Neuroscience
If you want to know whether you're going to enjoy a movie, the opinion of professional film critics might not be the best place to find out. Jonathan Plucker and colleagues compared the ratings given to films by professional critics, "amateur critics", and undergrad students, and discovered a continuum of overlapping opinion with the experts being the harshest judges, followed by the amateur critics, while the students were the most generous.
A further finding to emerge was that undergrads who'd watched more films tended to provide harsher ratings, but these were still more generous on average than the amateur and professional critics.
Plucker's team said this is one of the first studies to compare expert and lay opinion on films in a systematic way. Their results involved the assessment of 680 films dating from 2001 and 2005, with professional ratings garnered from metacritic.com and amateur critics' ratings taken from www.imdb.com and www.boxofficemojo.com. One hundred and sixty-nine undergrads provided their ratings for comparison.
The researchers said their findings support the idea of "creative gatekeepers" who help society decide what products in a given realm are truly creative. A continuum of film opinion suggests different people might best be served by different gatekeepers. They explained: "a gatekeeper for one person may be a well-known critic, for another, novice critics on the most popular film sites; and for yet another, their next-door neighbour or best friend."
_________________________________
Plucker, J., Kaufman, J., Temple, J., & Qian, M. (2009). Do experts and novices evaluate movies the same way? Psychology and Marketing, 26 (5), 470-478 DOI: 10.1002/mar.20283
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Thor Doesn't Nail It In 3d
The second Thor movie opens in the UK later this week. Is it worth paying the extra to see Thor's hammer in three dimensions? A soon-to-be published psychology study suggests probably not. Brendan Rooney and Eilis Hennessy surveyed 225 cinema-goers...
- Movies Like Elizabeth I Can Help Students Learn History
It's late one Friday afternoon with "double history" looming. But you arrive at class and your prayers are answered: the teacher says that for today's lesson you're going to be watching the popular film Elizabeth I. According to a new study,...
- Watch A Movie, Learn A New Language...?
How cool would it be if you could learn a new language simply by watching subtitled foreign films? So far, research has shown that you can certainly learn new vocabulary this way, but not grammar. Now Sven Van Lommel and colleagues at the University...
- The Misrepresentation Of Coma In Films
The unrealistic portrayal of coma in films could be misleading the general public at a time when society has been so bitterly divided by the ethical issues raised by high-profile cases like that of Terri Schiavo. She died last year after her feeding tube...
- Alzheimer's Disease: Sarah Polley's Movie, Away From Her
Sarah Polley has won another award for her movie: From The Vancouver Sun: Polley wins N.Y. film critics award CanWest News Service Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley has won the New York Film Critics Circle's best...
Neuroscience
Do professional movie critics evaluate films the same way as the rest of us?
If you want to know whether you're going to enjoy a movie, the opinion of professional film critics might not be the best place to find out. Jonathan Plucker and colleagues compared the ratings given to films by professional critics, "amateur critics", and undergrad students, and discovered a continuum of overlapping opinion with the experts being the harshest judges, followed by the amateur critics, while the students were the most generous.A further finding to emerge was that undergrads who'd watched more films tended to provide harsher ratings, but these were still more generous on average than the amateur and professional critics.
Plucker's team said this is one of the first studies to compare expert and lay opinion on films in a systematic way. Their results involved the assessment of 680 films dating from 2001 and 2005, with professional ratings garnered from metacritic.com and amateur critics' ratings taken from www.imdb.com and www.boxofficemojo.com. One hundred and sixty-nine undergrads provided their ratings for comparison.
The researchers said their findings support the idea of "creative gatekeepers" who help society decide what products in a given realm are truly creative. A continuum of film opinion suggests different people might best be served by different gatekeepers. They explained: "a gatekeeper for one person may be a well-known critic, for another, novice critics on the most popular film sites; and for yet another, their next-door neighbour or best friend."
_________________________________
Plucker, J., Kaufman, J., Temple, J., & Qian, M. (2009). Do experts and novices evaluate movies the same way? Psychology and Marketing, 26 (5), 470-478 DOI: 10.1002/mar.20283Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Thor Doesn't Nail It In 3d
The second Thor movie opens in the UK later this week. Is it worth paying the extra to see Thor's hammer in three dimensions? A soon-to-be published psychology study suggests probably not. Brendan Rooney and Eilis Hennessy surveyed 225 cinema-goers...
- Movies Like Elizabeth I Can Help Students Learn History
It's late one Friday afternoon with "double history" looming. But you arrive at class and your prayers are answered: the teacher says that for today's lesson you're going to be watching the popular film Elizabeth I. According to a new study,...
- Watch A Movie, Learn A New Language...?
How cool would it be if you could learn a new language simply by watching subtitled foreign films? So far, research has shown that you can certainly learn new vocabulary this way, but not grammar. Now Sven Van Lommel and colleagues at the University...
- The Misrepresentation Of Coma In Films
The unrealistic portrayal of coma in films could be misleading the general public at a time when society has been so bitterly divided by the ethical issues raised by high-profile cases like that of Terri Schiavo. She died last year after her feeding tube...
- Alzheimer's Disease: Sarah Polley's Movie, Away From Her
Sarah Polley has won another award for her movie: From The Vancouver Sun: Polley wins N.Y. film critics award CanWest News Service Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley has won the New York Film Critics Circle's best...