Fielding Graduate University
Over the past year, I had the opportunity to lead a research project on “authentically inclusive representation” (AIR) with the Center for Scholars and Storytellers (CSS) at UCLA. CSS is an impact-driven organization led by Yalda T. Uhls, PhD, a former film executive turned development psychologist who was recently featured in the APA Monitor on Psychology.
As a media psychologist, I often focus on the “why.” Why do some stories resonate so deeply with audiences? Data consistently shows that when audiences see stories rooted in truth, care, and context, they connect—across identities and demographics. This project let me dig into the “how.”
A few years ago, CSS created a metric to assess the quality of representation in storytelling. Over multiple AIR reports, they found that films that score highly on AIR (as evaluated by expert advocacy organizations) also tend to perform better—with audiences, with critics, and at the box office. In the current research, funded by the Nielsen Foundation, we looked beyond the “what” to the “how.”
Following some of our best practices from qualitative inquiry in psychology research, I conducted 25 interviews with writers, directors, producers, studio executives, and expert advocacy organizations to uncover the behind-the-scenes processes. What really stood out to me is that AIR is not a matter of budget, format, or genre. It is about intentionality. AIR is achievable across a range of productions—film and TV, indie and major studio, small to large budgets. And what united them wasn’t a checklist—it was a commitment to specificity and nuance.
We’re in a moment where words like “diversity” and “inclusion” are increasingly politicized, and while I don’t shy away from them, this research affirms that the heart of authentic storytelling isn’t ideological—it’s creative. It’s about making characters feel real. It’s about telling stories that ring true, rooted in lived experiences and cultural insight. It’s about treating representation not as an obligation, but as an opportunity to reflect the depth of human life. And it’s about going beyond “perfect minority” representation to letting everyone just be a flawed, real human.
That, to me, is where storytellers and psychologists overlap. This project reminded me that good storytelling and good psychology begin the same way—with deep listening. The creators I spoke with were researchers in their own right. They interviewed communities and consulted with experts. They asked, again and again, what drives this character? What shapes their worldview? How do they make sense of what’s happened to them?
I also saw social psychology come alive in unexpected places. In one particularly fun moment, I got to nerd out with one of the writer-director-producers of Moana 2 about the cultural orientation hypothesis—and how the film shifted the hero’s journey from a Western model to a community-centered, Pacific Islander ethos.
Leading AIR 3.0 deepened my appreciation for the craft behind authentic storytelling. How do creators build trust, on-screen and off? How do they resist flattening characters into tropes or symbols? Again and again, the answer was specificity. When you honor the layers of identity—how race, gender, culture, and life history intersect—you reach deeper. And audiences feel it.
I hope you’ll explore our 10-step Roadmap to Achieving AIR, along with the case studies that bring it to life.
