The Psychology of Game of Thrones | StarTalk

So Travis, are you there? I am here. I've been summoned.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON (VOICEOVER): Hey! [laughter] [cheering and applause] So you're a professional psychologist but also a fan of "Game of Thrones"?

Oh, yes. I am a psychology professor, a big nerd, and I love using fiction to talk about real psychology. And I have here your book, "Game of Thrones Psychology"-- that's the name of the book-- "The Mind Is Dark and Full of Terrors."

So what's the takeaway from all this violence in the minds of who's portrayed, in their time and in their day, and what effect it might have on the audience?

That's complicated. There are a lot of different reasons. In real life, it can be hard to study. We know that in experiments, watching violence produces short-term effects on someone's behavior. But it's hard to study in the long run. If you have an idea that this can turn someone into a violent psychopath, it's not exactly ethical or practical to do that study. In fact, you look in the military, of course-- some people would suffer from PTSD and others don't. Others come home-- and you can not always predict who it's going to be.

That's interesting, because if you could predict, that would be an amazing advance in our understanding of the psychological state of warriors. There are people who, as a form of coping with horrible situations, do shut down parts of themselves. We also know that traumatic brain injury-- injury to areas in the frontal cortex-- can shut off their empathy for other people.

OK. Tell me about the psychology of revenge. This is a recurring theme in "Game of Thrones." And I have to confess, revenge-- you know that feels good. So it's got to be something deep inside of us. We want to feel power-- power over our own lives, over others. And when we feel mistreated, when something horrible has happened that made us feel helpless, it's hard to maintain a sense of feeling strong. Revenge is one way of feeling we've restored a sense of balance, of justice in the world and a sense of power for ourselves.

So if that is something fundamental within us and you have a clever screenwriter, storyteller, cinematographer, they would portray this and that would resonate deeply within us and we want to see more of it, presumably. And I always said I really think "Game of Thrones" is so popular because of the psychology of the characters. It's not about the dragons, the White Walkers, or the magic. It's about the human beings. They hadn't had dragons in a long time. For most of them, they're concerned about dragons-- the idea of dragons. Ideas affect their whole lives.

OK. Thank you for sharing your psychological insights. Thank you. This was fun. [applause] So thanks again. All right, everyone-- Travis. Thank you.