How?researchers picked the saddest flick

By Alan Boyle

"The Champ" may not show up on the critics' all-time top-ten lists, but for many scientists, the 1979 flick about a beat-up boxer and his boy is considered the classic tear-jerker ? so classic that a clip from the movie serves as the scientific?standard for inducing sadness. But how did "The Champ" win its crown? And is it still a contender?

The "saddest movie in the world" has been the focus of Internet buzz ever since last month's Smithsonian.com report, which noted that the film has popped up in a wide variety of studies of depression and grief. For example, "The Champ" played a role in determining that depressed people aren't really more likely to cry than non-depressed people,?and that people are more likely to spend money when they're sad.

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Live Poll

Is 'The Champ' still the top downer?

• 155525

  Yes, it's still the champ of sad movies.

  38%

• 155526

  It's sad, but I've seen sadder flicks.

  41%

• 155527

  Blechh, it's just laughably sentimental.

  14%

• 155528

  None of the above.

  6%

VoteTotal Votes: 921

That's not to say that the experimental subjects were forced to watch the whole 121-minute movie. Psychologists just used just used a 171-second clip in which the boxer (Jon Voight) goes down for the count, turning on the tears from his son (played by 9-year-old Ricky Schroder, in a performance that won him a Golden Globe). The?scene was one of more than 250?film clips?selected by psychologists James Gross and Robert Levenson on the basis of recommendations from movie critics, video-store employees and film buffs.

During the late '80s and early '90s, the researchers refined their list and ended up showing 78 clips to 494 undergraduates. Gross and Levenson hoped that?various movies would get strong thumbs-up for eliciting amusement, or fear, or sadness, or contentment ? but they didn't always hit the mark. For example, their top fear-inducing movies, "The Shining" and "Silence of the Lambs,"?ended up sparking too many?other emotions as well.

In contrast, "The Champ" performed like ... well, you know. The movie "produced levels of sadness that were much greater than those for any other emotion," they wrote in their seminal 1995 paper, "Emotion Elicitation Using Films."

Even though that research is now 16 years old, it's been cited more than 300 times in other scientific articles, and Schroder's cry-fest is still being used as a?downer in the lab. (For what it's worth, the best film on Gross and Levenson's list for eliciting amusement is the fake-orgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally.")

The fake-orgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally" rates high on the amusement scale.

Knowing which movies are reliably amusing or depressing is important for psychology experiments,?because?movies?provide a relatively painless way to elicit a variety of emotions ??especially the negative ones.?Showing someone a sad film clip won't leave lasting mental scars. When you compare it with some of the other methods that can spark feelings of fear, anxiety?or anger, such as drugs or electric shocks, the choice is a no-brainer.

But isn't it time to rerun the experiment with a new set of?movies? What seemed sad or funny in the '80s may seem sadly dated or unintentionally funny in 2011. And indeed,?clips from other?flicks?such as "Steel Magnolias" and "John Q." have?stood in for?"The Champ" in some recent studies of sadness. If you have any suggestions for the saddest movie scene ever (or film clips that are the best for inducing fear, amusement or contentment), feel free to list them in your comments below.

Someday, some scientist just might decide to do a sequel to the sad-movie saga. Will a new top tear-jerker rise up for a new generation?

"I know that others have been working on this (as have we)," Levenson, director of the Institute of Personality and Social Research at the University of California at Berkeley, told me in an email, "but I believe the champ still is 'The Champ.'"

More about emotions and movies:

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Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/01/7220905-how-scientists-picked-saddest-flick

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