AsianScientist (Aug. 25, 2017) – Social media is a treacherous minefield on Monday mornings. One moment you’re innocently scrolling through babies and cats on Facebook; the next, you’ve found out what happened in the latest Game of Thrones episode—the one you still haven’t seen because it airs at 9 am on a workday in Asia. Thanks, friends in the US!
Nobody likes spoilers; in fact, we go to great lengths to avoid them. News outlets preface them with warnings in all-caps, and users of online forums flag or censor them in their posts. They might even come in handy as weapons—there is an unconfirmed report of a woman taking revenge on her ex by texting him juicy details from each new episode of Game of Thrones.
Our revulsion for spoilers sometimes even extends to real life events. During the last Olympics, the spoiler-averse reacted with righteous indignation when the media dared to do its job of reporting sporting results as they happened.
Are spoilers really that terrifying? While unsolicited advance knowledge of GoT plot points annoys me, the truth is that it rarely bothers me once I finally get around to watching the episode. Does knowing what happens really take away from our enjoyment of stories in television shows, movies and books?
Plot psychology
According to psychologists at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), quite the opposite is true. Counterintuitively, spoiling stories for people can actually enhance their enjoyment of them, they found in a 2011 study.
The researchers had subjects read short stories from three different genres: stories with an ironic twist, mysteries, and literary stories. While one group read the stories untouched, the researchers spoiled the tales for a second group by giving them a short introductory paragraph that revealed their endings. Both groups were then asked to rate their enjoyment of the stories.
Across all three genres, subjects reported that they enjoyed the spoiled stories more than the unspoiled ones—a difference that was small but statistically significant.
Does this increased enjoyment come simply from knowing how a story ends? To test this, the researchers followed up with a study that asked subjects to rate stories while they were only midway through reading them. Once again, subjects rated spoiled stories more highly than unspoiled ones, suggesting that something else is at play besides the sense of an ending.
What is going on? Spoilers might increase our enjoyment of stories by helping us better understand where the overall narrative is going, think the authors. Knowing that the wife in the tale killed her husband with a frozen leg of lamb (Roald Dahl’s Lamb To The Slaughter, one of the stories in the first study) removes the need to worry about the plot, leaving you free to enjoy other aspects of the story—the characters, the poetry of the writing, and the humor, for instance.
These findings might also explain why many of us can experience certain cherished movies or books over and over again, and enjoy them more, not less, each time.
The authors even muse that their findings could apply outside of fiction, to real world events. “Other intuitions about suspense may be similarly wrong: Perhaps birthday presents are better when wrapped in cellophane, and engagement rings when not concealed in chocolate mousse,” they write (spoiler: more fieldwork is obviously required).
Bring on the surprises
Having read George RR Martin’s books, I can vouch for the fact that knowledge of the plot in no way diminished my enjoyment of Game of Thrones’ earlier seasons. In fact, the books’ backstories and detailed world-building probably enhanced the experience.
Being in the business of science and stories myself, I’m invariably fascinated by studies like the two mentioned above. But while the research suggests that I should perhaps be seeking out Monday morning spoilers instead of avoiding them like the plague, I’m still inclined to stick to the second course of action.
For one, short stories and epic, multi-volume works like Game of Thrones (or A Song of Ice and Fire, as the book series is called) are two very different beasts—people have invested years in the latter, and many quite understandably don’t want their experience of a long-awaited next installment spoiled.
For another, some of my most memorable experiences of entertainment are closely tied to the element of surprise. I remember clearly how I felt when major characters met untimely ends, when omniscient narrators got sucked into the story, when completely unexpected plot twists blew my mind and took my breath away. While repeated readings or viewings may deepen our appreciation of a work, there will always be something special about experiencing it for the first time.
So, I’ve decided: no spoilers for next week’s Game of Thrones season finale, please. If you need me, I’ll be hiding in my cave.
This article is from a monthly column called The Bug Report. Click here to see the other articles in this series.
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
