A study was undertaken to design and implement an experimental instrument for testing the influence of the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) film rating system on movie attendance. Sixty-five high school students were given synopses of four different fictional films, each of which had been assigned an MPAA rating of G (approved for…

Personal interviews were conducted with drive-in theatre patrons in an attempt to paint an empirical portrait of a contemporary drive-in movie theatre audience. A total of 607 patrons of one Rochester, New York, drive-in were interviewed by trained college undergraduates using a prepared 33-item questionnaire consisting of open- and close-ended…

Reactance theory predicts that when a behavioral freedom is restricted or eliminated an individual is motivationally aroused to restore that freedom. This theory served as the basis of a study that investigated whether motion picture ratings, specifically R and X ratings, acted as a source of reactance arousal for high school students. Subjects…

The relation between revenues from motion pictures and the picture ratings (G, PG, R, X) by the Motion Picture Association of America was examined. Successful films were those listed by "Variety" magazine as the top revenue producers for the given year. Data were collected for the years 1969-1979. The analysis showed that years in which…