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Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Fact or Fiction, Chick Flick or Not
From Physorg.com:
Melodramatic tear-jerkers, usually called ‘chick flicks,’ result in a chorus of groans should someone with a Y chromosome be forced to partake. But a University of Alberta researcher has discovered that men who are told that a sob story is purely fictional are more likely to enjoy the tale.
“Now, we’re not saying that guys are going to go and scour the video store for a sad movie, just because it’s not based in reality,” said Jennifer Argo, a marketing professor with the U of A School of Business. “This really only applies if someone is already being made to watch the story, or read a book. But when guys are told a story is fictitious, they really rate it much higher.”
Women, on the other hand, are more likely to have a positive response if they’re told ahead of time that the story is based in fact, according to the study Fact or Fiction: An Investigation of Empathy Differences in Response to Emotional Melodramatic Entertainment Argo authored with Rui Zhu and Darren W. Dahl of the University of British Columbia. The results will be published in The Journal of Consumer Research.
“Our hypothesis is that men are stereotyped and socialized to not show emotion, and if a story’s fictional, it allows them to just relax,” said Argo. “It gives them a chance to escape reality.”
Comments
The research is completely flawed for one simple reason: Movie studios make movies that maximize revenues, so any key event that is not profitable get altered to the point that it no longer resembles the actual event being portrayed. Therefore every movie you see is fictional by definition.