This study aimed to elucidate the role that emotional processes play in the enjoyment of television drama. Of primary interest was negative affect, which is a primary component in all drama, but has not been fully understood in entertainment research. A 2 (CONTEXT: Present, Absent) x 2 (ENDING: Happy, Sad) fully factorial between-individual design was employed to test the effects of empathy toward protagonist and viewers' affective states on entertainment of a dramatic television program. Participants viewed a specially-constructed episode of the program "LOST," which manipulated the availability of the protagonist's back story and the hedonic valence of his eventual outcome through a happy or sad ending. Eudaimonic preference for film was measured as a covariate due to the expectation that people who prefer programs that provide opportunities for them to better know their true selves might enjoy negative endings more than those with higher hedonic preferences. Results showed that the empathy induced by providing character context interacted with ending type, resulting in sad endings being enjoyed differently, suggesting that sad endings could be more entertaining than previous theory would predict. Additionally, eudaimonic preference predicted greater entertainment of sad endings only when context was present.
Another contribution of this study was the examination of entertainment, empathy, positive and negative affect as situational effects that evolve over time. To address this research question, a 2 (CONTEXT: Present, Absent) x 2 (ENDING: Happy, Sad) x 3 (TIME: t1, t2, t3) mixed design was used to tease out the temporal characteristics. Correlational analysis of dependent variables over time also showed empathy for the protagonist at Time1 was associated with negative affect and entertainment at other time points, but only when character context was presented. Results support the idea that entertainment and emotion are temporal processes that are subject to both situational and dispositional variables.