That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Binge Watching

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

To kick off season 7 of That Neuroscience Guy, we're discussing the neuroscience behind binge-watching your favourite shows. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kergolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. In my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast, and welcome to another new season. We took a couple weeks off over Christmas, and now we're back. We've talked a lot about the content of the podcast and Matt and I feel like we might've drifted away from the neuroscience of daily life a bit and gotten into some pretty non-daily life stuff. So our focus for this season is going to focus or refocus more correctly on the neuroscience of daily life. And on that note, I'm going to touch on something that

I definitely did over the holidays, and I'm assuming that some of you at least did, and maybe during the pandemic or maybe even before, but it's binge watching shows. Have you ever sat down and you just keep watching a show, like you go through an episode and then you go through another episode and then you go through another episode, or maybe your binge is spread out a bit more, which is just, it's like every day after work. Now I realize not everyone does this, but we know that there's been a massive increase in binge watching of TV shows. All of the major channels and all of the major providers know this and they can tell it just because they know when people are watching certain

shows and they've got the stats. So on today's podcast, the neuroscience of Netflix. Now when it comes to binge watching, there's sort of two major views. One is the positive view. So why we do these things and why it might be good for us. And I'm going to frame this, of course, in terms of the brain and how your brain functions. But then there's a negative view as well. So a primary reason why we binge watch is it's instant gratification. It provides entertainment. It provides engagement.

It provides relaxation. And these are things that we value. And we've talked a lot about value over the course of the podcast. But basically, things that we value. And we've talked a lot about value over the course of the podcast, but basically we choose high value options. So if you're sitting on the couch and you want to go outside and maybe rake leaves, or you want to watch another episode of your favorite show that might have higher value. So we choose it and that gets us gratification. Now, people that have been listening to the podcast for a while probably can guess where this is going.

But when we do this, there's a release of dopamine within the brain. All right, and dopamine basically gives our body a sense of natural reward. It makes ourselves feel good about ourselves. It's pleasure. And what's important with it is dopamine is a reinforcer of behavior. And what's important with it is dopamine is a reinforcer of behavior. So every time you make a choice, if that choice is rewarding to you, so it provides entertainment, it provides engagement, or it provides relaxation,

dopamine is going to strengthen the value of that choice. So it makes it even more likely that we're going to choose to do that again. And this, like I've said, it drives addictive behavior. And it's just telling your body, you know, this feels good. You should keep doing this. Your brain is constantly, while you're binge watching, producing these releases of dopamine. And it's almost like a drug-like high. And then you actually develop an addiction to the show because you develop the cravings for dopamine. So that's why you keep going back, is because that dopamine release reinforces that behavior and it makes you feel good. So your brain learns that every time you choose to watch that show, you're probably going to feel good and then you want to engage it more and more.

Now, there's some other reasons why you might choose to binge watch. some other reasons why you might choose to binge watch. It gives you positive affect. It might change your emotional state. I've already said it provides some kind of stimulation, but basically these are things you want. That change in emotion also is something. And again, if I say change in emotion, I'm hoping you, the listeners, realize I'm talking about the amygdala and other emotional parts of the brain. So when we watch our show, there's that release of dopamine, but that emotional system in your brain is also firing up. This ties into the next reason why we binge watch, which is use and gratification theory. And basically the idea is that people use media such as the internet, television, social media, other forms of that type of thing, and they use it to satisfy their unmet emotional needs. All right. So they might be missing

something in their life. And by watching the show, it fills them in. And I want to come back to this one more on the negative side, because there's a positive and negative nature to this. So if you feel like you need, you know, an emotional rush of some kind and you don't have that, then that would be used in gratification theory. And that, again, is tied to dopamine and the amygdala. But it may not be a positive thing. Like I said, I'll come back to them in a couple minutes. Now, another motivation for binge watching,

it's a social thing. People actually binge watch, even though if you're doing it alone, to make social connections. And in the past, I've talked about how we're kind of hardwired for this, right? Deep down in the midbrain structures, we want, for the most part, there's a small subset of people that don't, but we want to interact with other people. And we do that by being a part of the fan group for the show. You know, if you go to lunch with a group of people at work and they're telling you a show is awesome and you have no clue, that can have a

negative connotation to it. You sort of feel like you're missing out and you're not a part of it. And this drives, you know, the idea that people might even binge to catch up, right? You're behind by a couple episodes and when you go to work tomorrow, you want to make sure that you know what people are talking about. And sometimes this works for shows that are even new, because people are motivated, their brain saying, well, hey, you know, the last time I failed to watch the show on time, I was ostracized a bit by my peer group. So what I'm going to do if a new show comes out is I'm going to watch a lot of it so that I'm prepared for any sort of possible situation. And remember, these aren't conscious decisions. This is a deep-seated drive. You're not sitting there going, okay, I need to watch all of these shows so at lunch tomorrow I feel bad. It's just you're sort of hardwired this way. We want to be

socially included. And when we have those conversations, we've got these midbrain structures that are basically driving us to want to be fit in if nothing else um and this goes on to even the recommendation side of things there's been a lot of research that shows what do we binge watch we tend to binge watch what people recommend to us if someone recommends a show to you, you're far more likely to watch it than if you just see the preview clip or read about the show. And the idea is that this is part of this social connection as well. Now, there's some other reasons why you might binge watch. These shows can be immersive, right? You basically get transported to some place you've never been, whether it's a time or a situation. And, you know, I love The Sopranos.

I have for a long time. And I guess the connotation would be, well, I'm never going to join the Mafia. But if I watch The Sopranos, I can get transported in this world a little bit and experience it. This is particularly true of sci-fi and fantasy shows. Most likely, to the best of you know, we're most likely the

best of my knowledge, we're never going to meet elves or orcs or the other things you might see in Lord of the Rings. But by watching these shows, we get immersed in this and we can identify with the characters. You know, the challenge I'd say is think of a fantasy or sci-fi show that you watch or think of any show that you watch, and you might identify with some of the characters to some extent. And we want to do this, just like we want to socially know about the show, we also want to fit into groups. And funnily enough, this identification ties us to the show and our brain seeks that sort of connection. And this has been specified by other research where they talk about narrative transportation, which is basically you're transported into the narrative of the story. And because you like the story and you're immersed in

it, you keep watching the show. And again, this is just your brain's reinforcement system driving this on. And then narrative completion. I think everyone's done this. I know I have. You pick a show. It's not particularly great, but you just want to see the end of the story. And that's, again, an inner drive for us. We have curiosity and we want to see how the show comes to an end. And lastly, as we transition to some of the more negative outcomes of binge watching, is the cognitive engagement factor. If we really like a show, we get cognitively engaged.

And if you watch a lot of it, say you sat down and watched five episodes, you might feel exhausted at the end of it. And the reason you feel exhausted is because your brain's been working. It's been processing all that information and you're engaged, your emotional system's firing, and it actually can tire you out. Now I said, that's the transition into some of the negative outcomes of excessive binge watching. And I portrayed this as a positive thing earlier, but there's a negative side to this, which some people binge watch shows or get tied to shows to help deal with aversive emotions. So sadness or anxiety, right? And they watch the show because it makes them feel better. But the problem with it, watching a TV show probably isn't the best way to deal with this, right?

And it's because your body is going to respond to what's going on screen. We talked about mirror neurons once, but this again is a natural part of the brain, which is if we see something, we tend to respond to it. And that's why if there's a particularly sad scene, we feel sad. If there's a particularly happy scene, we feel happy. If there's a particularly happy scene, we feel happy.

And this becomes like a coping mechanism for your brain. But the problem, like I said, is it only works when the stimulus is present. All right. So when the show is on, it works. But when the show disappears, it doesn't keep your brain in a happy state. And the other problem, of course, and you think back when we talked about learning and prediction errors a long time ago, the dopamine response to the same stimulus diminishes over time. And the reason it does this is because we come to expect, we know what's going to happen. So if you watch the same show for a long period of time, then what happens is we kind of know

what's going to happen next. And we don't have that dopamine response. And this is why people can peter out while binge-watching. So you start into a series, you love it, you get through season one, season two, season three, but by the time you're halfway through season four, you're kind of like, I've heard all this before, like not enough has changed. And this, of course, is why some famous shows like Game of Thrones

were immensely popular for a lot of people, because Game of Thrones did a pretty good job of making the storyline fairly hard to predict, whereas other shows, and I'm not going to name any, but I remember there was one that I was addicted to that was kind of like a rom-com around a family, and by about season three, I realized every single episode was the same. So that dopamine response had died off and my addiction to that show changes. And again, this is a negative thing, right? What's interesting is we can actually get addicted to these negative behaviors, like I said. So even though it's negative gratification because the show makes you feel bad,

this is another possible outcome. I was talking about how shows make you feel happy. But if a show makes you feel bad, funnily enough, people can get addicted to that as well. And then that just means it becomes increasingly more and more negative. And finally, of course, I talked about narrative transportation, this idea that you get engaged in the storyline. But if it becomes an escape from reality, that of course is a negative thing as well. You need to be able to pull yourself back from the show and realize that it's just a show. And some people can't get there, right? They can't do that. And that's because their brain is addicted and they like this

reinforcement that they get from watching the show. There are symptoms of behavioral addiction. The biggest one is, can you walk away from it, right? So, you know, people talk about problem internet and computer use, problem gambling, problem social media addiction. The same would be true of problem binge watchers, right? And if you can't walk away from it, then you have a problem and you need to think about dealing with that problem and how you can deal with it. The same would be true if it's your only escape, right? You live to be in that fantasy world. That's probably not the best way of dealing with the real world. Now, when I was doing the research for this episode, I almost started laughing because I found a research paper that was talking about some of the problems that come

from binge watching. Lack of sleep. You stay up too late to watch your show. Lack of exercise. You choose your show over exercise. The food choices you make, right? You might be more into snack food and less into a healthy choice because guess what? It's easier to eat that stuff when you're watching your show. And it also leads to a lack of social interaction. You're so busy, you're watching your show, you forget to engage with other people in the real world. So the reason I laughed when I saw that is if you listen to my episode on brain health, and I've mentioned brain health countless times throughout a couple seasons, you know, these are things I talk about. How do you improve brain health? Get sleep, exercise, have a good diet, and engage socially. And I'll finish with this, just a couple of tips. If you

are into binge watching, you really have to do a self-assessment. You have to think about why you're binge watching and be aware that, you know, you're getting these dopamine releases every time you watch your show. You've got this emotional response from the amygdala and what you need to think of,

are there other ways I can get this? You know, how can I do this in a more positive manner? Now, I'm not saying don't watch television. What I'm saying is be aware of the dangers of binge watching. So that's a bit of the neuroscience of Netflix, more appropriately, the neuroscience of binge watching. Remember, the website is still up, thatneuroscienceguy.com. You can support us through Etsy. We do sell t-shirts and some other merch. There's Patreon where you can put up, basically you support the podcast with donations on a weekly or monthly basis. All the money goes to graduate students in my lab.

There is X and threads at that Neurosci guy. Please feel free to follow me. And the most important thing is send us ideas. You can do it on X, you can do it on threads, or you could email us at thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. Matt and I've been mapping out a fantastic season for you, and we still want to hear your ideas. We've included as many as we can, but I'm sure some of you out there listening to this have other great ideas about the neuroscience of daily life. And again, thank you so much for

listening to the podcast. Please subscribe if you can. My name is Olaf Kregolsen, and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another neuroscience bite.