Defining the Problem Recent studies have show emotions have been found to have more physical effects than previously thought. Respiration rate, heart rate, and blood pressure are just three of the characteristics that are affected by a person’s emotions. Media such as art, music, literature, and film is very influential in how people feel at a given time. If emotion is induced through these influences, the change in heart rate could be measured by taking the subject’s heart rate before and after the viewing, listening, or reading of the media influence. The purpose of this experiment is to observe the effect of various movie genres on the heart rate of 17 year olds. …show more content…
The data does not support my hypothesis for the sad movie. The average change in heart rate for each movie genre was an increase. As predicted, the horror movie had a very high average change in heart rate while the change in heart rate was lower for the comedy and the drama. The romantic movie had a much higher change in heart rate than expected, but the hypothesis was still supported. The prediction for the sad movie was that the subjects’ heart rates would decrease and create a negative mean change in heart rate. Though there was a decrease in one of the five subjects’ heart rates and no change in two of the five, the average change in heart rate for the sad movie was an increase of 0.8 beats per minute (bpm). However, two of the five subjects had a decrease in heart rate after the drama which created a lower average change in heart rate for this genre at 1.6 bpm. The horror film and the romantic film both had the highest average change in heart rate at a 4.6 bpm increase. Romantic movies could have a greater effect on teenagers because their hormones are changing and therefore a little romance could increase their heart …show more content…
The more intense the movie, the more of an increase the heart rate experiences. Further possible investigations include the effect of different techniques in horror movies such as suspense, gore, jump scares, and dark voyeur on heart rate. Another investigation could be the effect of the length of a video clip on heart rate; two-and-a-half minutes may not be enough time for the subject to fully comprehend the scene and react