with the characters. That brain area was especially active when they evaluated the character they felt closest to and liked the most.
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"For some people, fiction is a chance to take on new identities, to see worlds though others' eyes and return from those experiences changed," [ [Dylan] Wagner said.
"What previous studies have found is that when people experience stories as if they were one of the characters, a connection is made with that character, and the character becomes intwined with the self. In our study, we see evidence of that in their brains."
Identification with characters was a key element in the success of the series. My own view is that having characters who were not one dimensional made it easier for people to identify with them and thereby made GoT so compelling. As with real life, there were good people who did bad things, bad people who did good things, and a lot of people who did inadvisable things.
