Presenting and analyzing movie stimuli for psychocinematic research

Movies have an extraordinary way of capturing our perceptual, conceptual and emotional processes. As such, they offer a useful means of exploring psychological phenomenon in the laboratory. Until recently, it has been rather difficult to present animated stimuli and collect behavioral responses online. However, with advances in digital technology and commercially available software to construct, present, and analyze movies for behavioral investigations, there is a growing interest in psychocinematic research. A rather simple, yet useful procedure is described that presents movie clips and collects multiple behavioral responses during its presentation. It uses E-prime 2.0 Professional software to run the experiment and Microsoft Excel to sort and analyze the data.