Have you seen The Hunger Games: The Mockingjay 2? Maybe you should read this first.

This bonus edition of the YA Wednesday is meant to tap into the release of  the final movie in The Hunger Games Series. Dr. Louise Freeman is the first to offer up a second guest column. She looks at how young adult literature and psychology inform each other. It is an interesting connection that hasn't been explored very much. She has done a good job convincing me. In addition, she has found a way to do projects with classroom teachers.

Psychology and YAL:  When Two Disciplines Inform Each Other.

            One of my favorite moments at the 2014 LSU Young Adult Literature Conference and Symposium came during author Matt de la Peña’s address, when he explained that, from the moment he knew what a college education was, he knew he wanted to study psychology, and that he thought and understanding of psychology was crucial for successful writers. Up until that time I had been feeling a bit like the proverbial fish out of water, as the lone psychologist in a sea of English teachers, education professors, literary scholars and writers. Matt reinforced my view that the behavioral sciences can inform YAL, and vice versa.

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I suppose it is fitting that I am now researching psychology and neuroscience in the context of YAL, since, looking back, it was likely L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time that sparked my interest in studying the brain. I still remember my fifth grade teacher reading the book aloud to us, and the excitement as the villainous “IT” was revealed for who IT was: a slightly oversized brain who had managed to enslave an entire planet and force its citizens into a dismal conformity. That, combined with my lifelong interest in biology, no doubt instilled by my biology-professor parents, led me into the field of behavioral neuroscience.
            Over the last few years, I have evolved from occasional comments on “serious reader” Harry Potter blogs (www.hogwartsprofessor.com) to actively applying my training as a psychology professor to some of my favorite YA series. For example:

• I have spoken (http://www.mbc.edu/news/2012/11/01/professor-couches-harry-potter-in-psychological-terms/) and written (https://journals.shareok.org/studyandscrutiny/article/view/121) about Muggle psychiatric disorders illustrated by characters in Harry Potter.
  • These depictions may have measurable effects: work by Mary Baldwin Global Honors Scholars found that Harry Potter readers are more empathic and less likely to stigmatize people with mental illness than non-readers. (http://www.mbc.edu/news/2015/10/30/students-take-their-turn-on-potter-psychology/)

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We have used the Divergent series as a tool for teaching about the “Big Five” model for human personality. (http://www.mbc.edu/news/2014/03/27/movie-night-psych-students/)
A collaboration with English teacher Martha Guarisco showed that completing a reading unit about Wonder was associated with higher perspective taking skills on a common empathy test (http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/archives/02-2015); we are currently testing whether the same is true of The Crossover, and if the changes in empathy are associated with theory of mind skills.
I have twice presented at the annual Harry Potter conference at Chestnut Hill College. (http://www.harrypotterconference.com/) on ecopsychology within the series and on its empathy-inducing attributes.

Most recently, I have completed a chapter on the depiction of post-traumatic stress disorder in the Hunger Games series, and particularly the process by which Peeta was hijacked. I am giving a talk on the topic on the Mary Baldwin College campus, and, at the request of several people, have made the lecture available on Youtube.

• Part 1 will deal with the concept of fear conditioning and how, in some patients (including many of our favorite Hunger Games characters),  it can lead to PTSD.  https://youtu.be/eQKKBfbfPQI
• Part 2 will address how Peeta’s hijacking is treated and what that tells us about modern day therapies for PTSD. https://youtu.be/KRUYueLBhRs
• Part 3 will look at some recent memory-modification studies in mice to address the question of how feasible a process like hijacking might be. https://youtu.be/JIgRWaATp1g

With psychology as one of the most popular fields of study for today’s college students, and with YAL more widely read than ever, the two fields can mutually inform each other. One recent and relevant example:A 2014 study by Vezzali and colleagues showed that elementary students who had a series of lessons stressing the anti-bigotry themes of the Harry Potter series and who strongly identified with Harry were less likely to show stigmatizing attitudes towards immigrants. Furthermore, European college students who had read the series were less stigmatizing of, and better able to adopt the viewpoint of refugees. The Hunger Games series illustrates both the long-term harm that exposure to violence can cause, and the power of the media in shaping our attitudes towards warfare and the victims of it. The young readers that grew up with both of these very popular series are now bona fide “young adults”—old enough to cast their votes for our leadership. Presumably they will at least partially base their decision on policies towards immigrants and refugees; it would be interesting to know to what extent their adolescent book selections will affect their future choices, and their attitudes towards both perceived threats of violence and towards those trying to escape it.

I hope that, as the study of YAL becomes more interdisciplinary, that we will see more psychologists joining the discussion and investigating both psychological themes within the books themselves, and the effects of reading them on both the young, and the young at heart.

Source:
Vezzali, L., Stathi, S., Giovannini, D., Capozza, D., & Trifiletti, E. (2014). The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45(2), 105-121.

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