Intended Movie Experience: Linking Elicited Emotions to Eudaimonic and Hedonic Characteristics

This study investigates the relationship between movies’ elicited emotions and their eudaimonic (meaningful) and hedonic (pleasurable) characteristics. We use emotional signatures derived from movie reviews, which have been previously shown to capture these elicited emotions. We examine correlations with both the movies’ eudaimonic and hedonic characteristics and the users’ eudaimonic and hedonic orientations, calculated based on their highly rated movies. We demonstrate the predictive power of emotional signatures in determining both movies’ and users’ experiential qualities and assess how genre clusters differ in their eudaimonic and hedonic characteristics based on these signatures. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to explore these connections. Ultimately, our findings aim to enhance personalized recommender systems by aligning recommendations with users’ emotional needs and desired experiences.