One participant was scared by the heavy breathing of the killer in the film Halloween, while several others found the suspenseful music in Jaws frightening. media should be cause for concern regarding its potential for causing enduring fright reactions in children,” she says.ĭisturbing sounds/distorted images is the other most common type of fright stimulus found in films and TV programming (reported by 60 percent of participants). “In any case, the ubiquity of blood and gore in the U.S. Harrison says that it is not clear whether this type of stimulus was mentioned most frequently because it is inherently more frightening than the other types, is the most common stimulus found in the mass media or, for some reason, is recalled more easily. To this day, I remain horrified of blood.” “The nightmares didn’t always involve sharks, but always contained gross amounts of blood. “For about two months after the movie, I had nightmares about blood,” the participant said. One participant said that in the movie Jaws, it was not the shark or actual deaths that was frightening, but the blood. The most frequently reported type they found is blood/injection/injury (reported by 65 percent of the sample). Harrison and Cantor categorized the phobia-producing stimuli into five areas: animal (animals, insects, reptiles, animal-like aliens, etc.) environmental (fires, floods, earthquakes, storms, water, nuclear holocaust and other environmental threats) blood/injection/injury (blood, gore, injury, pain, wounds, needles and other physical threats to living things) situational (heights, enclosed spaces and circumscribed situations like doctors’ offices) and disturbing sounds/distorted images (loud noises, distorted faces, etc.). “It appears, then, that the physical and emotional fright reactions our sample experienced in reaction to media stimuli are very similar to those typically experienced in reaction to real-life stimuli, a finding that is consistent with the principle of stimulus generalization,” Harrison says. While more than one-fourth of the study’s participants still experience such aftermath, the duration of the effects–both past and present–range from less than a week (about 33 percent of the sample) to more than a year (about 36 percent).Īccording to the study, a wide range of symptoms were reported, including crying or screaming (27 percent of participants), trembling or shaking (24 percent), nausea or stomach pain (20 percent), clinging to a companion (18 percent), increased heart rate (18 percent), freezing or feeling of paralysis (17 percent) and fear of losing control (11 percent), as well as sweating, chills or fever, fear of dying, shortness of breath, feeling of unreality, dizziness or faintness, and numbness (all less than 10 percent each). More than a third avoided or dreaded the depicted situation in their own lives, and nearly a fourth reported obsessive thinking or talking about the frightening stimulus. The researchers, whose study will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Media Psychology, found that 52 percent of the sample reported disturbances in normal behavior such as sleeping or eating after viewing a frightening film or TV program. They ranged from an inability to sleep through the night for months after exposure, to steadfast and continuing avoidance of the situations portrayed in the programs and movies.” “These effects were more serious than jumpiness at a slammed door or the need to use a nightlight. “This may not be surprising, but the proportion of participants–one in four–who reported fright effects that they were still experiencing indicates that these responses should be of major concern,” says Harrison, assistant professor of communication studies. Moreover, about 26 percent still experience a “residual anxiety” today. In their study “Tales from the Screen: Enduring Fright Reactions to Scary Media,” U-M researcher Kristen Harrison and colleague Joanne Cantor of the University of Wisconsin found that 90 percent of the study’s participants (more than 150 college students at Michigan and Wisconsin) reported a media fright reaction from childhood or adolescence. While the short-term effects of watching horror movies or other films and television programs with disturbing content are well-documented among children and teens, a new U-M study shows that long-term effects can linger even into adulthood. These effects range from inability to sleep to avoidance of situations portrayed in those movies. One in four college students in a recent study said they experience lingering effects of a frightful movie or TV experience from childhood.
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