Effect of Hedonic Contrasts on Movie Appreciation

A beautiful painting is perceived more positively when it is presented after a painting considered ugly, and vice versa. Such an effect is called hedonic contrast and has been demonstrated with stimuli such as images, paintings, and musical extracts. However, it has never been observed with audiovisual stimuli. In order to fill this gap, a study was designed to test the presence of hedonic contrasts with 40-s movies. One hundred sixty participants were recruited and divided into four groups. In Group 1, participants watched two 40-s movies, one rated as positive and the other as negative. The order was reversed in Group 2. After each movie, participants of these two groups gave their level of appreciation. In Groups 3 and 4, participants watched the same movies in the same order as the first two groups, but gave their ratings only after seeing both movies. All participants gave an appreciation on a 1 to 10 scale, and on a -100 to 100 scale. Results show that the positive movie received significantly higher scores when presented after the negative one, compared to when it was presented first. The negative movie was significantly less appreciated when presented after the positive one. These effects were observed with both scales, but their magnitude was larger with the -100 to 100 scale. Hedonic contrasts occurred when the appreciation was given immediately after the presentation of a movie, but not when it was given only after viewing both movies. The theoretical and applied implications of the results are discussed.