It’s been a rough day and nothing has gone the way you hoped it would. All you want to do is go home, change into something cozy and settle in bed with your favorite TV show. Whether it’s a popular show like Friends or The Office, or a show you refuse to let people know you watch as a guilty pleasure, the comfort of the show you’ve seen so many times before is exactly what you need. But as you hum along with the theme song in anticipation of the episode to come, do you ever wonder why a sense of calm washes over you when your favorite characters grace your screen? You probably haven’t, but I have, so I’m going to tell you anyway.
Let’s look at it from a scientific perspective. The Mere Exposure Effect is a psychological phenomenon that occurs through continuous exposure to a specific stimuli – the more exposure, the more preference for it. In non-academic English it means that the more a person interacts with something, the more they enjoy it. In a sense, human brains are lazy, so our levels of enjoyment towards different forms of media depends on how easy it is for our brain to process it. Because you’ve seen Grey’s Anatomy more times than you can count, your brain doesn’t have to do any work to figure out what’s going on, and that makes your brain (and you) happy. In turn, this causes you to watch the show again, and the cycle continues.
There is also research that suggests that watching familiar TV shows can be restorative. Self control is a finite resource and depletes throughout usage. Your ability to hold self control can be restored by social positive interactions. However, because it can also be depleted by negative social interaction, people might look elsewhere to recharge – referred to as “social surrogate restoration.” It has been proven that “fictional worlds” can provide the same kind of benefits as positive social interactions. People tend to seek familiar TV shows after exerting a lot of self control, and the TV show ends up restoring the depleted resource. So next time you hold yourself back from yelling at your computer and the ever frustrating “error 404: the requested URL was not found” message displayed on your screen, know that science shows it’s good for you to rewatch The Big Bang Theory for the umpteenth time.
It’s all about the familiarity. You’ve seen your comfort show so many times you practically know it off by heart, which means there’s no anxiety inducing moments – you already know what’s going to happen, so you aren’t worried when there’s a cliffhanger or plot twist. As an added bonus, since you already know the show so well, it doesn’t require adding anything to your mental plate. When there’s a lot of stress put on your working memory, you develop a cognitive load, and there’s only so much you can take before you run out of room. There’s no thinking or effort required, which means no energy expenditure, which means no stress for your brain.
Even when you watch something for the nostalgia of it, when you’re looking to go back to a time and place when you were in a better mindset, you’re still seeking the comfort of familiarity. Nostalgia is the sentimental longing or affection for the past, specifically that you have positive associations with. Watching your favorites from that time transports you back to the familiar feeling of happiness that you’re missing in the present moment.
Not everyone’s comfort show is the same, so it’s perfectly fine to ignore the unsolicited TV show recommendations that everyone seems to have a never ending supply of. Maybe you prefer watching Gordon Ramsay and his creative insults, or Jessica Day and her friends play “True American.” Perhaps it’s a show I haven’t mentioned or even heard of, but the specifics don’t matter. All that matters is that it brings you comfort in times of need and makes you feel better when the going gets tough.
It’s been a rough day. All you want is your bed and comfort show, and now you know why.
Sources:
Derrick, Jaye L. “Energized by Television.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol. 4, no. 3, Aug. 2012, pp. 299–307, doi:10.1177/1948550612454889.
Fayard, Jennifer V, Ph. D. “Why Rewatching TV Shows Feels so Good.” Psychology Today, 26 June 2021, www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/people-are-strange/202106/why-rewatching-tv-shows-feels-so-good.
MSEd, Kendra Cherry. “Mere Exposure Effect: How Familiarity Breeds Attraction.” Verywell Mind, 26 Apr. 2023, www.verywellmind.com/mere-exposure-effect-7368184.