Inc.
Forget genres, what truly hooks you may be a character’s motives, choices and behaviour.
Scientists Just Discovered How the Movies You Like Reveal Your Specific Personality Type
Author: Jeff Haden
I like movies in which a character trains and improves. (Like Rocky.) I like movies in which a character protects the vulnerable. (The Equalizer series.) I don’t particularly like — I don’t dislike them, but I don’t seek them out — movies in which characters bond with friends or act on rage.
What does that say about me? According to a preprint of a new study, I’m relatively high in Openness and relatively low in Extraversion, two of the Big 5 personality traits. In short, my personality traits predict the narrative elements I’ll find engaging.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Big 5, here’s a quick summary.
- Openness: Measures imagination, curiosity, and a drive for novelty. High scorers enjoy art and abstract ideas. Low scorers prefer familiar routines.
- Conscientiousness: Reflects organization, responsibility, and persistence toward goals. High scorers plan and meet deadlines. Low scorers tend to be more spontaneous or disorganized.
- Extraversion: Captures energy, sociability, and assertiveness. High scorers thrive in groups and social settings. Low scorers (introverts) prefer quiet time and lower stimulation.
- Agreeableness: Measures an orientation toward compassion, trust, and cooperation. High scorers value social harmony. Low scorers are more competitive or skeptical.
- Neuroticism: Evaluates emotional stability and vulnerability to stress. High scorers experience more anxiety or mood shifts. Low scorers remain calm under pressure.
The study explains why you may gravitate towards a certain genre, but not enjoy every movie in that category. Being high in Openness, for example, predicts preferences for characters engaging in exploration and reasoning, not for all aspects of science fiction or fantasy.
In my case, I like action movies, but action for the sake of action? Not so much.
As the researchers write:
The predicted links were not between personality traits and broad genre categories such as horror or romance, but between traits and specific narrative ingredients tied to identifiable motivational mechanisms.
[For example], Agreeableness predicted stronger responses to characters showing warmth, compassion, and forgiveness, and reduced interest in characters acting on rage and seeking revenge.
This level of specificity is consistent with an account in which each ingredient activates a distinct motivational system, and personality traits modulate the sensitivity of these systems independently.
In simple terms, the ingredients of a movie matter more than the genre. My wife isn’t keen on Westerns, but she really enjoyed Old Henry. She likes characters who turn out to be more than they seem. She likes underdogs who turn out to be overdogs. She also really liked the Netflix series Godless. The fact that it’s a Western was irrelevant: The characters’ motivations and behaviors are what drew her in.
As the researchers write:
Take fear of predators and fear of aggressors: they also correlate in both preferences and films. Yet these two forms of threat processing are routed through distinct neural circuits, and the distinction maps onto recognizable differences in fiction: stories built around monstrous creatures engage a different kind of horror than stories featuring human enemies, and critically, they are not preferred by the same individuals to the same degree.
The correlation between ingredients likely reflects the narrative efficiency of co-activating related but functionally independent systems, not the operation of a single motivational mechanism.
So yeah: Your personality helps predict the type of movie you like, but it’s complicated. People high in Conscientiousness like movies in which characters defend their values, condemn wrongdoing, and are celebrated as heroes, but so do people high in Agreeableness. And if a character doesn’t commit romantically, or doesn’t nurture a child? People high in Conscientiousness might sour on that character, and therefore on the movie.
Bottom line? The movies you like say something about you on a deeper level than “I like rom-coms” or “I like horror.”
You may tend to enjoy certain genres, but what you really like is when characters display motivations and behaviors that line up with how you see yourself, and your place in the world.
I like movies in which people on the downside of advantage find a way to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to overcome their shortcomings. I like movies in which the underdog wins.
More to the point, I like underdogs in real life. I like to be underestimated. I like when people shouldn’t be judged by the cover of their book. I have a soft spot for honest, hardworking strivers, and that doesn’t just guide my movie choices.
It also guides my behavior.
If you like a little food for thought and introspection, go to page 2 of the pre-print of the study to see which narrative ingredients you tend to like, and what that says about your personality type. (It’s always fun to uncover insights about what makes you tick.) You can also take one of the free tests (there are plenty; here’s one) to see where you fall on the scale of each of the Big 5 traits.
You’ll probably learn why you like certain movies.
More importantly, you’ll learn a little something about yourself.
Win-win.
Credits: TCA, LLC.