LOS ANGELES

THE Harmony Institute wants to change your mind  at the movies.

In the last few weeks, a little-noticed nonprofit with big ideas about the persuasive power of movies and television shows quietly began an initiative aimed at getting filmmakers and others to use the insights and techniques of behavioral psychology in delivering social and political messages through their work.

Harmony, based in New York, was organized by John S. Johnson III, a co-founder of the Buzzfeed.com viral media site and a descendant of a Johnson & Johnson founder, Robert Wood Johnson, and by Adam Wolfensohn, an investment banker who was a producer of the climate change documentary “Everything’s Cool.” It was a favorite at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007.

In an interview, Mr. Johnson said the institute was born from his own perception that environmental and social messages in films and television shows were often ineffective.

“It felt like a lot of preaching to the choir,” said Mr. Johnson, who spoke of the limited ability of a blatant message movie like “An Inconvenient Truth” actually to change minds. “It’s not reaching people, it’s not expanding the choir.”