Do tragic movies about death make you think?

This collection includes the datafiles for a pilot study and main study testing the effects of the narrative structure of tragic movies about death on viewers' reflection, death attitudes, and growth.

The first datafile includes data of a pilot study (N = 117) that was conducted to select stimulus movies that differed in the role of death in the narrative structure, but were similar in terms of viewers’ engagement. Participants watched two out of a total of eight movies that were selected based on an extensive online search for short movies about death and completed a questionnaire measuring their engagement, the extent to which they thought the movie focused on death, the extent to which they thought that the movie/characters expressed various death attitudes, their attitudes towards the movie, and whether they felt that death occurred at the beginning or the end of the movie (manipulation checks).

The second datafile includes data of the main study. This study employed a between-subjects design in which participants (N = 374) watched two short movies (selected based on results of the pilot study) in which death was either the triggering event, occurring at the beginning of the movies, or the resolution, occurring at the end of the movies. Prior to watching, viewers were reminded of their own death, the death of a loved one, or of eating breakfast (control condition). Their reflection, attitudes towards death, and posttraumatic growth were measured after watching.