Just a moment...
The Wundt curve shows that overly simple and predictable stimuli provide only neutral hedonic value. Positive hedonic value requires stimuli that are somewhat novel/complex/ambiguous. Too much novelty or complexity, however, leads to negative hedonic value. There is, then, a “sweet spot” for the right amount of stimulus novelty/complexity: slightly... See more
Culture is an Ecosystem: A Manifesto Towards a New Cultural Criticism (2)
The place of maximum curiosity – the zone in which storytellers play – is when people think they have some idea but aren’t quite sure. Brain scans reveal that curiosity begins as a little kick in the brain’s reward system: we crave to know the answer, or what happens next in the story,
Will Storr • The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better
It was simply selecting whatever would most shock and compel people to watch longer.