If you are an avid reader, this has probably happened to you dozens of times: you read a book and then watch the movie, only to discover that it doesn’t live up to your expectations and end up saying that the book was much better. No matter the genre, no matter if it’s “Love in the Time of Cholera,” “The Name of the Rose,” or “The Lord of the Rings,” we almost always think the book is better. Why?
What we see first leaves us with more intense marks
There are those who claim that we like books more simply because it is usually the first contact we have with history. As it is usually with the good books that make it to the big screen, normally we have read the book first and only then watched the movie.
In the field of Psychology this is known as Primacy Effect. In fact, research carried out at Harvard University tells us that we tend to prefer the first products we are shown, regardless of whether it is a can of food or a car. Apparently, our brain remains anchored in that first experience and makes it take precedence over all similar objects or situations that come later. However, when we talk about books and movies, everything is not reduced to the order of presentation.
Books generate greater involvement
Another theory states that books generate more emotions and a higher level of commitment, more intense sensations than a movie can achieve. In fact, if we think about it, we normally spend days reading a book, thinking about its characters and situations, which allows us to identify with its protagonists and experience the plot more intensely. As a result, the book generates a greater emotional impact than the movie, and that would be the real reason we prefer written works.
Film buffs and literature lovers will probably know Stephen King’s discomfort with Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of “Shining.” The writer stated that the movie was very cold and that his characters had lost strength. Neither Shelley Duvall was so weak nor did Jack Nicholson descend so quickly into madness.
On the other hand, we cannot forget that the movie normally cuts many scenes, losing the level of detail that a book normally offers and this means that, on many occasions, the characters themselves lose their strength and charisma. In this sense, I remember several books in which a good part of the personality of their protagonists was shown through their internal dialogues and, obviously, when bringing them to the screen those monologues were eliminated, making the characters pale shadows in comparison with those that were drawn on the pages of the book.
Another reason why we tend to like the book more is that we have already made it our own. We suffer from what is known as the “Owner Effect”. That is to say, when we read a book our imagination normally runs wild and recreates details that do not exist. We imagine the scenes and the characters, we put a face on them and make the story our own, we fully identify with it and for longer.
Later, when we see it on screen, we tend to be disappointed because the protagonists are not what we imagined and the context is also different. In fact, even if it is the same book, each person experiences the plot differently and that recreation is what allows them to make the story their own. And we already know that our brain is quite resistant to change, so it will be more difficult for it to accept the vision that another person transmits to us about the story that we had already outlined in our mind.
Of course, it is worth clarifying that this is not always the case, there are times when the movie far surpasses the book, but I must say that at least as far as I am concerned, these are exceptional cases.
