Apparently, spoilers are good for you. Well, that’s what one survey from August suggests:
UC San Diego psychology researchers Nicholas Christenfeld and Jonathan Leavitt wanted to test if being spoiled hurt someone’s enjoyment of a story. So they took 30 test subjects and let them read 12 short stories by famous authors like John Updike, Roald Dahl, Anton Chekhov, Agatha Christie and Raymond Carver. Some they just read straight, others they read with a paragraph beforehand that ruined the ending or major twist in the piece. In almost all of those cases, the reader liked the story more when they were spoiled.
Published way back in August, this generated quite a bit of on-line discussion, and a lot of people were quick to suggest that the logic held true for movies as well, and modern blockbusters at that. It seems like a ready-made defense for those posting a constant stream of spoilers for The Dark Knight Rises, or leaking plot twists for various popular television shows. However, I’m not necessarily convinced by this logic.
This survey is suspect…
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Agatha Christie, Anton Chekhov, film spoilers, francis ford coppola, John Updike, movie spoilers, Movies, Nicholas Christenfeld, Raymond Carver, roald dahl, Short story, spoilers, spoiling, University of California San Diego | 2 Comments »
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