Comfort TV – the answer to high cognitive load | WARC | The Feed

Comfort TV – the answer to high cognitive load

Familiar TV programmes have been the go-to shows for millions over the past 15 months or so, making 2020 the “year of the rewatch”.

The details

• Nielsen data shows that, in the US, the American version of The Office, which finished eight years ago, was the most streamed show last year. Other oldies that ranked among the highest were New Girl and Vampire Diaries.
• In the UK, The Sopranos, which ended in 2007, was the hottest show of the year, according to GQ – NOW TV reported a 122% spike in viewers of the show (in the US, America HBO reported a 200% rise).

Why is it happening?

• According to Jennifer Fayard, Associate Professor of Psychology at Ouachita Baptist University, writing in Psychology Today, new shows serve up unfamiliar characters we need to concentrate on getting to know, and plot twists we need to make an effort to follow. 
• ‘Working memory’ is limited – after a point it can’t deal with any more information – but during the pandemic, people have faced a “heavier cognitive load”.
• They’ve had to keep up with relevant information and make more important decisions than normal. They have had more virtual meetings, unfamiliar and changing work conditions and protocols. They have had to finds new ways to balance work and childcare.
• Fayard says research strongly supports the idea of the “mere exposure effect” – the more times we are exposed to something, the more we tend to like it later on. Experiencing something previously raises “perceptual fluency”, or how easy we find it to process information in later experiences.

The big idea

When something is easy to process, it creates positive emotions, which in turn make us like the object more. That’s why you’re watching re-runs of Breaking Bad.

Sourced from BBC, GQ, Psychology Today