14 DAY TRIAL // Most people are annoyed out of their mind when the most exciting moment of the movie or TV show they're watching is interrupted by a set of mindless commercials, but scientists now claim that this is for the best. In other words, the ads that are aired at various intervals throughout the usual program play an important part in the dynamics of our mind – because otherwise we would not enjoy the show as much, the investigators say. And this holds true for everything we watch on TV.
“The punch line is that commercials make TV programs more enjoyable to watch. Even bad commercials. When I tell people this, they just kind of stare at me, in disbelief. The findings are simultaneously implausible and empirically coherent,” University of California in San Diego (UCSD) assistant professor of marketing Leif Nelson, who is the co-author of the new research, admits.
The main find of the new paper is that people tend to revert to their usual states over specific amounts of time. That is to say, regardless of whether they pass through a tough time (such as a funeral) or a happy moment (such as a promotion), individuals always tend to turn back to a “default” condition, which is their actual mood. The research has revealed that, no matter how exciting the show is, viewers will always exhibit a drop in interest after half an hour or so. That's why commercials come in handy, the scientists uphold.
That may be the case, some viewers consider, but there's no need for commercial sequences every 15 to 20 minutes, as this is the thing that truly takes the edge off any production. “The reason this happens, we argue, is that we tend to adapt to a variety of experiences, as they’re happening. Listening to a song, watching a TV program, having a massage: these all start out very enjoyable, and within a few minutes we get used to it. Interruptions break that up,” Dr. Nelson explains.
On the other hand, if people are subjected to bad experiences, such as listening to a pick-hammer breaking the asphalt, they tend to perceive the noises emitted by the machine as being worse if breaks occur. If the sound continues, their brains adapt to it at one point, and then come to completely ignore the noise. According to the scientist, it's all in our brain. We have the ability to push aside uninteresting things and to only focus on what's important. And, also, we do this unconsciously.