Soap Opera Viewers Psychology
Viewers probably don’t realize what’s really attracting them to watch a soap opera like Coronation Street or Eastenders day after day, and year after year. Viewers’ emotions come or go, up or down, irritated or cheerful with the characters’ emotions, with the happenings in the story. Behind this, what’s the hidden power driving them to have been a sincere viewer of a soap opera for 2 years or even over 10 years? Let’s enter the soap opera viewers’ mind world and look into their psychology. We will start with some audiences’ views on the soap opera Dallas. Then through it, we will examine the soap opera viewers’ psychology from different aspects. ... Soap opera like Eastenders or Dallas successfully creates a real world in front of its viewers. ... One of the fascinations in watching soap opera is viewers can get some level of pleasure from exploring other people’s (here the characters’) inner world, discovering their concealed thinking, finding out their innermost secrets, digging out their true mentality, and getting to know them better and better. ... Watching soap opera brings the viewer some mental contentment at different levels. ... Another factor which draws the watchers to their favourite soap opera is that in the lifelike world, they acquire a sense of self-existence and self-awareness while they experience the characters’ every different emotion: joy, fury, sorrow, or happiness. ... Throughout watching a soap opera, some viewers are possibly not noticing that actually they’re not simply enjoying the `witty dialogue` (Letter17) or `the talks about oil` (Lettler23) or the way of those characters’ dealing with the relations with each other. ... Desiring to pursuit some level of different knowledge is another psychological factor behind the viewers’ watching soap operas.