What our taste in movies says about us
Crime, action, comedy, or documentary? Our favourite film genre reveals a lot about how our brain works.
It’s time to watch a movie and you know the type you like. So, when you go to the cinema or select a movie to watch on TV, it’s your choice.
Or is it?
There’s evidence that choice doesn’t come into it. Rather, our brains are hardwired to the movie genre that gives us the biggest emotional fix. And it seems the movie watching world is split in two.
Scientists have found that people have a go-to movie genre because it activates enjoyable emotions in the complex organ that keeps them coming back for more.
They discovered that people who like comedy and action had more activity in the region linked to excitement and reward compared to people who favoured the thriller and documentary genres.
The Martin Luther University (MLU) study was published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience and included 257 participants – 129 men and 128 women.
Beforehand, the participants had declared whether they were fans of crime films, action films, comedies, or documentaries.
They were then shown images of fearful and angry faces while wearing electrodes that monitored their brain activity.
The electrodes monitored the amygdala, the brain's major processing centre for emotions, linking our emotions to many other brain abilities, especially memories, learning, and our senses. It’s the part of the brain that can trigger a “fight or flight” reaction in response to threats.
Researchers also investigated the neuronal activity of the nucleus accumbens, known as the reward centre in the brain.
Fans of action films showed the strongest reactions in both areas.
This surprised the researchers who had expected action fans to be less easy to stimulate, as action films typically provide many stimuli.
The results suggest that action film aficionados are particularly susceptible to emotional stimuli and find this stimulation appealing.
The team found similar brain activity in the brains of people who preferred comedies.
A different picture emerged for fans of crime films or thrillers and documentaries. Both areas of the brain reacted significantly less to the emotional stimuli.
The researchers concluded "It appears that people choose the film genres that most optimally stimulate their brains.”
Films are an interesting phenomenon for psychologists because they not only depict every human emotion, but they also evoke them.
“Negative emotions, such as anger or fear, play a central role in many films,” says Esther Zwiky, a psychologist at MLU. Up until recently, relatively little was known about the connection between film preferences and the processing of negative emotions in the brain.
Related reading: MLU, Daily Mail
