Movies are a pretty simple experience: As long as there are no jerks texting, babies crying through the action sequences, or mystery fluids spilling onto your arms from some unseen place that is better not investigated, all we need is a good flick and a comfortable seat. But it turns out the movie experience is not quite as simple as that; there are all sorts of things about watching films and television shows that we never consider -- or even outright hate -- that are actually making the whole thing better ...

5 Spoilers Enhance Your Enjoyment

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If being drawn and quartered were still in practice, it would be chiefly employed on those who reveal spoilers -- at least according to the Internet. Is there anything worse than waiting for the next installment of your favorite franchise, spending months religiously avoiding all teasers, reviews, and human interaction in general, only to have someone in line with you carelessly blurt out that the National Treasure was in our hearts all along?

Well, according to science, you're strangling an elderly couple outside a Nicolas Cage movie for nothing. A study at the University of California, San Diego revealed that, much in contrast to popular belief, spoilers actually enhance our enjoyment. In a series of experiments, researchers presented test subjects with one of three different versions of a story: one that was spoiled beforehand, one that was in its original, unspoiled state, and one that had the spoiler incorporated somewhere in the middle -- presumably via a clown face popping up halfway through and screaming "HE'S BEEN DEAD THE WHOLE TIME HUHUHUH!"

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To the absolute shock of all, the results unanimously proved that overreacting Internet forum members do not, in fact, represent the sum total of human psychology: Test subjects who knew the spoilers beforehand enjoyed the stories significantly more than those who experienced them unspoiled. Subjects exposed to middle-point spoilers also enjoyed the stories less, but we'll chalk that one up to the Impending Death Clown.

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You ruin everything, Patrick.

Researchers theorize that this is because we tend to focus primarily on the plot and the resulting suspense, which prevents us from chilling out and taking in all the other wondrous elements that make up good storytelling. Or, as Jonathan Leavitt of UC San Diego's psychology department more eloquently put it, "Once you know how it turns out, it's cognitively easier -- you're more comfortable processing the information -- and [you] can focus on a deeper understanding of the story."