Watching Romantic Comedies Shapes Beliefs About Love, but Personality Matters More

Romantic comedies have long promised audiences that love strikes in airport terminals, that best friends are secretly soul mates, and that a single grand gesture can erase years of misunderstanding. A new study from Brazil now offers one of the most detailed portraits yet of what this beloved genre actually does to the people who watch it, and the findings are more nuanced than either the film industry’s defenders or critics might expect. The research, published in the journal Trends in Psychology, suggests that while romantic comedy consumption is genuinely linked to idealized beliefs about love, individual differences such as personality traits, gender, and age explain far more of those beliefs than the movies themselves.

The study was conducted by Daniela Zibenberg of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro and Jean Carlos Natividade of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas. They recruited 646 Brazilian adults aged 18 and older, with a mean age of 29.6 years, through invitations distributed on social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Just under 73 percent of participants were women, and roughly 60 percent were in a romantic relationship at the time of the study, most of them dating or married. The research was approved by the ethics committee of the Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

To capture the psychological footprint of romantic comedies, the researchers measured several distinct constructs. Participants ranked their preference for 14 film genres, reported how often they watched romantic comedies on a scale from never to always, and estimated how many romantic comedy films they watched in a typical week. Romantic beliefs were assessed with a Brazilian adaptation of the well-established Romantic Beliefs Scale, which measures four idealized notions: that love finds a way despite obstacles, that there is one and only one true love, that true love will be nearly perfect, and that love can strike at first sight. Relationship satisfaction was measured with a validated five-item scale, and personality was assessed with both the Big Five model and the Emotional Investment construct, which captures the disposition to invest in an amorous relationship through its Romanticism and Affection components.

The theoretical backdrop for the study draws on two of the most influential frameworks in media psychology. Social learning theory, originally formulated by Albert Bandura, holds that people learn behaviors and attitudes by observing others, including fictional characters on screen. Cultivation theory, developed by George Gerbner and colleagues, proposes that heavy media consumers gradually come to perceive the world as resembling the world depicted in the media they consume. Applied to romantic comedies, both frameworks predict that repeated exposure to idealized romantic expressions, such as love at first sight and destined soul mates, should lead viewers to endorse those same beliefs more strongly in their own lives.

The correlational results supported that prediction. Weekly romantic comedy consumption was positively correlated with all four romantic belief factors as well as with an overall romantic belief score. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses, which tested five separate models, revealed that demographic and personality characteristics together explained between 13 percent and 23 percent of the variance in romantic beliefs, with the strongest prediction observed for the overall romantic belief factor. Adding the romantic comedy variables of frequency, weekly quantity, and genre preference increased the explained variance by an additional 2 to 4 percent across the models. Notably, the Romanticism component of Emotional Investment emerged as the single most powerful predictor in every model tested, suggesting that a person’s underlying romantic disposition is tightly interwoven with their idealized beliefs about love.

The specific predictors showed instructive patterns. Conscientiousness and Romanticism positively predicted all four belief factors, while Affection behaved counterintuitively, showing negative associations with several beliefs once other variables were accounted for. Age negatively predicted belief in the one and only true love but positively predicted idealization, a pattern the authors speculate may reflect generational differences or the accumulated relationship experience of older participants. Gender also mattered, with men endorsing more romantic beliefs than women on average. Among the romantic comedy measures, the number of romantic comedy films watched per week was the most consistent predictor, positively forecasting idealization, love at first sight, love finds a way, and the overall romantic belief score, while genre preference predicted the love finds a way factor and the overall score.

Perhaps the most intriguing finding emerged from the mediation analysis examining how romantic comedy consumption relates to relationship satisfaction. The researchers found what statisticians call inconsistent mediation, or a suppression effect. At the direct level, weekly romantic comedy consumption was negatively associated with relationship satisfaction, a pattern the authors attribute to the upward social comparisons viewers may make between their own relationships and the polished, idealized romances on screen, which often depict consistently satisfying intimacy, mind-reading partners, and frequent romantic gestures. Yet two indirect pathways ran in the opposite direction and were statistically significant: through the belief in one and only true love, and through the idealization belief, romantic comedy consumption was positively associated with relationship satisfaction. These positive indirect effects partially offset the negative direct effect, producing a total effect that was not significantly different from zero.

This double-edged pattern helps resolve a long-standing debate in the literature. Previous studies have reported that romantic media fosters unrealistic expectations that undermine satisfaction, that it reinforces positive beliefs that enhance relationships, and that it has no measurable association with satisfaction at all. The new findings reconcile these contradictions by showing that all three outcomes can coexist within a single pathway structure, with the balance determined by which beliefs a viewer internalizes. Importantly, the researchers found that idealized romantic beliefs themselves were positively correlated with relationship satisfaction, consistent with earlier work suggesting that romanticism can promote relationship-maintenance behaviors rather than undermining them. The love at first sight factor, by contrast, was not significantly correlated with satisfaction, possibly because initial physical attraction is largely unrelated to the passion, intimacy, and commitment that sustain long-term partnerships.

The authors are careful to acknowledge the limitations of their design. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot determine whether romantic comedies shape beliefs, whether people with romantic beliefs seek out romantic comedies to confirm their existing worldview, or whether both processes operate simultaneously. Only about 3.4 percent of the sample reported watching three or more romantic comedies per week, so stronger cultivation effects might emerge among heavier viewers. All measures relied on self-report, which is vulnerable to recall bias, and the sample was predominantly female, highly educated, and skewed toward participants with incomplete college education. The researchers also note that Brazilian media consumption is shaped by a heavy reliance on foreign streaming content and by the enduring popularity of daily soap operas, both of which may dilute or complicate the identification processes assumed by social learning theory. Future work, they argue, should include longitudinal designs, more gender-balanced and ethnically representative samples, and experimental procedures that track belief changes over weeks with and without romantic comedy exposure.

The practical implications reach from the therapy room to the writers’ room. The authors suggest that relationship education programs could harness romantic comedies that reinforce beneficial beliefs, and they cite prior evidence that simple interventions, such as reading a corrective article before viewing or completing a counterarguing exercise afterward, can reduce romantic belief endorsement when desired. Clinicians working from evidence-based frameworks may find the results useful when discussing media habits with clients, particularly given research linking belief formation to emotional well-being. For filmmakers, the recommendation is subtle: rather than merely portraying idealized relationships, producers might craft narratives that promote the specific idealized beliefs, such as love finding a way or the value of a singular partner, that are associated with greater satisfaction. And for the millions of viewers who return each year to the comforting formula of the meet-cute and the happy ending, the message is reassuring. Romantic comedies do leave a mark on how we think about love, but that mark is modest, filtered through who we already are, and it does not appear to make our relationships any less happy.

Subject of Research: The impact of romantic comedy exposure on idealized romantic beliefs and relationship satisfaction in Brazilian adults

Article Title: Happily Ever After: Impact of Romantic Comedy Exposure on Romantic Beliefs

Article References: Zibenberg, D., & Natividade, J. C. (2026). Happily Ever After: Impact of Romantic Comedy Exposure on Romantic Beliefs. Trends in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-026-00526-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43076-026-00526-7

Keywords: romantic comedies, romantic beliefs, relationship satisfaction, personality traits, cultivation theory, social learning theory, media psychology, Big Five, emotional investment, idealization, Brazilian adults, film consumption