Ulric B. and Evelyn L. Bray Social Sciences Seminar

Abstract: The proliferation of online streaming services has increased the breadth of video content available, offering consumers a wide range of options to choose from. What determines consumers' movie preferences? We address this question by investigating the associations between movie contents, quantified via user-generated plot keywords, and the Big Five personality traits of their Facebook fans. We find that plot keywords predict the personalities of movie fans above and beyond demographics and general movie characteristics such as quality and genre. Furthermore, fans' personalities are associated with specific plot keywords and the movies' psychological themes (e.g., movies with keywords related to negative emotions have neurotic fans, and movies with violent keywords have low-agreeableness fans). Our findings reveal robust links between personality and liking of specific movie contents, with implications for cinema advertising, branded entertainment and product placement in movies.