The next time your so-called friends yell at you for still talking about Mad Men and The Wire, tell them science says it's healthy for you. This is not a lie. According to psychologists at the University of Oklahoma, watching prestige dramas will give you a keener sense of the world around you.

The study, which was published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, wanted to figure out if the programming you watch has an affect on empathy and emotional intelligence.

In two separate studies, participants were randomly assigned to watch either a prestige drama (Mad Men, The West Wing, The Good Wife, or Lost), or a TV documentary (Shark Week, How the Universe Works, NOVA Colosseum, or Through the Wormhole). In the second study, there was also a control group that didn't watch any television. The participants then performed the "Reading the Mind Through the Eyes" test, where participants try to detect the emotions (jealousy, hate, arrogance, panic) in 36 pairs of eyes.

Participants who watched the TV drama performed better on the test than documentary-watchers, and the control group fared the worst. The researchers deduced that paying attention to a narrative can help you understand what's going on in another person's head. It's called the "theory of mind," what humans do when they try to pick up social cues and predict what another person will do or say next.

Business Insider noted that the documentaries weren't about people, and they didn't test any trashy soap operas or reality TV, so it's unclear whether those programs would also produce the same results as the dramas.

But you don't have to tell that part to the people who keep calling you a snob.

This article was originally published on Esquire.com (from The Newsroom)

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From: Esquire UK