The choice of a movie is determined by several factors but this article explores gender, mood, and arousal as a factor of movie choice. Take the concept of sports for instance; a man will watch a sports movie based on the violence and confrontation of the particular movie. A woman on the other hand will watch due to the body shape, movement, and beauty of the actors. (Banerjee, Greene, Krcmar, Bagdasarov, & Ruginyte, 2008, p. 97) This article attempts to prove that film choice is based on the specific gender’s need for gratification.
Specific content appeals to a gender regarding the characteristics of a film. These characteristics are: story line, mood, and the content. An action film for instance has a high sense of thrill or arousal and suspense which can potential keep a man on his toes but for a woman the same film can be watched due to a certain actor playing in it or possibly due to a female hero within the storyline. Based on this films can be tagged as “men or women” films. For instance a woman film could be based on a female succeeding , have a storyline told from a female point of view, or based on the concept of falling in love or other “happy” thoughts. On the other hand a man film could be gritty, violent, sexual scenes, or have some type of competition. (Banerjee, Greene, Krcmar, Bagdasarov, & Ruginyte, 2008, p. 97) The overall feel of the movie can determine whether it is the preferred choice of a man or woman through mood or arousal.
The author utilized 544 subjects out of a Communications class that consisted of 44% males and 56% females. A study was done to confirm or deny her theory of movie choices based on men or women’s point of views. 4 movies in all were chosen. Of the 4 chosen, 2 were based on specific moods and the other two were based on arousal. The concept of the movie was to explore the choice of the film based on the type of sensation the subject was experiencing or needing at that current time. In order to measure the choice of the film the subjects were given a list of 10 movies with descriptions in no specific order. The subjects were instructed to read the descriptions and rate them based on describing words from 1-5. 1 meant that the description represented the movie well and 5 meaning that description did not represent the movie at all. The results of the tests showed that all the subjects read the descriptions of the movie the same way and nothing was different. This did not reach the goal of the first experiment which was to find which movies were chosen based on high mood or arousal. During the course of this experiment the subjects were offered the chance to view clips of the movies. In order to complete this experiment the authors used Form V of Zuckerman’s (1994) Sensation Seeking Scale.
Banerjee, S. C., Greene, K., Krcmar, M., Bagdasarov, Z., & Ruginyte, D. (2008). The Role of Gender and Sensation Seeking in Film Choice: Exploring Mood and Arousal. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications. doi:10.1027/1864-1105.20.3.97
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