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Updated: May 14, 2026

Post-Movie Subliminal Measurement (PMSM), for Investigating Implicit Social Bias
Published on: February 29, 2020
Predicting film genres with implicit ideals
1Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis Memphis, TN, USA.
Abstract:
We present a new approach to defining film genre based on implicit ideals. When viewers rate the likability of a film, they indirectly express their ideal of what a film should be. Across six studies we investigate the category structure that emerges from likability ratings and the category structure that emerges from the features of film. We further compare these data-driven category structures with human annotated film genres. We conclude that film genres are structured more around ideals than around features of film. This finding lends experimental support to the notion that film genres are set of shifting, fuzzy, and highly contextualized psychological categories.
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