Hero or villain? The role of audience beliefs about suspense for their suspense experience

Abstract

The aim of our paper is to examine the role of recipients’ general media beliefs about suspense during a specific experience of suspense, thereby contributing to a more complete explanation of suspense. The audience can be expected to have formed their own beliefs about suspense based on their own viewing or reading experiences and genre knowledge. While these cognitions about suspense have been theorized to influence the specific viewing or reading experience, their empirical investigation has largely been neglected. Two studies were conducted to address this gap. Study 1 explores audience members’ media beliefs about suspense using in-depth interviews. Study 2 develops a scale of media beliefs about suspense based on the results of study 1 and investigates their influence on audience members’ suspense experience. Our results provide valuable evidence that audience members’ media beliefs about suspense are a reasonable influence on their suspense experience.