2-D or 3-D? That is the question

New study shows no difference in emotional reactions between film formats

2014-09-04

(Press-News.org) The increased visual realism of 3-D films is believed to offer viewers a more vivid and lifelike experience—more thrilling and intense than 2-D because it more closely approximates real life. However, psychology researchers at the University of Utah, among those who use film clips routinely in the lab to study patients' emotional conditions, have found that there is no significant difference between the two formats. The results were published recently in PLOS ONE.

The study aimed to validate the effectiveness of 3-D film, a newer technology, as compared to 2-D film that is currently widely used as a research tool. Film clips are used in psychological and neuroscience studies as a standardized method for assessing emotional development. Because it is less invasive than other methods, it is especially useful when studying the emotional responses of young people for whom emotional well-being is critical to healthy development.

Author Sheila Crowell, assistant professor of psychology at the U, says that results of the large and tightly controlled study also suggest that as an entertainment medium, 3-D may not provide a different experience from 2-D, insofar as evoking emotional responses go.

"We set out to learn whether technological advances like 3-D enhance the study of emotion, especially for young patients who are routinely exposed to high-tech devices and mediums in their daily lives," says Crowell. "Both 2-D and 3-D are equally effective at eliciting emotional responses, which also may mean that the expense involved in producing 3-D films is not creating much more than novelty. Further studies are of course warranted, but our findings should be encouraging to researchers who cannot now afford 3-D technologies."

How the study was conducted

Researchers looked at several measures of emotional state in 408 subjects, including palm sweat, breathing and cardiovascular responses, such as heart rate. These measures are commonly used to gauge emotional responses.

Four film clips were chosen because each prompted one discrete emotion intensely and in context without viewing the entire film. Study participants viewed a 3-D and 2-D clip of approximately five minutes of each film: "My Bloody Valentine" (fear), "Despicable Me" (amusement), "Tangled" (sadness) and "The Polar Express" (thrill or excitement). Participants were randomized to view the films in a design that balanced the pairs of films watched, in which format, and order of presentation. The complex configurations allowed the researchers to compare not only emotional responses, but effects of format and viewing order on the results.

Taken as a whole, the results showed few significant differences between physiological reactions to the films. When accounting for the large number of statistical tests, only one difference was seen between the formats—the number of electrodermal responses (palm sweat) during a thrilling scene from "The Polar Express" 3-D clip. The researchers believe that could be because the 3-D content of the film is of especially high quality, with more and a larger variety of 3-D effects than the others.

Supporting the overall finding is that participants' individual differences in anxiety, inability to control emotional responses or "thrill seeking" did not alter the psychological or physiological responses to 3-D viewing. In other words, personality differences did not change the results: 2-D is still equally effective for emotion elicitation. According to Crowell, "this could be good news for people who would rather not wear 3-D glasses or pay the extra money to see these types of films." INFORMATION:

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Team identifies important regulators of immune cell response

2014-09-04

JUPITER, FL, September 4, 2014 - In a collaborative study, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology have developed a more effective method to determine how immune cells called T cells differentiate into specialized types of cells that help eradicate infected cells and assist other immune cells during infection. The new approach, published recently by the journal Immunity, could help accelerate laboratory research and the development of potential therapeutics, including vaccines. The ...

Knowing how bacteria take out trash could lead to new antibiotics

2014-09-04

AMHERST, Mass. – A collaborative team of scientists including biochemist Peter Chien at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has reconstructed how bacteria tightly control their growth and division, a process known as the cell cycle, by specifically destroying key proteins through regulated protein degradation. Regulated protein degradation uses specific enzymes called energy dependent proteases to selective destroy certain targets. Because regulated protein degradation is critical for bacterial virulence and invasion, understanding how these proteases function should ...

Reacting to personal setbacks: Do you bounce back or give up?

2014-09-04

Sometimes when people get upsetting news – such as a failing exam grade or a negative job review – they decide instantly to do better the next time. In other situations that are equally disappointing, the same people may feel inclined to just give up. How can similar setbacks produce such different reactions? It may come down to how much control we feel we have over what happened, according to new research from Rutgers University-Newark. The study, published in the journal Neuron, also finds that when these setbacks occur, the level of control we perceive may even determine ...

Plant-based research at Penn prevents complication of hemophilia treatment in mice

2014-09-04

While healthy people have proteins in their blood called clotting factors that act quickly to plug wounds, hemophiliacs lack these proteins, making even minor bleeds difficult to stop. The main treatment option for people with severe hemophilia is to receive regular infusions of clotting factor. But 20 to 30 percent of people who get these infusions develop antibodies, called inhibitors, against the clotting factor. Once these inhibitors develop, it can be very difficult to treat or prevent future bleeding episodes. In a new study, researchers from the University of ...

LSU Health research discovers new therapeutic target for diabetic wound healing

2014-09-04

New Orleans, LA – Research led by scientists in Dr. Song Hong's group at LSU Health New Orleans has identified a novel family of chemical mediators that rescue the reparative functions of macrophages (a main type of mature white blood cells) impaired by diabetes, restoring their ability to resolve inflammation and heal wounds. The research is in-press and is scheduled to be published in the October 23, 2014 issue of Chemistry & Biology, a Cell Press journal. The white blood cells, or leukocytes, of the immune system, help defend the body against infection or foreign ...

Study shows complexities of reducing HIV rates in Russia

2014-09-04

(Boston) – Results of a new study conducted in St. Petersburg, Russia, show that decreasing HIV transmission among Russian HIV-infected drinkers will require creative and innovative approaches. While new HIV infections globally have declined, HIV rates remain high in Russia. This is due in large part to injection drug use and spread via heterosexual sex transmission. Alcohol use also has been shown to be related to risky sexual behaviors and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Published online in Addiction, the study showed that a behavioral intervention did not ...

AGU: Ozone pollution in India kills enough crops to feed 94 million in poverty

2014-09-04

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In one year, India's ozone pollution damaged millions of tons of the country's major crops, causing losses of more than a billion dollars and destroying enough food to feed tens of millions of people living below the poverty line. These are findings /of a new study that looked at the agricultural effects in 2005 of high concentrations of ground-level ozone, a plant-damaging pollutant formed by emissions from vehicles, cooking stoves and other sources. Able to acquire accurate crop production data for 2005, the study's authors chose it as a year representative ...

Greener neighborhoods lead to better birth outcomes, new research shows

2014-09-04

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Mothers who live in neighborhoods with plenty of grass, trees or other green vegetation are more likely to deliver at full term and their babies are born at higher weights, compared to mothers who live in urban areas that aren't as green, a new study shows. The findings held up even when results were adjusted for factors such as neighborhood income, exposure to air pollution, noise, and neighborhood walkability, according to researchers at Oregon State University and the University of British Columbia. "This was a surprise," said Perry Hystad, an environmental ...

Scientists prove ground and tree salamanders have same diets

2014-09-04

Salamanders spend the vast majority of their lives below ground and surface only for short periods of time and usually only on wet nights. When they do emerge, salamanders can be spotted not only on forest floors but also up in trees and on other vegetation, often climbing as high as 8 feet. Given their infrequent appearances aboveground, it has never been clear to biologists why salamanders take time to climb vegetation. Researchers at the University of Missouri recently conducted a study testing a long-standing hypothesis that salamanders might climb vegetation for food. ...

Public trust has dwindled with rise in income inequality

2014-09-04

Trust in others and confidence in societal institutions are at their lowest point in over three decades, analyses of national survey data reveal. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Compared to Americans in the 1970s-2000s, Americans in the last few years are less likely to say they can trust others, and are less likely to believe that institutions such as government, the press, religious organizations, schools, and large corporations are 'doing a good job,'" explains psychological scientist and ...

2-D or 3-D? That is the question

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: