Mood Management

The other day I was watching a PBS Frontline special called The Persuaders. The Persuaders is the type of thing you see in an undergraduate-level intro to PR or advertising course and documents how research contributes to persuasive content. One of the more interesting parts of the special was a segment on political research. Researchers used focus groups to figure out what political candidates should feeding their audiences -- I know, nothing new. What was new to me was this number: 80% of our voting (and presumably other decisions) is based on emotions. This is important; it gives us a root around which we can explore the fertile soil for more roots.

It isn't that big of a jump to say that our entertainment decisions are also guided by emotions, and, in fact, there is a VAST body of research that lends support to this. Though many, many studies contributed to the idea, the seminal study on entertainment as mood management came from Zillmann and Bryant (1985). As it is quite late and I don't have a copy of this book chapter at home, the details of their experiment won't go into this blog post (I know, I know -- poor-quality half measure #1). The point of their research, however, is that people use media to manage their moods. More specifically, people are hedonists and, 1) use entertainment as a means of maximizing pleasurable moods, and, 2) use entertainment as a means of minimizing unpleasant moods. In other words, bored people seek out exciting fare, angry people seek out comedy, etc. Later research suggests that people sometimes like to prolong sad moods by listening to sad music, but again (half measure #2) I left all that stuff at the office where it can do no one any good at 1am. Regardless, here's the point: the decisions we make surrounding entertainment are somehow geared to satisfy inner emotional needs or desires.

After reading a good 20 publications on entertainment theory, 30+ on selective exposure, and another 20 or so on cognitive dissonance, I feel like I am aware of most of the basic stuff forming the primordial soup of entertainment theory. I remind the reader (read myself) that entertainment theory isn't really a theory at this point; it's more of a jumble of moving parts that suggest scientists will soon come up with something less rickety.

The key thing to take away from this blog post is that emotions form the bulk of the basis of our entertainment decisions. Sure other things contribute to our selectivity: demographics, memory, availability of content, etc. But the emotional and hedonistic animals we are wants to be satisfied emotionally.

Anything else is beyond the scope of this post, but believe me, there's A LOT more out there.