The results of J. Rosenbaum have also mimicked mine as they had “uncovered two personality traits that played a role in the influence of spoilers on preference for and enjoyment of stories: need for affect and need for cognition”. In this they had concluded that the two types were “The need for affect (NFA), defined as “the tendency to approach or avoid emotion-inducing situations and activities”” who are similar to people such as Bassam where he claims there is “no enjoyment” in spoiled stories and is “annoyed” when the show was spoiled for him implying that the show is emotionally attached to him.

 

From this I can conclude that Bassam needs affect and as proven by the Rosenbaum study- “respondents who scored higher on need for affect enjoyed unspoiled stories more (Rosenbaum & Johnson, 2016 Rosenbaum, J. E., & Johnson, B. K. (2016)”.The need for cognition group were defined as “the tendency for an individual to engage in and enjoy thinking”.

 

Although my second type is different from this, this NFC (need for cognition) is still viable and can be applied to certain participants in my research as it is similar to my “Involvement” criteria in the Observation. The results that Rosenbaum had obtained was the need for cognition “interacted with spoilers such that people with a low need for cognition selected spoiled over unspoiled stories”. 

 

This is likely reflected in my observation where Participant 4 unlike the average results responded more positively to the spoiled results and also the possible reason why overall enjoyment in participant 4 would still rise in “Comedy Spoiled” even though the involvement had decreased, implying that they can enjoy the episode regardless due to the enjoyment being independent of their need for involvement mirroring the study where people with a low need for NFC would still watch spoiled episodes.

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Secondary research also provided more insight into people who had said they can predict shows and wouldn’t mind spoilers such as Burak or Ahmed. In Christenfield’s study he had said that “that spoilers which fit viewers’ expectations were more likely to augment enjoyment, because these were more readily incorporated into viewers’ mental models of the narrative, which in turn facilitated fluent processing”—this might explain why they both wouldn’t mind spoilers as they are reaffirming their predictions which is the purpose for why they watch the show.