Nudging Movie Choice A Study on the Influence of Nudges on the Selection of Meaningful Movies

Abstract

Meaningful movies are thought-provoking and moving depictions of life and its circumstances. These movies seem to be especially beneficial for emerging adults, who generally search for meaning in life and desire personal growth. However, instead of choosing meaningful movies according to those needs, emerging adults often expose themselves to more appealing hedonic entertainment. The present study examined whether nudging, via meaningful movie labels, could help emerging adults to select meaningful movies using a one-factor between-subject experiment among 90 college students, aged 18 to 25 years. Findings revealed that labels were able to nudge the choice of meaningful movies for emerging adults with a more meaningful life orientation. For emerging adults with a less meaningful lifestyle labels did not work. Similarly, emerging adults who already prefer meaningful movies did not use meaningful movie labels, but select this kind of movies regardless of labels. The degree of depletion had no effect on the labels’ usage, indicating that more exhausted participants did not utilize labels more likely than less exhausted participants. After watching a meaningful movie, only the appraisal of that movie seemed to be a predictor of subsequent movie selection. Labels did not influence that decision.