Scientists Discover Every Movie Has a Unique Chemical Profile Created by Its Audience

There have been countless studies on the physical effects the human body goes through when watching a movie. You don’t have to be a scientist to prove the effects, either. Anyone can check a pulse throughout a movie and realize that it changes depending on what’s on screen. Heart rates rise during horror movies, they fall during comedies. It’s not exactly breaking news.

That said, a new study by German scientists has revealed that the human body’s reaction to movies is even more elaborate. Apparently an audience will change the chemical composition of the air in a movie theater throughout a movie. We’re not talking raising the temperature by simply being in the theater, either. The body emits different chemicals through the skin and through breathing all day long, but researchers have now proven that these ‘chemosignal’ emissions can not only be triggered by specific scenes in a movie, but that they synchronize across everyone in the theater. Not only that, but these changes in the air are reproducible, occurring in the same patterns for a movie regardless of who is in the audience or where they’re watching it. 

That may sound boring, but knowledge that each movie has its own unique CO2 profile is kind of cool. Plus the researchers argue these chemosignals could alter a person’s perception of a film not unlike how certain smells can affect a person’s memory. And while it may be incredibly hard for a filmmaker to take advantage of it, knowing that suspenseful scenes change the chemical composition of the room means that they can further breed suspense by chasing that specific chemical profile. Basically, despite your best efforts, you can’t truly turn your brain off when watching a movie. 

And while this may seem like some frivolous science trivia about movie watching, it has also led to some important findings. The researchers have proven that a person’s chemical emissions can be altered by an emotional state induced by external stimuli, which means that certain tests that use breathe emissions as signs of diseases like cancer may be inaccurate simply because a person is stressed out about taking the test. 

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