Abstract
Very little is known about media violence and its effect on appetite and eating behavior. The present study aims at investigating the immediate acute effect of violence in movies on mood, stress, appetite perception and food preferences in a real-life setting. A total of 447 subjects (F=202; M=239) completed a validated visual analog scale to record their subjective feelings of hunger, satiety and desire to eat immediately at their way out of any of the three types of movies (horror, romance/comedy and drama/action). There was a significant difference between the three movie categories for the tensed feeling (P=0.003), anxiety (P=0.021), the sleepy feeling (P=0.000) and a preference to eat something sweet (P=0.019). Horror/violence movie types affected the subject by making him feel more stressed and anxious; however, romance made him feel sleepier and less tensed. Movie types did not seem to affect hunger or appetite directly, but rather triggered some food preferences.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson CA, Shibuya A, Ihori N, Swing EL, Bushman BJ, Sakamoto A et al. Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: a meta-analytic review. Psychol Bull 2010; 136: 151–173.
Gentile DA, Anderson CA, Yukawa S, Ihori N, Saleem M, Ming LK et al. The effects of prosocial video games on prosocial behaviors: international. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2009; 35: 752–763.
Carroll D, Turner JR, Lee HJ, Stephenson J . Temporal consistency of individual differences in cardiac response to a video. Biol Psychol 1984; 19: 81–93.
Goldfield GS, Kenny GP, Hadjiyannakis S, Phillips P, Alberga AS, Saunders TJ et al. Video game playing is independently associated with blood pressure and lipids in overweight and obese adolescents. PLoS One 2011; 6: e26643.
Ballard ME, Wiest J. R . Mortal Kombat: The effect of violent videogame play on males' hostility and cardiovascular responding. J Appl Soc Psychol 1996; 26: 717–730.
Siervo M, Sabatini S, Fewtrell MS, Wells JC . Acute effects of violent video-game playing on blood pressure and appetite perception in normal-weight young men: a randomized controlled trial. Eur J Clin Nutr 2013; 67: 1322–1324.
Acknowledgements
We thank Professor Jonathan Wells for his valuable advice and suggestions for this project. We also thank our senior students for collecting the data.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mattar, L., Zeeni, N. & Bassil, M. Effect of movie violence on mood, stress, appetite perception and food preferences in a random population. Eur J Clin Nutr 69, 972–973 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2014.262
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ejcn.2014.262
- Springer Nature Limited