What are the Psychological Factors Influencing Movie Preferences?

[letsfailsafe]

I have realized patterns throughout talking to people about: movie genres, movie quotes and actors.

From my school, people with high academic achievements, broad general knowledge and good thinking skills tends to like more 'artistic', highly rated and 'award winning' movies. I will call these type of movies: A type movies.
Examples: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Silence of the Lambs, Memento, The Shawshank Redemption and Fight Club.

People who aren't interested in academic fields tends to be more interested in movies with low ratings and 'not award winning' movies. I will call these type of movies: B type movies.
Examples: Resident Evil, GI Joe, Olympus Has Fallen and HitmanAfter reading many film reviews and talking about movies like Fight Club and Memento, people who likes A type movies tends to have better understanding of the movies. But people who likes B type movies tends not...

These patterns I have written up here are obviously extremely simplified and many important factors have been ignored. (such as past life experience)

Is there any related psychology research done? (I can't find any...)

 

[Evo]

Some of the most successful scientists I've known loved awful movies and bad tv.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Sounds like a case of confirmation bias to me. Have you any hard data showing a correlation between careers/academic achievements and media preferences? I'm unaware of any and it's a stereotype that "smart people" like art-house, indie and alternative movies and "average people" like Hollywood action blockbusters with no plot and lots of explosions.

Because of this stereotype (which is related to others like the socially awkward genius and the popular dumb kids) you notice it when it's true but not so much when it isn't.

Either way first you should confirm (with proper resrarch) the initial assumption that said correlations exist before trying to find a reason for them.

 

[Monique]

I think there might be truth in it. Clearly broadcasting stations take it into account their audience and there is a difference between television programming for the educated and uneducated. I could name examples, but you'd not be familiar with it. *edit* well, let's take NPR as an example media. Clearly that station has an above average educated audience http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/audience.html (click "about the audience").

Here one citation of the movie industry, no link to an actual study unfortunately.

The demographic characteristics for specialist cinema audiences differ in important respects from commercial cinemas audiences. There is a noticeably higher proportion of people in education or with higher educational qualifications.
http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/resources/how-to-start-a-local-cinema/understanding-audiences/demographic

Demographics of television shows: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/Arts_audiences_insight.pdf

 

[micromass]

There might be some truth to it. For example, this chart relates the SAT scores with favorite music.
However, somehow the link to the website doesn't work anymore, and I can find no publication, so do take it with a grain of salt.

http://img.labnol.org/files/music-that-makes-you-dumb.png

 

[DiracPool]

Red Hot Chili Peppers?

 

[Evo]

There might be some truth to it. For example, this chart relates the SAT scores with favorite music.
However, somehow the link to the website doesn't work anymore, and I can find no publication, so do take it with a grain of salt.

[PLAIN]http://img.labnol.org/files/music-that-makes-you-dumb.png[/QUOTE]Here.

Sadly though (for fans of the intelligent music), the study by Mr Griffith was rather un-scientific. The US based study used Facebook to find out the most popular music at colleges around the country and then got their average SAT scores to plot a graph that looked something like the one you see above. Other issues include classical music as a genre rating poorly while Beethovan rates off the charts.
Griffith himself states it's not really accurate but fun none the less.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-03/does-your-taste-music-reflect-your-intelligence

 

[micromass]

An actual paper. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bdm.730/abstract

http://www.psmag.com/culture-society/classical-music-linked-to-high-intelligence-27959/

 

[Tsunoyukami]

Until very recently I disliked horror films. I found them predictable (and therefore boring) and was often irritated by the stupidity of the characters involved in the situations.

However, I elected to take Horror Film as a general interest course to fill in my schedule this past semester and I loved it. I now have a much greater appreciation for the horror genre - and I feel as if I "understand" the genre much better from a variety of perspectives.

Admittedly, I did not attend many of the lectures throughout the semester - which was really a three-hour period in which films were screened (I opted to watch them outside of class on my own time) and very little discussion occurred. However, I attended all the tutorials (which were heavily discussion and analysis based0 and completed all the readings. Surprisingly, many of the readings were very interesting. I was shocked at the level of analysis and the variety of perspectives through which horror films (especially the more popular ones) have been analyzed. I can't say anything particularly scientific about the question of whether or not ones taste in film etc. is related to their intelligence. However, I can say that I believe that the majority (if not all) of entertainment can be watched in both a 'mindless' and an 'intelligent' manner.

 

[Curious3141]

"the study by Mr Griffith was rather un-scientific."

*Very* unscientific, I would say. Anyone who knew the slightest about music would classify Rage Against the Machine as "Metal" instead of "Rock". Well, technically, they're a rap-metal fusion, but definitely more metal.

 

[D H]

Some of the most successful scientists I've known loved awful movies and bad tv.

I'm not a successful scientist, but I loved the stuff produced by Best Brains, Inc.

This stuff:

A man and his robot sidekicks trapped on a space station by an evil scientist are forced to watch a selection of bad movies, often (but not limited to) science fiction B-movies. To stay sane they give a lowbrow running commentary on the films they are watching. Awful movies and bad tv. Can it possibly get any better than that? A sampling:

 

[Evo]

I *Love* MST3K!

 

[DiracPool]

I *Love* MST3K!

Crow or Tom Servo? I go with Crow, he's my boy.