The Journal of Consumer Research published a study in 2007 suggesting that the presence of other people may enhance the movie-watching experience. The researchers are the first to examine how a shared experience affects our overall impressions of an experience as a whole. Researchers observed that movie-watchers influence one another and gradually synchronize their emotional responses while watching a film together. The bottom line is that mimicry of this type affects each participant's evaluation of the overall movie experience, and therefore a movie review will usually be in sync.
The research was accomplished as follows. The researchers asked the participants in the study to watch a video clip. Some watched alone, while others watched the clip with others. There was a partition in between some of the paired participants so their expressions could not be viewed. But then there were others left with no partition, whose expressions could be seen. Joysticks were used by all to indicate their feelings at each moment while viewing the clip.
When the participants were asked how much they liked the movie clip, each reported higher ratings the more their assessments lined up with the other person. Apparently when they mimicked expressions, people catch each other's moods. This leads to a shared emotional experience. In the end, that feels good to people, so they attribute that good feeling to the quality of the movie.
Researchers determined that those people watching who watched the film clip together appeared to evaluate the film within the same broad mood - either tracking up or down. But in a different study, the researchers videotaped the participants and found that people adopt the observed expressions of others - the synchrony of their evaluations can be traced to the fact that they glanced at the other person while they watched the movie clip.
If by chance they looked at one another at the exact same moment in time ...the researchers said they appeared to note whether the other person's face expressed the same or different emotion than their own. If they perceived congruity - or the same expression as their own, the participants kept their current emotional expression . . . however if they perceived incongruity, or a different expression, this led to a dampening of subsequent expressions. Researchers concluded that these social effects were bi-directional, meaning that the influences were not the result of a leader-follower pattern, but rather mutual.
The study was the first to look at contagious emotions in a naturally developing relationship between two participants.
Source: Suresh Ramanathan and Ann L. McGill, "Consuming with Others: Social Influences on the Moment-to-Moment and Retrospective Evaluations of an Experience." Journal of Consumer Research: December 2007.
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