The emotional and cognitive effect of immersion in film viewing

TLDR

The study tests how immersion affects viewers’ emotions and genre categorisation. Participants watched an animated film in either a low‑immersive 3D or a high‑immersive CAVE setting, then rated emotions and categorized the film into action, drama, comedy, or non‑fiction genres, with both fictional‑world and artefact emotions assessed. Higher immersion intensified both fictional‑world and artefact emotions but did not affect genre categorisation, suggesting immersion mainly increases emotional arousal.

Abstract

This brief report presents an experiment testing the effect of immersion on emotional responses and cognitive genre categorisation of film viewers. Immersion of a film presentation was varied by presenting an animated movie either in a 3D-viewing condition (low immersive condition) or in a CAVE condition (high immersive condition, comparable to virtual reality experience). Viewers rated their emotions and categorised the movies into four basic film genres (action, drama, comedy, and non-fiction). Two distinct types of emotion were measured: Fictional World emotions (e.g., sadness) in response to the presented fictional events and Artefact emotions in response to the film as an artefact (e.g., fascination). Results showed that stronger immersion led to more intense emotions but did not influence genre categorisation. In line with expectations, both types of emotional response were intensified by high immersion. The results are explained by suggesting that highly immersive cinema has its impact on a basic dimension of emotion, namely arousal that underlies both types of emotions.