Science says: spoilers increase the enjoyment of watching

Bruce Willis has been dead all along. Jack was indeed watching the door. Darth Vader is the father of Luke Skywalker. A is ultimately the evil twin of Spencer. Romeo and Juliet both die. Yes, SPOILER ALERT. There's a good chance that you are also one of the many who warn people about this. That you don't want them, or that you can give them at any moment. I'm not always very good at this myself, by the way, because in my enthusiasm I sometimes reveal a plot twist here and there. Sorry. Bad trait.

Or well, that's actually not so bad. In fact: you seem to enjoy a series, movie, or book even more when you already know what is going to happen. Whut? Yes, that has been researched. by The University of California. Researcher Christenfeld tested it twice.

In the first round, he gave his guinea pigs three different stories to read: a detective, a story with a big plot twist, and a literary piece with a decent ending (nothing spectacular, then). Half of them were already told how it would end, and the other half were not. What turned out: those who had already been spoiled found all the pieces more enjoyable to read.

And so Christenfeld took it a step further. He had the groups (again split in two) read different types of stories, but this time he asked before the end how they felt about it. Because is it true that a spoiler only ruins the ending for you? No. People who received the spoiler generally found it more enjoyable even before the plot twist/the ending.

What is the reason for that? That's still a bit of a guess, but Christenfeld has the idea that it comes from having more knowledge about what you see or read. And more knowledge makes it more enjoyable to engage with it.

So here it is: go ahead and give spoilers. It's a bit tricky to test yourself, of course, because you only have one chance to see something for the first time... But I personally never find spoilers that bad.

Then the very last one: yes, Rachel got off the plane. All the people in Lost are actually already dead. Speaking of the worst ending EVER. This is a plot twist that managed to ruin an entire series. Quite impressive.