Why can't we stop seeing series? Science explains it to you

They arrive at 9:00 p.m. and after a day of obligations the expected moment is approaching ... blanket, dinner and a chapter of your favorite series ... Wait, just one chapter? Well, I may know little, we may still have time to see the second ... or the third ... or a whole season!

We all love the series, we could spend hours of our favorite characters and even months waiting for a new season. There is nothing like a good story that caught us and makes us forget daily stress, but sometimes our excessive love for them makes we can invest productive time sitting at the screen, without paying in our obligations and even sleeping less than normal .. ¿What do the series that become so easily become an addiction? Neuroscience and psychology can provide some explanations.

Content

• We empathize with the characters and their stories
• The suspense and our brain reaction
• A shelter against stress
• Imitation learning
• Post series "depression"

We empathize with the characters and their stories

Empathy is the ability to recognize the feelings of others And this is what happens to us when we visualize a story. Our ability to identify with other people, even in fiction, makes us internalize their emotions and feel that we participate in a common purpose. Therefore, when we get involved in complex stories and loaded with emotion, We cannot stop wanting to know what will happen to them and if everything will end in their lives.

Something like that has demonstrated the neuroeconomist Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University. This researcher showed in a video how a father spent the last days with his sick son. In the physiological responses of the participants it was found as Cortisol and oxytocin levels, stress -related hormones and empathy respectively, had ascended after watching the video, especially among the subjects that showed greater behaviors of affectation.

The suspense and our brain reaction

A cliffhanger is an open end that leaves us simply "in the stake" is that end of each season of Game of Thrones that leaves us with an open mouth and with a need, almost exasperating, of knowing more.

It seems that the anguish of not knowing what is going to happen is what makes our body produce an excess of CRH, hormone involved in the stress processes that make us stay on alert, which can even make us lose sensation of tiredness and continue to click the next chapter.

Besides, When we enjoy our favorite show, our brain continuously produces Dopamine, A neurotransmitter involved in brain reinforcement that also influences our feeling of pleasure when we take drugs or have sex, and this makes us feel addicted to this form of pleasure

Other studies have found that Our brain tends to focus especially on what causes us to suspend while ignoring the rest, That is why before a scene that keeps us on alert, we feel so immersed on the screen that we forget that we have to wash our clothes or do dinner, as if we were in a "Tunnel vision".

People watching a season of Game of Thrones

A shelter against stress

Sometimes, we feel so loaded with daily stress that we need to take a break and see series can be an escape from our real problems. A series marathon can be a temporary curative and an aid to disconnect from daily stressors that keep us on a alert cognitively.

In addition, we can join other people who see the same show being a source of conversations with which to strengthen our social life and share points in common with others.

Imitation learning

As we have mentioned above, our Identification with certain characters that can have points in common with us and our real lives (labor, personal, social ...), makes us learn from them by vicarious learning; That is, seeing a model similar to us, we can learn how their problems solve or how things are more complicated with their behaviors.

Post series "depression"

The happiness or excitation that produces us to see series is proportional to the sadness and the emptiness that leaves us when we cannot see more episodes. We live at that time a situation that can be considered of loss and we can feel little stimulated

In addition, when we return to reality is when the obligations we have put aside are thrown on us: we have 6 hours to have to get up, we have not prepared food for the next day ... and our level of stress can become even greater than at the beginning.

Therefore, we must strive to consume series in a responsible manner, for example, programming the number of episodes that we are going to see per day and making sure that we balance this activity with others that also reinforce us such as going out with friends or doing something fun not to focus All our emotion in the series. Besides, force us to carry out our obligations periodically before seeing an episode, It can be a way to use them as reinforcement and fulfill our tasks without entering into an addictive situation.