Chapter 13

1. Chapter 13 Reactions to Disturbing or Frightening Media Content

2. Frightening Stories As Entertainment • Throughout history, people have enjoyed hearing frightening stories. • Frightening stories have also been used to help face personal fears. • Dracula and Frankenstein • War of the Worlds • Friday the 13th • Halloween • X-Files

3. Explanations for the Appeal of Fright • Catharsis • When viewers witness graphic violence on the screen or read about it in books, they purge or rid themselves of their own violent tendencies or inclinations. • The transformations that monsters undergo provide cathartic relief for teens who are experiencing physical changes as they mature sexually. (Evans, 1984)

4. Explanations for the Appeal of Fright • People are able to enjoy taboo experiences in a vicarious manner. (Wood, 1984) • Rosenbaum suggested that people enjoy horror because it encourages a belief in a superior spiritual being capable of destroying evil forces. (1979)

5. Measuring Fright • Self-reporting measures • Subjects are shown frightening or disturbing content, then asked to select words or phrases that best describe their reactions to the content. • Measures of physiological responses • Fright reactions are measured through physiological responses such as a person’s heart rate.

6. Fright Reactions in Children • Parents are usually unaware that their children experienced intense fright reactions. • Parents underestimate the severity or significance of their children’s fright. • Children enjoy being frightened.

7. Long-Range Effects of Fright Reactions in Children • Sometimes children react with nightmares after viewing a disturbing program. • Years after seeing a frightening movie, children may experience night “terrors” or have strange fantasies. • Frightening media content threatens to impair psychological development.

8. Dynamics of Fear Reactions to Media Content • Classical conditioning is the reason that fright reactions occur despite the fact that the viewer is not in danger and understands that.

9. Classical Conditioning • Certain stimuli cause certain responses, and similar stimuli evoke similar, but less intense, responses

10. Fear-Producing Stimuli • Three types of media content that result in fear responses in real life: • Dangers and injuries • Distortions of natural forms • Experience of endangerment and fear by others

11. Dangers and Injuries • Natural disasters • Violent confrontations • Major wars • Animal attacks • Major accidents

12. Distortions of Natural Forms • Familiar sights or organisms are shown with a deformity, distortion, or mutilation • Movie monsters

13. Experience of Endangerment and Fear by Others • Only category with indirect responses to scary content • Two mechanisms that produce an indirect response of fear: • Empathy: identifying with the characters • Vicarious involvement: fear of audiences in situations in which characters are unafraid because they are unaware of impending danger

14. Emotional Response Factors • 3 important factors that cause viewers to react emotionally: • Realism of depiction • Motivations of the viewer • Other factors that affect a viewer’s emotionality

15. Realism of Depiction • Stimulus generalization: when viewers witness highly realistic action their fright responses tend to be intensely emotional. • Particular fears of individuals also affect the intensity of emotional responses evoked. • Stimulus discrimination: the ability of audience members at various ages to be able to distinguish screen events from real-life occurrences.

16. Motivations of the Viewer • Viewers who want to be entertained might purposely “forget” that the events are being staged in order to enhance enjoyment. • Viewers who want to keep fright reactions to a minimum might continue to remind themselves that the actions are only mediated. • Viewers who watch for informational purposes tend to pay more attention to the program and thus may become more aroused.

17. Factors Affecting Viewers’ Emotional Responses • Excitation transfer • Audience members who are aroused before viewing an exciting or disturbing scene build on that arousal with new responses to film scenes and produce more intense emotional reactions. • Foreshadowing of impending threats enhances the effects of a movie.

18. Gender Differences • Social pressures to conform to gender-specific behavior • Girls- scream at horror shows • Boys- self-controlled mastery of the disturbing content

19. Age Differences • At different ages children experience different types of fear reactions: • 3-8 yrs • monsters, ghosts, supernatural creatures, the dark, animals, strange and fast-moving creatures • 9-12 yrs • threats of injury or destruction to self or loved ones • 12+ • personal injury, social and peer pressures and accompanying fears, & global fears

20. Reason for Differences • Cognitive development of children • As children grow older, they respond more intensely to media depictions that are based more on reality than fantasy or the unrealistic.

21. Strategies for Coping With Fear • Noncognitive strategies- do not require the viewer to process verbal information • Cognitive strategies- require the activation of cognitive processes

22. Types of Noncognitive Strategies • Visual desensitization • Physical activity

23. Types of Cognitive Strategies • Children are told to remember that a program is not real. • Offer reassuring information about the minimal danger of any threats presented in the media. • Information can be provided verbally or visually to calm children.