On the cognitive neuroscience of soap watching

[MarkH]

That is an excellent, excellent, excellent point!

What is "addicting" to a Days viewer may not be for a Y&R or OLTL viewer.

Damn, I would love to be doing that study!

[JackPeyton]

But the thing is, look at GH & YR's ratings.... they are falling. fast. so its not working, thats not the answer.

furthermore look at Days, its growing, fast, and its not about bad people doing bad things.

[MarkH]

Yes, and I think that gets at the point that different audiences watch different shows for different reasons.

Part of the Days ratings miracle this year HAS to be the baby switch. And that has a bunch of pretty "bad" people at the core (Nicole, EJ, Sami, Stefano). I realize they're all more "grey" than "black" these days, but you get my point....

[Sylph]

So this study's bullsh!t. Turns out.

[MarkH]

So, I have found a partial excerpt of the study. If you can excuse the usual academic verbiage, here is the abstract.

They lay out their argument as follows:

They have this interesting thing to say about why people watch soaps:

The theoretical basis for this work is "disposition theory". Here is a snippet about what that means:

The study was therefore driven by three hypotheses:

A succinct summary of methodology is as follows:

Now, this study went on to use HUGE samples. The student sample was 527 undergraduates. About a 10th of the sample each watched one random week of the show. Then they answered questions about viewing habits, character evaluation and show evaluation.

Almost more interesting is the fan sample and Neilsen sample used!

So the sample sizes were quite interesting. The "target age" information is very fascinating, because it is even younger than the 'desirable' Neilsen demo!

Now, the paper is far more detailed, but the figure below shows an interesting trend analysis linking "DT Vector" with ratings over the ten week period (in the 18-24 demo). The DT vector is a multiplicative function of a character's likeability, the "justness" of his/her outcome, and the importance of that character to the viewership. (The sum function shows that this is combined over each of the 12 focal characters studied during the time period)

Their ultimate conclusion, then (which I think we could debate--and which does not seem immediately generalizable beyond the DOOL young sample) is

As some of you have pointed out, the study would have wider generalizability if audiences of different shows were assessed and (of course) if audiences of different ages were assessed. But it is noteworthy that this study, funded by NBC, was (logically) focused on only their one show, and their desired demographic.

It is also interesting to me that they chose to do this research with DOOL, but not Passions. It suggests that even by 2005, they were not really investing in saving Passions.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

GH has been mob-centric for over a decade, that isn't anything new.

Y&R has only been this morbid overall with this current writing regime. Y&R thrived on being a more subtle soap for years. It was #1 in demos, households, and viewers, so clearly something about it was working that wasn't depressing and morbid. Yet now the #1 soap has to adopt a strategy that's more "dark?" Yeah, I think it's another failed excuse to defend the crappy Y&R writers right now...

[Sylph]

Yup.

[MarkH]

As I think got established up-thread, these results are really only generalizable directly to DOOL, and for the period of the 2004-2005 era where this study is done.

I'm not so sure the results are generalizable to other shows, but I think the methdology is. In that sense, it would be fascinating to affirm what is implied by your note: that the preferences of Y&R viewers in the desired demo differ from those of other soaps. But it would be nice to see this approach applied in a rational way to all the soaps: quantify what the target viewers want/prefer, give it to 'em, and see if it affects ratings. Seems pretty basic, huh?

[Sylph]

Wait. You've just said the opposite a few posts ago.

[Ann_SS]

I do find it interesting that this study is so recent. So despite the pronouncements that NBC wanted out of the soap business and that Days was doomed, the network was paying these people to conduct research about how to save Days.

Mark, thanks for sharing this insightful study. However, you posted the excerpts without the reference which is not done. Here is the reference for anyone who wants to read the whole article: Ren Weber, Ron Tamborini, Hye Eun Lee, Horst Stipp. Soap Opera Exposure and Enjoyment: A Longitudinal Test of Disposition Theory. Media Psychology, Volume 11, Issue 4. October 2008. pages 462 - 487.

[RomeAt50]

I have always believed that you can get too much of a good thing. Some things become exhausting or boring if you get too much of it. But the networks are often too simplistic in their thinking and once they realize viewers like something they frequently go overboard.

[jfung79]

Thanks for your recognition of the generalizing point I made in my post, MarkH!

It seems from the excerpts like the study is about viewers liking it when good things happen to good characters and liking it when bad characters get their just punishment (but not too much or too little punishment). And the study recognizes that a character can change over time, so does allow for complexity in character development.

That seems to be different from what was stated before that the study showed viewers liked watching bad people do bad things.

Also, the graph you posted is of weekly ratings and the model doesn't even seem to predict those perfectly, never mind day-to-day fluctuations. Could this maybe be a different study?

I don't think it's really that surprising that viewers want characters they care about and think highly of to be rewarded, and the ones they don't like to be punished, and will watch more when something like that happens. It seems like that's all the study was confirming.

[MarkH]

No, my original summary was from a verbal conversation with one of the investigators. Once I tracked down the source, I could be more precise.

I really think this question about whether shows attract audiences with different preferred moral configurations is quite interesting....

ETA: There are also fMRI findings that obviously didn't make it into the article (and, as near as I can tell, are unpublished). These ostensibly tell us about the activation of the brain's reward network when they get scenes that are in their "desired configuration".

[Paul Raven]

This is all very interesting,but really,who at NBC decided to waste this money on the research?

Why do they try to impose scientific/behavioral research on something that can not be quantified?

Sample 10,100 or 1000 soap viewers and you will get responses as different as the people themselves.

Looking at the state of Days at that time,anyone with a modicum of knowledge about soaps could have told them what was wrong with the shows.

Networks and movie studios spend millions on research,only to have it proved wrong over and over again,yet everyone is too caught up in the 'machine' to admit the emperor has no clothes.

The networks want to make money and see the soaps as nothing more than that.It has always been the case,and that was fine back in the day when the shows raked in millions and ratings were healthy.

Once the soaps got high profile,everyone got more greedy and execs started to interfere,figuring they could make even more.

Look at Guiding Light.Once the axe fell,they started to bring back old characters,saying that's what viewers deserved and wanted.

If they knew that,why didn't they do it before?Probably,because the party line was bring in younger 'sexier' characters and no-one would stand up against it.

I think that we at the message boards represent an minute percentage of viewers.Most,especially in the desired demographic,watch the show fairly regularly and take what is given at face value.Maybe they will flick through a SOD at the checkout,but that is the extent of their interest in anything going on beyond what they see each day.

They are drifting away because of all the other entertainment/leisure options and the fact that the shows themselves no longer provide the same level of involvement/interest.

[lmfan]

Very interesting but the problem I have with research like this is that it can be used incorrectly and summarized down to so called "truths" that don't factor in the complexity of the fans reaction to certain characters and storylines.

For example, this researcher found that people like bad characters doing bad things, but his own research says that viewers also enjoy the bad characters paying for their crimes and good characters being rewarded for their goodness (based on your snippets of the research). Also that characters can change over time and so can the viewers reaction to them which seems to me would make gray character more valuable that just black and white characters. If a character is always bad and never has to pay that is just as bad as a good character that is always good and considered boring.

No matter how interesting this type of research may be, I would not want a show written based on the results of a 6 week study and the views of college students, many of whom may be new viewers who have not invested years into a show.

I wonder if NBC was looking to see how to appeal to this target audience only (new, young viewers)so I don't think it can be generalized to the soap viewing audience as a whole.

Still thought provoking though.