The early studies on American movie audiences originated from the moral panic of social progressives about the growing audience of children. With the communication structure and behavior audience analysis as the main methods, the studies revealed three different aims and patterns of society, application and market. Sociologists focus on audience composition and intend to provide scientific evidence for film censorship;For example, the military, education departments and other users of the film media focus on the publicity, learning effect and audience influence generated by the film.The film industry tests the market on pragmatic principles. The type of early audience studies have a positivist tendency, though almost discontinued with the humanistic study of movies in the 1960s and 1970s, shaped the research tradition of American movies and influenced the shift of contemporary movie-goers' theories from psychoanalysis to cognition and historical paradigm.