The science of hunger games

In the dystopian future world of The Hunger Games , 24 teenagers are forced to fight to the death, their battle turned into televised entertainment. But what raises The Hunger Games above similar stories, like the cynical Japanese film Battle Royale , is that it is mainly preoccupied with how human goodness can flourish even in the most dehumanizing circumstances.

As I watched the film and read the books, I found the story kept reminding me of classic pieces in Greater Good about the psychological and biological roots of compassion, empathy, and cooperation. The vision of human beings as fundamentally caring and connected is not merely wishful thinking on the part of Suzanne Collins, the author of the novels on which the movie is based. Here are five examples. Killing is against human nature.

Katniss, a skilled hunter and the hero of The Hunger Games , is indeed horrified by the prospect of dying—but her worst fears revolve around needing to kill other people. Research says that Katniss is the rule, not the exception. Sociologist Randall Collins comes to a similar conclusion in his massive study Violence. Wealth makes us less compassionate. The citizens of the Capitol brutally exploit the 12 districts of the country of Panem, giving themselves a very high standard of living while deliberately keeping the rest in a state of abject poverty.

The movie and the book take pains to reveal how much this limits their ability to empathize with the less fortunate—a situation confirmed by research, some of which has been generated by the Greater Good Science Center here at UC Berkeley. People are motivated to help others by empathy, not reason or numbers.

Power flows from social and emotional intelligence, not strength and viciousness. He seldom actually lies to anyone, but he does artfully reveal and conceal his emotions to maximize their impact and win support for their survival a trait illustrated in the clip above, when he uses his crush on Katniss as the raw material for a compelling, sympathetic story.

In contrast, the characters who rely on brute force and violent prowess find themselves isolated and defeated in the end. This is exactly what research in social and emotional intelligence predicts will happen. Social connection trumps power and independence.

But social rank is not as important as social context. What patterns of social affiliation do you have? How often do you groom, how often does somebody groom you? How often do you sit in contact and play with kids? Katniss would very much like to be totally self-reliant. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. You can follow him on Twitter! Love turns out to be fundamental towards keeping Katniss alive. Her affection for her sister and her mom is the thing that causes her to remain solid as a supplier for the family.

Katniss grew love for Peeta in the arena but she fought her feelings because of their history in the past. Though she claims she expresses affection for Petta only for the sake of the gifts from Sponsers, it can easily be argued that her true feelings for him are what help her survive the final phases of the Games.

Survival is the best supported theme of The Hunger Games. In the Hunger Games Katniss and Peeta had to do any things just to survive. Some challenges Peeta and Katniss faced were the spreading of rapid fires, posinous creepy crawlies, fierce canines, being hunted by other candidates with weapons and other stuff that the Capitol created to attempt to execute them. Outside of the Games, there was a fight for survival happening. From day to day in the poor Districts of Panem, citizens where faced with starvation and living of basically nothing.

This quote represents the impact the Hunger Games had on his life. Peeta was proud to have won the Hunger Games for District Peeta and Katniss gave District 12 hope. The Hunger Games is a film that how people enjoy the killing of innocence children. In the film children are forced to participate in the Hunger Games and if their not physically skilled it is a great chance that they will end up dead.

The repressive Capitol enjoys instantly prepared food, smart household gadgets and obsessing over the latest Capitol couture, Medina points out.

By contrast, the "District 12" home of heroine Katniss Everdeen located in today's Appalachia has a poor, starving population that works in the coal mines and suffers from electricity shortages. By drawing a contrast between the futuristic Capitol's wonders and the dangerous, dirty work of coal mining , "The Hunger Games" may be prompting readers to sense that "some underlying element of this society is in disorder," said Bernard Carlson, a professor of science, technology and society at the University of Virginia.

In the end, "The Hunger Games" does not celebrate the progress of technology — an idea that historians of science and technology see as overly simplistic anyway.

Instead, the books show how a society's technological choices reflect its political motivations and social priorities. Still, even the historians who have picked up "The Hunger Games" don't judge the story too seriously based on its technological choices.

They, too, want to be entertained. Live Science. Jeremy Hsu.