This makes me wonder about the role of film as a “machine for empathy” as described by Ebert. If movies could prime people for relationship chats by seeding emp

This makes me wonder about the role of film as a “machine for empathy” as described by Ebert. If movies could prime people for relationship chats by seeding empathetic ideas. This led me to wonder if there’s any relationship between the media and ability to elicit empathy - if couples discussed relationship books would they also see a lower rate of divorce? So far, I can only find one paper on this (https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.19003.tur https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.19003.tur) but I wonder how it fits into the wider literature? What is known about the ability of different media to generate empathy? The paper above suggests books are better than films. What about immersive games?