SCARY MOVIES AND TV PROGRAMS HAVE LONG-LASTING EFFECTS.

• Position: Brief Article

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 study by researchers Kristen Harrison, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Joanne Cantor, University of Wisconsin, Madison, shows that long-term effects can linger even into adulthood. They found that 90% of the participants (more than 150 college students at Michigan and Wisconsin) reported a media fright reaction from childhood or adolescence. Moreover, about 26% still experience a "residual anxiety."

"These effects were more serious than jumpiness at a slammed door or the need to use a nightlight. 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," Harrison points out. The duration of the effects range from less than a week (about 33% of the sample) to more than a year (about 36%).

A wide range of symptoms was reported, including crying or screaming (27%), trembling or shaking (24%), nausea or stomach pain (20%), clinging to a companion (18%), increased heart rate (18%), freezing or feeling of paralysis (17%), and fear of losing control (11%), as well as sweating, chills or fever, fear of dying, shortness of breath, a sense of unreality, dizziness or faintness, and numbness (all less than 10%).

Harrison and Cantor categorized the phobia-producing stimuli into five areas: animals (mammals, insects, reptiles, animal-like aliens, etc.); environmental (fires, floods, earthquakes, storms, water, nuclear holocaust, and other ecological threats); blood/injection/injury (blood, gore, trauma, pain, wounds, needles, and other physical threats to living things); situational (heights, enclosed spaces, and circumscribed locations like doctors' offices); and disturbing sounds/distorted images (loud noises, horrible faces, etc.). The most frequently reported type they found is blood/injection/injury (65% of the sample). One participant said that, in the movie "Jaws," it was not the shark or actual deaths that was frightening, but the blood. "For about two months after the movie, I had nightmares about blood. The nightmares didn't...