A famous set of experiments found the opposite of the cultural rule about a . Told the ending in advance, readers enjoyed short stories as much as or more than unspoiled ones. Later work suggested that result might depend on who the reader is. A new pair of experiments spoiled short stories in one and television episodes in the other. What separated them?
The did. Spoiling a short story left enjoyment roughly where it was, repeating the earlier result, and spoiling a full-length television episode lowered it. So a spoiler is not a substance that acts the same way everywhere. Under some circumstances it has a negative effect, and the circumstances include what kind of thing is being spoiled.
The cultural rule says a spoiler ruins a story, and the research has never been that tidy. When Leavitt and Christenfeld gave participants plot-crucial information before a short story, those readers enjoyed it as much as or more than readers who went in blind.
That result is counterintuitive enough to have become famous, and later work complicated it. The effect might arise from an interaction with individual differences such as , rather than from spoiling as such.
So this ran two experiments. The first repeated the short story method and added a condition where participants were told in advance that their story was being spoiled. The second extended the whole design to full-length television episodes.
The outcomes diverged by medium. Short stories behaved as before, and television episodes did not: spoilers reduced enjoyment there. The useful conclusion is narrower than either headline, since spoilers under certain circumstances have a negative effect, and a few pages and an hour of television are not the same circumstance.
wat. A spoiler does not wreck every plot: in this study it hurt television episodes and left short stories alone.
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It replaces an absolute cultural rule with a sharper question: which kind of advance information damages which kind of story experience.
How do we know?
Daniel and Katz ran two experiments. The first spoiled short stories, with a condition in which participants were told in advance that a spoiler was coming, and the second extended the method to full-length television episodes.
What is still unknown
The literature on spoilers remains mixed, and effects vary between kinds of narrative and between people, including individual differences such as how much a person enjoys thinking things through.
Learn something?
Where to next
Does a spoiler really make a story more enjoyable?spoilers
Can a few minutes with a text change how well you read another person?replication
How does a story change a mind without presenting a single argument?stories