Summary: A new study shows that your favorite movie genre can shed light on how your brain processes emotions. Action and comedy lovers react strongly to negative stimuli, while those who prefer crime, thriller or documentaries show weaker emotional reactions.
Using fMRI scans of 257 participants, the researchers were able to uncover this connection and gain insights into the link between media preferences and emotional processing in the brain.
Key data:
- In action and comedy fans, the brain reacts more strongly to negative stimuli.
- Fans of crime films and documentaries show fewer emotional reactions in important brain regions.
- The study shows how film preferences could be adapted to stimulate individual brain activity.
Source: Martin Luther University
Crime, action film, comedy or documentary? Which film genre a person prefers reveals a lot about how their brain works.
This is the conclusion of a new study led by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), which compared data on film preferences with recordings of the brain activity of around 260 people.
Fans of action films and comedies reacted particularly strongly to negative emotional stimuli, while the reaction was significantly weaker among participants who preferred documentaries or crime and thrillers.
The results were published in the journal “Frontiers of Behavioral Neuroscience”.
Films are an interesting phenomenon for psychologists. “Films are so fascinating because they not only depict every human emotion, but also evoke it. Negative emotions such as anger or fear play a central role in many films,” says Esther Zwiky, psychologist at the MLU.
Until recently, relatively little was known about the connection between film preferences and the processing of negative emotions in the brain.
The researchers examined this interplay in detail and evaluated the data of 257 people. As part of a larger study, the respondents also provided information about their film preferences.
In addition, the participants’ brain activity was analyzed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The subjects were shown fearful or angry faces and geometric shapes while they were lying in an MRI machine. “With this established test, we can measure how the brain processes emotional stimuli,” explains Zwiky.
The researchers focused on two areas of the brain: First, the amygdala, which is responsible for processing vital emotions.
“The amygdala can trigger a fight-or-flight response in response to threats,” says Zwiky.
The team also examined the neuronal activity of the nucleus accumbens, known as the reward center in the brain.
The results were surprising: “We found that fans of action films showed the strongest reactions in both areas. We did not expect this, as action films typically offer a lot of stimuli. Therefore, it would have made more sense if action fans had been less easily stimulated,” Zwiky continued.
However, the results suggest that action movie fans are particularly receptive to emotional stimuli and find this stimulation appealing.
The team found similar brain activity in the brains of people who preferred comedies. However, a different picture emerged in fans of crime films, thrillers and documentaries. Here, both brain areas reacted significantly less strongly to the emotional stimuli than in the other groups of participants.
“It seems that people choose the film genres that best stimulate their brains,” concludes Zwiky.
About this research news on emotions and neuroscience
Author: Tom Leonhardt
Source: Martin Luther University
Contact: Tom Leonhardt – Martin Luther University
Picture: The image is from Neuroscience News.
Original research: Open access.
“How films move us – film preferences are related to differences in the neural emotion processing of fear and anger: an fMRI study” by Esther Zwiky et al. Limits of behavioral neuroscience
Abstract
How movies move us – Movie preferences are linked to differences in neural emotion processing of fear and anger: an fMRI study
Introduction:
Films are a source of audiovisual stimulation and expose people to different emotions. Interestingly, several genres are characterized by negative emotional content. Although theoretical approaches exist, little is known about preferences for certain film genres and the neural processing of negative emotions.
Methods:
To address this gap, we investigated the relationships between movie genre preference and brain limbic and reward-related reactivity using an fMRI paradigm with negatively emotional faces in 257 healthy participants.
We compared the functional activity of the amygdala and nucleus accumbens (NAcc) between individuals with a preference for a particular film genre and those without such a preference.
Results and discussion:
The activation of the amygdala was relatively higher in people with a preference for action films (PTFCE-FWE= 0.013). The preference for the comedy genre was associated with an increased amygdala (PTFCE-FWE= 0.038) and NAcc activity (PTFCE-FWE= 0.011). In contrast, crime/thriller preference (Amygdala: PTFCE-FWE≤ 0.010, NAcc: PTFCE-FWE= 0.036) and the preference for documents were associated with the reduced amygdala (PTFCE-FWE= 0.012) and NAcc activity (PTFCE-FWE= 0.015).
The study revealed associations between participants’ genre preferences and brain reactivity to negative affective stimuli. Interestingly, preferences for genres with similar emotion profiles (action, crime/thriller) were associated with oppositely directed neural activity. Possible associations between brain reactivity and susceptibility to various film-related gratifications are discussed.
