Embodiment in theatre : effects on emotional response, empathy, and experience-taking.

Embodiment is a relatively new area of research in the social psychology literature, where it looks at how an individual’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are rooted in the human body. By grounding role-playing in embodiment theories, this paper aims to explore how role-playing can affect one’s emotional response, empathy, experience-taking, and locus of control, in a theatre setting. Particularly, it is of the study’s interest to find out if there is any differential outcome between physical simulation (via role-playing) and mental simulation (via imagined role-playing). Contrary to the initial hypotheses, it was found that mental simulation significantly enhanced emotional response, empathy, and experience-taking more than physical simulation. Possible explanations and implications of the findings are discussed. Keywords: embodiment, simulation, empathy, perspective taking, locus of control, emotional response, role-playing, forum theatre.Bachelor of Art