Psychological perspectives on acting.

Psychologists know surprisingly little about the cognitive and affective underpinnings of acting, and this stands in sharp in contrast to what has been learned about the psychological skills involved in music and the visual arts. In this article, the author discusses findings on the childhood precursors of acting talent and outlines a program of research she is initiating to test the hypothesis that acting training fosters strength in reading others' mental states, feeling others' feelings, and regulating one's own emotions in an adaptive manner. This research has implications for understanding the malleability of these outcomes and expertise in these abilities. Acting is a strange phenomenon, but one that we take for granted: Actors pretend to be others, for the audience's enjoy- ment, without the intent to deceive. Acting is a universal human activity, and one that is uniquely human—no other animals create dramas, not even nonhuman primates. We are all actors to some extent, trying out different roles as we interact with others. In Shakespeare's words, One man in his time plays many parts (pp II. VII. 139-140). However, the roles people enact in their personal lives are typically fairly interrelated, and most are based on people's own personalities, desires, and emo- tional ranges. Actors, however, must play many unrelated kinds of roles. In the last few years, Charlize Theron has played a prostitute serial killer (Monster, 2003), the first woman to sue successfully over sexual harassment (North Country, 2005), an immortal su- perhero (Hancock, 2008), and herself, as an Oscar winner (for Monster, in 2003). How does she manage to portray these roles in such a realistic fashion? Does she possess unusual cognitive and affective skills that make this possible? And if so, what were the earliest signs of these skills in her childhood? Were these what drew her to acting training, or were these skills learned through acting training? In this article, I explore the early signs of acting talent and then discuss the psychological skills I believe to be necessary to act and that are therefore likely to be fostered by acting training—theory of mind, empathy, and emotion regulation.