These four reasons were discussed in relation to various dispositional characteristics such as fearfulness, empathy, and sensation seeking. Deirdre Johnston in a 1995 issue of Human Communication Research, looking into motivations for viewing graphic horror, there are four different reasons for why we (or at the very least a small sample of 220 American adolescents) like watching horror movies: gore watching, thrill watching, independent watching, and problem watching. In fact, there is evidence that young viewers who perceive greater realism in horror films are more negatively affected by their exposure to horror films than viewers who perceive the film as unreal (Hoekstra, Harris, & Helmick, 1999)."Īccording to research published by Dr. Most people who view horror movies understand that the filmed events are unreal, which furnishes them with psychological distance from the horror portrayed in the film. The answer that McCauley came up with was that the fictional nature of horror films affords viewers a sense of control by placing psychological distance between them and the violent acts they have witnessed. McCauley (1998) posed the logical question of why these students found the documentary film so unpleasant when most had sat through horror pictures that were appreciably more violent and bloody. Yet many of these same individuals would think nothing of paying money to attend the premiere of a new horror film with much more blood and gore than was present in the documentaries that most of them found repugnant. Even the majority of individuals who watched the tape in its entirety found the images disturbing. Ninety percent of the students turned the video off before it reached the end. One clip showed cows being stunned, killed, and butchered in a slaughterhouse a second clip pictured a live monkey being struck in the head with a hammer, having its skull cracked opened, and its brain served as dessert a third clip depicted a child’s facial skin being turned inside out in preparation for surgery. “Haidt, McCauley, and Rozin (1994), in conducting research on disgust, exposed college students to three documentary videos depicting real-life horrors.
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