We can all agree that during the last year, most people have experienced a heavier cognitive load than they may have normally. Jennifer Fayard describes cognitive load as the amount of stress put on our working memory. During the pandemic, we have had to keep up with more information and make more decisions (and more crucial, potentially risky decisions) than we normally did.
Unfortunately, our working memory is a limited resource, and there comes a point at which we simply cannot deal with anything else. Increased Zoom meetings, divided attention, unfamiliar and changing work conditions, balancing work and childcare, and other concerns zapped most of our processing capacities. Under a heavy cognitive load, we might turn to TV shows we’ve already seen and loved instead of new ones so that we don’t have to pile anything else onto our mental plates. My recent easy viewing show has been House. What’s yours?
There is also some evidence that when we are stressed and overloaded, watching TV can be restorative. Specifically, research indicates that watching familiar TV shows has been shown to restore our feelings of self-control after a period of exertion, and also that we tend to prefer familiar shows when we feel depleted. As before, watching a familiar show helps our brains take a load off, but in addition, we may be intrinsically motivated to watch familiar shows because watching something that we know we already like may serve as its own reward.
To read full article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/people-are-strange/202106/why-rewatching-the-same-tv-shows-feels-so-good-right-now?collection=1163262
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