Morbid Curiosity and Empathy
in Movie Preference:
Real vs. Imagined Threat

My team of five graduate students and I spearheaded a consumer psychology project exploring how morbid curiosity (the interest in dangerous or threatening phenomena) and empathy influence horror movie preferences for real vs. imagined sources of threat.

For our experiment, I created 16 original movie posters as our stimuli and an original AMC-style website on Wix. Our Qualtrics survey connects directly to our website and once the participant adds a movie to their cart, they are redirected to the survey.

By including an immersive movie ticket purchasing website, I was able to apply UX research methods, like usability and clicking behavior. Our study applies market segmentation analysis to understand different viewer profiles and motivations of our 200+ participants. Our goal is to tailor marketing communications based on audience film preferences.