Do 3D Movies Elicit More Of An Emotional Response Than 2D Films?

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
While the common perception is that watching movies in 3D adds an extra level of excitement and makes the theatrical experience more thrilling and lifelike, new research appearing in a recent edition of the journal PLOS ONE suggests otherwise.
Psychologists from the University of Utah devised the study to investigate whether or not older 2D film clips could produce the desired response in people who are regularly exposed to high-definition 3D video. They recruited 480 participants, showed them both types of film clips, and then gauged their emotional reaction to what they watched.
Four five-minute film clips were selected, each of which prompted one discrete emotion intensely and in context without the need to watch the entire film, the researchers explained. The participants watched both 2D and 3D versions of each film, which included clips from “My Bloody Valentine” (which is associated with fear), “Despicable Me” (amusement), “Tangled” (sadness) and “The Polar Express” (thrill or excitement).
All of the participants were selected at random to view the films in a design that balanced the pairs of films watched, the format which they were viewed in, and the order of presentation. These configurations allowed the study authors to compare not just the emotional responses, but the effects of format and viewing order on the results as well. Overall, they found few significant differences between physiological reactions to the clips.
The researchers used common measures to gauge emotional responses, including palm sweat, breathing and cardiovascular responses such as heart rate. Taking into account the sizable number of tests, the research team said that there was only one primary difference detected between the formats – the number of electrodermal responses (palm sweat) experienced during a thrilling moment in the 3D clip of “The Polar Express.”
The authors believe that this is due to the overall quality, the amount and the variety of 3D effects used in this particular film. Overall, however, the researchers found that the individual differences in anxiety, control of emotional responses or “thrill seeking” did not change the participants’ psychological or physiological responses to 3D viewing.
Thus, differences in personality did not change the fact that 2D and 3D are equally effective when it comes to eliciting emotions. In a statement, study author and assistant professor of psychology Sheila Crowell said that the findings “could be good news for people who would rather not wear 3D glasses or pay the extra money to see these types of films.”
“We set out to learn whether technological advances like 3D enhance the study of emotion, especially for young patients who are routinely exposed to high-tech devices and mediums in their daily lives,” she added. “Both 2D and 3D are equally effective at eliciting emotional responses, which also may mean that the expense involved in producing 3D films is not creating much more than novelty.”
While Crowell and her colleagues note that further research is needed to confirm the findings, they said that researchers who cannot afford 3D technologies should be encouraged by the results. In addition to Crowell, Daniel L. Bride, Brian R. Baucom, Erin A. Kaufman, Caitlin G. O’Connor, Chloe R. Skidmore, and Mona Yaptangco – all of the University of Utah’s Department of Psychology – were credited as authors on the study.
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