Ashlynn Parker
AP Scholar
Class of 2024
Email: ashlynnnichole05@outlook.com
Does sight or sound have a greater emotional effect in surprising movie scenes?
With the popularity of media rising we see there is a problem with emotions being accurately portrayed in the media. Despite the need for humans to be able to emotionally connect, scenes are being overly dramatized and if continued this may cause an impact on mental illness and emotional acceptance towards rising generations. Surprise is an overly dramatized emotion in film as people often react or “jump” when surprised in movies. The amygdala is a necessary part of the brain that reacts to surprising or scary scenes and instructs your body on how to respond to unexpected or frightening events. This affects your brain, heart, lungs, and hormones. (Brownlowe, 2023) Surprising events affect your whole body and it's important to understand what causes your emotions. The American Psychological Association addresses the effect of dramatized emotion on mental health by stating, “Overall, all types of news media consumption increased emotional distress, but television and social media exposure were more strongly associated”(Huff, 2022). This problem negatively impacts rising generations as their mental health, as well as daily interaction with others is being affected by dramatized portrayal of emotion. A possible cause of this problem is a lack of knowledge of what causes audiences of movies to have an emotional connection as well as an emotional response. A study focusing on specific emotions to discover what causes an emotional response will help impact accurate connections and emotions being portrayed in the film industry.
Emotion is an important part of everything we do, and how we react to what we see and hear can impact our every day lives. My study will help to discover the importance of hearing as well as seeing and the reaction that causes us in terms of surprise. The significance of this study as it furthers the understanding of emotional response and the impact the rise of media has on daily encounters. This research is significant as it can aim to bridge sound and sight as senses to a similar purpose.
This research is significant as the findings show evidence for a new understanding of human emotion. This research leads to an understanding of emotion and may lead to further accurate emotional portrayals in films. This research, if continued, would allow for sound to be more prominent in films and therefore could create stronger emotional pulls.
I decided to use exploratory research in the form of surveys to explore sound and sight effects on surprise. I had participants watch and listen to scenes from four movies (Legally Blonde, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Five Feet Apart, and Meet Joe Black) and share their emotional responses with both audio and visual excerpts for each movie. Each movie was meant to showcase a different type of surprise such as sadness and fear. I then compared these survey results to discover a trend using a quantitative correlational approach to explore this. A quantitative approach was used to take a statistical lens to see the difference between the effects of sound and sight. I used a correlational approach as I then compared these results to emotion. This correlational approach was necessary to find the correlation between sound and emotion as well as sight and emotion. I investigated the everyday experience of human's response to media while connecting it to the everyday feeling and emotion of surprise. A quantitative correlation approach was a necessity to be able to understand my results and to find a correlation.
We see a gap and need of knowledge in this area as there has been research of medias impact on both sight and sound but none comparing the two. In comparing sight and sound we will be able to understand the importance of each sense in the impact of emotion. This study is important and neccesairy to understand daily human reaction and emotional impact of rising media.
My hypothesis is that sight will have a greater response to surprise specifically I assume this because people often react emotionally to what they see. As someone with the gift of sight and sound, this may cause a bias as some people may have a diffrence reaction if they are deaf or blind. My next steps would be to further my understanding of emotions such as sadness and if the sound or the look of someone crying causes you to cry and focus the effect on movies as well.
39 individuals from age 13 to 75 participated in my study and each participant gave their informed consent. The majority of my participants were between age 16-25. . 59.3% of my 39 participants found that the audio clips caused them to feel more surprised while 40.7 % found that slight gave the participants more feelings of surprise. This answers my question in stating sound has a greater effect than sight in surprising movie scenes.
My study involved two variables: the effects of sound on emotion and the effects of sight on emotion. These were my two changing values and my overall goal of the study was to discover which of these two variables had a greater effect. The constant of my study is emotion, as the percentage of emotion based on the two variables of sight and sound are the focus points
Implications that can be taken from my study is learning that surprise is an emotion that can be felt as a response to movies. This study fills in the gap of the lack of research comparing sight as well as focusing on surprise as an emotion. An implication may be that sound is only more effective on surprise and not other emotions
Future researchers can test my study with the other six emotions to see if sound is universally more effective or only for specific emotions such as surprise. My study can lead to future studies in the field of cinematography by understanding how filmmakers target emotions to audiences this could impact the overall quality of the film.
In refuting my hypothesis, I learned a lot about the process of my research method. My research method was a successful outlook in discovering a correlation between sight and sound in emotion. I was surprised by my overall results learning that by 9% sound is more effective than sight in surprise. If I could repeat this process, I would have changed my process by choosing a narrower scope and focusing on just sound then just sight so I could ensure nothing was overlooked in collecting results. Implications that can be taken from my study is learning that surprise is an emotion that can be felt as a response to movies. This study fills in the gap of the lack of research comparing sight as well as focusing on surprise as an emotion.n. This research leads to an understanding of emotion and may lead to further accurate emotional portrayals in films. This research, if continued, would allow for sound to be more prominent in films and therefore could create stronger emotional pulls.
Paul Ekmans Seven Universal Emotion Study
Ekman, P. (1999). Basic-Emotions.pdf. Paul Ekman Group. https://www.paulekman.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Basic-Emotions.pdf
Harrison, T. (2022). Sound design for film. The Crowood Press.
Justus, T. (2022). Constructing Film Emotions The Theory of Constructed Emotion as a Biocultural Framework for Cognitive Film Theory. Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 16(2), 74+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A714170793/PPPC?u=bonn54603&sid=bookmark-PPPC&xid=d6cd41a7
Neta, M., & Kim, M. J. (2023). Surprise as an Emotion: A Response to Ortony. Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 18(4), 854–862. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916221132789