What lies beneath : the impact of gender and personality on film preference

Abstract

This study was a partial replication of Banerjee et al. (2008), focusing on the influence of gender and the personality trait of sensation seeking on film preference.This study used a 2 (Positive mood/negative mood) × 2 (High arousal/low arousal) within-subject design with 282 heterogeneous participants aged from 18 to 65 recruited through convenience sampling. High sensation seekers reported a preference for high arousal ? sad mood films and low sensation seekers preferred low arousal happy mood films. This was the case in two out of four films and partially supported the hypothesis that sensation seeking is positively associated with arousing films. No evidence was found to support the hypothesis that film preference is related to gender, although the general trend was that females preferred happy mood films and males preferred high arousal films.