Spoilers Affect the Enjoyment of Television Episodes but Not Short Stories

Abstract

While spoilers are culturally regarded as something that detracts enjoyment from a narrative, research has presented a complicated picture. When Leavitt and Christenfeld presented participants plot-crucial information to individuals before reading a short story, the story was subsequently enjoyed as much as, or more than, unspoiled stories. Other research shows that these findings may be driven by an interaction of individual differences, such as need for cognition, rather than a broad spoiling effect. In Experiment 1, we tested if reported enjoyment of a narrative decreased even when participants were alerted to the presence of a plot spoiler, to extend previous findings for short stories while adding a condition informing participants beforehand that their short stories was being spoiled. Experiment 2 extended this methodology to full-length episodes of television. Our results were different from previously reported positive effects of spoilers and show that spoilers, under certain circumstances, have a negative effect on enjoyment for television but not short stories.

Spoilers ahead, proceed with caution: How engagement, enjoyment, and FoMO predict avoidance of spoilers.

“…Johnson and Rosenbaum (2015) found that "unspoiled short stories exhibited a significantly greater level of enjoyment than spoiled stories" (p. 1080) and that unspoiled stories were considered to be more moving, suspenseful, and fun (Johnson & Rosenbaum, 2015). Daniel and Katz (2019) found results that were most closely related to the investigation in the current study; they indicated that in some cases, spoilers for TV shows had a negative effect on enjoyment but that spoilers did not decrease the enjoyment of short stories. However, this study only compared specific episodes of a TV show in an experimental setting that individuals were not regularly watching to experimental short stories; the current study examines an individual's avoidance of spoilers related to their favorite TV shows that they are watching in their daily lives.…”

Spoilers Go Bump in the Night

“…This single study was followed by a flurry of replications that yielded a series of, at times, conflicting findings. Some studies show that spoilers improved enjoyment (e.g., Ellithorpe & Brookes, 2018; Leavitt & Christenfeld, 2013), others show harm to enjoyment (e.g., Daniel & Katz, 2018; Johnson & Rosenbaum, 2015; Levine et al, 2016), and others suggest people tend to overestimate the negative impact of spoilers on their enjoyment (Yan & Tsang, 2016). Further work illustrated that processing fluency mediated effects of spoilers on audience evaluations (Leavitt & Christenfeld, 2013) and that the traits of need for cognition (NFC) and need for affect (NFA) had small moderating effects on spoiler acceptance and spoiler enjoyment, respectively (Rosenbaum & Johnson, 2016).…”

“…If spoilers are likely to have a negative effect on enjoyment by harming suspense, any positive effects are likely transmitted through processing fluency, which is the ease, or fluency, with which a narrative is understood. Spoilers have been shown to benefit fluency in both experimental (Leavitt & Christenfeld, 2013) and survey studies (Ellithorpe & Brookes, 2018), but other evidence has been weak or nonsupportive for fluency as a mediator of spoiler effects (Daniel & Katz, 2018; Johnson & Rosenbaum, 2018; Levine et al, 2016).…”