Abstract

Consumers have shown varied moods and emotional responses to every movie that had hit the market and this increased the attention of the respective researchers. Similarly, despite the continuous production of movies for the sake of the audience, little has been documented on how the member’s mood influence their opinion of the movie. The general understanding of the relationship between a person’s mood and experience can be related to what had already been researched. It is vividly stipulated that happiness, sadness, anxiety and disappointments play a significant role in determining the consumer’s perception of the movie (Jarvis, MacKenzie, & Podsakoff, 2003). The purpose of this study is to give an in-depth understanding of how the moods of those individuals who attend theaters to watch movies affect their opinion of the movie.

Hypothesis

The research will entail exposing participants with different moods to a selected movie theater. The movie that will be selected for this research is The Graduate. It is a comical movie and will make the audience laugh. As a resaercher, I will test the effect the audiences’ mood will have on their opinion of the movie.

1. After viewing scenes from the movie, The Graduate, audience members with happy mood will have positive opinion on the movie.
2. After viewing the scenes from the movie, The Graduate, audience members with sad mood will have negative opinion on the movie.

The elements under study are either happy or sad. Their condition will influence their opinion about the movie after watching it. When an individual is in a happy mood, he/she will always provide a positive opinion about the movie. Therefore, there is a direct relationship between happy mood and positive opinion. Such people will be willing to provide information on what they have seen in the movie since they have the ability to recall positive information. On the other hand, when a person is in a bad mood, there is a high chance of giving negative feedback about the movie. They will be reluctant to say what they saw in the movie because they cannot recall anything.

Method Section

Participants

A total of 40 students will participate in this experiment. All the participants will be undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Colorado. The method that will be used to select the participant is a voluntary system. The researcher will visit the institution and ask for participation after getting approval from the professor. Also, it is recommended that those who will participate will receive extra credit from their lecturer. The elements under study will be grouped randomly as happy mood and sad mood.

Design

The design of this particular research will be a correlational study. The researcher will try to determine if there is a correlation between happy or sad mood and audience members’ opinion about the movie. Similarly, if there are no associations between the two variables, then the researcher will conclude that there are no causal connections between happy or sad mood and audience members’ opinion on the movie. The researcher will use happy and sad mood as the predictor variables since they are the ones that will influence the audience members’ opinion on the movie. On the other hand, the criterion variable will be the audience members’ opinion on the movie because the variable will be influenced by happy or sad moods of the members.

The direction of the relationship between two variable will be described as either positive or negative. Similarly, the researcher will describe the strength of the relationship between the two variable using the correlation coefficient, r (DePaulo, & Kashy, 2005). For example, when the value of r is closer to + or -1.0 then he/she will conclude that there is a stronger relationship between the two variables.

Procedure

The researcher will randomly assign the participants in either happy or sad group. The comical movie clip will be shown to all the subjects. The researcher will also assess the mood stimuli and the dependent variable.

The researcher will conduct the experiment for groups of 10 or more and within each group; the subjects will be randomly assigned to either happy or sad mood. The participants will be instructed to sit on any seat upon entering the room. After all the participants are sitted, they will be handed questionnaires that will help them during the study. The packets containing the questionnaires will be unknown to both the subjects and the researcher since they will determine if the participant is in a happy or sad mood.

The participants will read and then sign a consent form before watching the movie. After agreeing to participate, the subjects will be shown a movie scene that will take approximately 10 minutes. Both the participants in the happy and sad group will receive gifts for their participation. The researcher will provide the participants with gifts as an incentive and also to maintain their various mood states. After going through the incentives, the participants will fill the question about their opinion on the movie.

Measures    

The researcher will quantify and tally the data using the ordinal scale. The selected measure will assess the following three questions.

1. What is your feedback about the first scene of the movie?

Excellent                         Good                     Average                     Poor

2. How many times do you feel like watching this movie?

1-3 times                         3- 4 times                4- 5 times             Never

3. What is your overall rating of the movie?

Highly Satisfactory       Satisfactory            Neutral                    Unsatisfactory

Highly Unsatisfactory

Discussion Section

After the participants have viewed the movie, those with happy mood will have a positive opinion of the movie. On the other hand, the participant with sad mood will have a negative opinion of the movie. Assuming that I have collected and analyzed the data, and found a correlation coefficient of 0.72, the following will be the interpretation. This correlation coefficient is closer to +1, and it implies that there is a stronger correlation between mood and movie opinion. Therefore, the relationship between the audience members’ mood and their opinion on the movie is very strong.

Some of the three possible causal relationships between mood and movie opinion include the following. First, since the participants were students, exams might cause a positive or negative influence on a person’s mood on his/her opinion about the movie. If a student had passed the assignment and immediately participates in the experiment, he/she will have a happy mood which will positively influence his/her opinion on the movie. On the other hand, if the student had failed the exam, he/she will have a sad mood. Sad mood will have a negative influence on the opinion of the movie. Second, conflicts among students might result in a causal relationship between mood and movie opinion. Conflicts create sad mood among students, and this will negatively influence their opinion on the movie. Third, motivation is another factor that can cause the relationship between mood and opinion in the movie. Motivated students will develop happy mood, and they will provide positive opinions on the movie.

Reference

DePaulo, B. M., & Kashy, D. A. (2005). Everyday lies in close and casual relationships. Journal of personality and social psychology, 74(1), 63.

Jarvis, C. B., MacKenzie, S. B., & Podsakoff, P. M. (2003). A critical review of construct indicators and measurement model misspecification in marketing and consumer research. Journal of consumer research, 30(2), 199-218.

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