Dive Brief:
- Research suggests the arts can help students develop empathy and compassion — even if they’re only viewing a work or performance.
- Going to plays and steeping oneself in the experience of another — even through a fictional tale — can boost social-emotional skills like empathy in middle school students when paired with discussions before and after the performance, according to a 2022 study published in Applied Developmental Science.
- “Several significant findings suggest that when paired with educational pre- and post-show experiences, students’ social perspective taking and empathy can be positively impacted through a single live theater performance,” wrote the study’s authors from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, George Mason University and Lehman College at the City University of New York.
Dive Insight:
Many disciplines have looked at the potential link between the arts and empathy development, whether someone is expressing themselves artistically or simply viewing the arts as, say, a theatergoer.
A recent study published in October in the BMC Medical Education journal, for example, asked medical school students in Portugal about their artistic practices. Researchers found that 35% were actively involved in arts expression, with the majority practicing music. Typically, those students scored higher in empathy.
“Moreover, earlier initiation and continuous engagement in artistic practice were associated with higher empathy, indicating the potential long-term benefits of sustained artistic involvement,” researchers wrote.
However, as other studies show, students do not need to be actively engaged in the arts themselves to benefit from SEL skill development. Just watching an artistic performance can bring about these benefits, which can stay with someone long after a play or show ends.
A 2021 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology noted, for example, that after people left a play, their feelings of empathy for the characters they watched remained. The study also found that some people even donated more to charities related to a show’s themes.
"Altogether, these findings suggest that theatre is more than mere entertainment,” the authors wrote. “It can lead to tangible increases in empathy and pro-social behavior.”
