Spoilers Go Bump in the Night

Johnson, Benjamin K.; Udvardi, Angel; Eden, Allison; Rosenbaum, Judith E.

doi:10.1027/1864-1105/a000252

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The greater the experienced anxiety and the fear cues, the greater the experienced fright. The availability of spoilers – the reveal of key scenes and plot points in a work of fiction in advance of viewing – appears to have little effect on the positive enjoyment of horror film or the experience of suspense (Johnson et al, 2019).…”

Section: What Is “Horror”?mentioning

confidence: 99%

(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films

Martin

2019

Front. Psychol.

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Why do we watch and like horror films? Despite a century of horror film making and entertainment, little research has examined the human motivation to watch fictional horror and how horror film influences individuals’ behavioral, cognitive, and emotional responses. This review provides the first synthesis of the empirical literature on the psychology of horror film using multi-disciplinary research from psychology, psychotherapy, communication studies, development studies, clinical psychology, and media studies. The paper considers the motivations for people’s decision to watch horror, why people enjoy horror, how individual differences influence responses to, and preference for, horror film, how exposure to horror film changes behavior, how horror film is designed to achieve its effects, why we fear and why we fear specific classes of stimuli, and how liking for horror develops during childhood and adolescence. The literature suggests that (1) low empathy and fearfulness are associated with more enjoyment and desire to watch horror film but that specific dimensions of empathy are better predictors of people’s responses than are others; (2) there is a positive relationship between sensation-seeking and horror enjoyment/preference, but this relationship is not consistent; (3) men and boys prefer to watch, enjoy, and seek our horror more than do women and girls; (4) women are more prone to disgust sensitivity or anxiety than are men, and this may mediate the sex difference in the enjoyment of horror; (5) younger children are afraid of symbolic stimuli, whereas older children become afraid of concrete or realistic stimuli; and (6) in terms of coping with horror, physical coping strategies are more successful in younger children; priming with information about the feared object reduces fear and increases children’s enjoyment of frightening television and film. A number of limitations in the literature is identified, including the multifarious range of horror stimuli used in studies, disparities in methods, small sample sizes, and a lack of research on cross-cultural differences and similarities. Ideas for future research are explored.

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Section: What Is “Horror”?mentioning

confidence: 99%

(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films

Martin

2019

Front. Psychol.

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“…For example, M. E. Ellithorpe and Brookes (2018) as well as Leavitt and Christenfeld (2013) reported that fluency is related to enhanced enjoyment. Other studies have reported that spoilers do not increase enjoyment by facilitating processing fluency (e.g., Johnson et al, 2020;Levine et al, 2016, Study 1). Still, others have pointed to the role played by personality traits in mediating the relationship between spoilers and processing fluency (Rosenbaum & Johnson, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Other research has shown that individuals with low need for cognition prefer spoiled stories and that this preference could be attributed to spoilers' ability to enhance processing fluency and thus their narrative experience (Rosenbaum & Johnson, 2016). In contrast, several studies have found no evidence that spoilers enhanced enjoyment through increased processing fluency (e.g., Johnson et al, 2020;Levine et al, 2016, Study 1). Interestingly, major spoilers (i.e., those that reveal major plot points) were found to enhance processing fluency for horror movies, but this did not enhance people's enjoyment (Johnson et al, 2020).…”

Section: Spoilers Narrative Experience and Processing Fluencymentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Extant work has produced contradictory findings regarding the impact that spoilers have on fluency. While some research has failed to find a connection between spoilers and processing fluency (e.g., Johnson et al, 2020;Johnson & Rosenbaum, 2018), advance knowledge of a narrative arc, or spoilers, has also been argued to enhance enjoyment due to its ability to increase this processing fluency (M. E. Ellithorpe & Brookes, 2018;Leavitt & Christenfeld, 2011. This has been attributed to mental model resonance, a process wherein previous information about a narrative is incorporated into people's mental models about that narrative.…”

Section: Spoilers Narrative Experience and Processing Fluencymentioning

confidence: 99%

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That’s not supposed to happen! Spoilers’ impact on experience of narratives with (un)expected endings.

Ellithorpe¹,

Rosenbaum²,

Brookes³

2024

Psychology of Popular Media

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Although spoilers are commonly believed to ruin the experience of a story, recent research has produced conflicting results about the role spoilers play in enjoyment. In response, scholars have begun to explore factors that impact the relationship between spoilers and the narrative experience. A series of three studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between spoilers and processing fluency by examining how expectations regarding a narrative's ending can interact with spoilers to affect fluency and the resulting enjoyment. Three online between-subjects experiments exposed participants to a spoiled or unspoiled preview and then assigned them to watch the season finale of a long-running sitcom with either the original ending that defied expectations or an alternate ending that aligned with genre conventions. Results reveal that both spoilers and whether an ending is expected have a complex relationship with fluency, with the three studies producing slightly different interactions between these two variables. In all three studies, fluency was associated with increased enjoyment. Public Policy Relevance StatementThree experiments found mixed results for the relationship between spoilers and processing fluency, and, subsequently, about the impact of spoilers on enjoyment. It is still to be determined whether seeking spoilers about a narrative event is likely to help or hinder enjoyment by impacting fluency.

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“…Several studies show that spoilers can in fact improve enjoyment of film by facilitating processing fluency (Ellithorpe & Brookes, 2018;Leavitt & Christenfeld, 2011, 2013. A recent paper by Johnson et al (2020) suggested that spoilers may play a specific role especially in the horror genre by creating heightened enjoyment through anticipation of a scare. They cite work by Carroll (1990) who suggested that even when we re-watch a narrative, we can feel the same thrill of the various twists and turns as when we viewed it for the first time.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spoiler alert: How narrative film captures attention

Cohen

Goldberg

Mintz

et al. 2023

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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Narrative transportation is a state of total immersion that arises when one becomes engaged in a story. In Cohen et al. (2015), participants viewed a suspenseful film either with order of scenes intact or scrambled (out of chronological order). Participants had to remember to raise their hand every time they heard a film character say the word “gun.” Results revealed participants were less likely to remember this instruction in the intact condition because their attention shifted away from processing their own goals to the goals of the protagonist. In three studies, we examined the boundary conditions of this effect by including a spoiler by telling participants the film ending (Study 1), having participants view the film individually or in groups (Study 2), and offering a reward incentive (Study 3). Overall, results showed that knowing the ending of the story did not improve performance, however, offering an incentive did boost goal maintenance. Implications of these findings are discussed.

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Spoilers Go Bump in the Night

Cited by 12 publications

References 35 publications

(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films

(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films

That’s not supposed to happen! Spoilers’ impact on experience of narratives with (un)expected endings.

Spoiler alert: How narrative film captures attention

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