Cardiovascular Lab

Abstract: Human beings are driven by our emotions. Knowing this, we guessed that the movie genres would have noticeable effect on our emotions. Horror films evoke fear, while action films entertain and thrill us. Likewise, documentaries can be very technical and sometimes evoke boredom, and romance films give us the fluttering butterfly effect. This is why we decided to form an experiment to determine how these emotions affect heart rate and blood pressure. We had two test subjects watch 5 minute clips of each genre mentioned, as we recorded their heart rate and blood pressure in one minute intervals. It was proven in our experiment that different genres of movies do effect our heart rate and blood pressure. However, we found that the reactions really depend on the person and their relation to the genres. During the horror test, our two subjects reacted differently because the first subject was familiar with horror movies, while the other subject was not causing her to reacted more. Both subjects had a level reaction during the action test, as well as during the documentary test. During the romance test, the subject’s reactions showed that the movie had a calming effec

Problem: Does the genre of a movie have an effect on people’s heart rate and blood pressure

Hypothesis: We believe that a person’s heart rate and blood pressure correspond to the genre of movie they watch. During the tests, we expect to see the highest heart rate/blood pressure during the horror and action test. Likewise, we expect to see a lower jump in heart rate/blood pressure during the romance and documentary tests

Materials:

Computer

Logger Pro

Hand Grip Heart Rate Monitor

Blood Pressure Cuff

Movie Clips

Procedure: 1) Select a movie clips from each of the following genres: Horror, Action Documentary, and Romance.

2) Have two test subjects watch each clip separately, while monitoring their blood pressure and heart rate.

3) Record and compare the data collected from each person.


Conclusion: After we completed our experiment on our two test subjects, we came to a conclusion that different genres do effect a person’s heart rate and blood pressure. However, we also concluded that the size of the reactions depends on the person. In our experiment, Sarah and Maria were consistent during the documentary and action genre tests. However, when it came to horror, Sarah reacted very strongly to the clip because she never watches horror movies. On the other hand, Maria is used to watching horror movies and hardly reacted at all. During the romantic genre both Maria and Sarah gradually dropped, as if the genre was soothing to them.