Instructions Read the following article then answer the questions at the end Abstract College students who wrote narrative accounts of their exposure to popular frightening television programs or movies before the age of 14 often included descriptions of sleep disturbances (58 of participants) as well as interference with their waking life (58 ), including long term avoidance of, or anxiety in situations not normally considered threatening These surprisingly strong and seemingly irrational reactions are consistent with LeDoux's two system conceptualization of fear memories Background There is a growing body of literature demonstrating that exposure to frightening contenton television and in the movies is associated with intense emotional reactions that extend well beyond the time of viewing For example, a survey of elementary and middle school children reported that the more television a child watched, the more likely he or she was to report the symptoms of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress A survey of parents of elementary school children reported that more hours of television viewing (especially at bedtime) were associated with higher rates of nightmares, difficulties with falling asleep, and the inability to sleep through the night Nine percent of the children studied experienced television induced nightmares at least once a week A more recent survey involving a representative sample of students in Belgium reported that approximately one third of 13 year old boys and girls said they experienced media induced nightmares at least once a month Harrison Cantor (1998) asked research subjects to describe a television program or movie that had produced a fear reaction that lasted beyond the time of viewing Although subjects could receive full extra credit for simply replying that they had had no such experience, more than 90 acknowledged having a media induced fear experience and wrote a paper and filled out a 3 page questionnaire about their reactions Their papers were content analyzed using a coding scheme derived from the DSM IV criteria for specific phobia, and 52 of respondents reported difficulties eating or sleeping, 36 reported avoiding or dreading the situation depicted in the movie, and 23 reported mental preoccupation or obsessively thinking about the movie More than one fourth of the respondents said that some of the fright symptoms were still present at the time of assessment, although the average time since media exposure was more than six years Method Because the students' papers were so revealing of their long term emotional reactions, I began saving the papers from a similar assignment in one of my classes Between 1997 and 2000, I collected 530 papers (virtually all of the papers on this topic written in my upper level undergraduate class on media effects I analyzed responses to the four movies writtenabout most frequently in this group of papers (Poltergeist, Jaws, Scream, and The Blair Witch Project ) Content analysis of papers about these movies explored fright symptoms that endured beyond the time of viewing These symptoms were placed into two major categories reactions occurring while the respondent was attempting to sleep (bedtime problems) and reactions that occurred during the daytime (waking effects) Bedtime problems included nightmares or the inability to sleep, not wanting to sleep alone or requiring special adjustments (e g , needing the light on, protective positions, etc ) Interference with waking life involved anxiety in normally nonthreatening situations (e g , swimming, being alone) or discomfort near otherwise benign objects or beings (e g , clowns, machines, or animals) The problems were characterized as enduring if they were described as still occurring in the respondent's life at the time of writing Results Combining all these media offerings, 58 of the papers reported bedtime problems, but only 6 reported that sleep problems were ongoing Fifty eight percent of the papers reported problems with waking life, and 30 reported that these reactions were continuing Thirty percent of respondents reported both bedtime and waking problems as a function of media exposure Equal numbers of students (28 ) reported one type of problem but not the other (waking problems without bedtime problems or vice versa ) Analyses of Individual Shows What seems so intriguing about these reports of long term reactions is that a substantial proportion of those who viewed five of the seven shows reported enduring problems The made for TV movie It, about a murderous clown and the blockbuster shark extravaganza Jaws produced the greatest number of enduring effects Given that the respondents were mostly in their third year of college and the experience occurred at or before the age of thirteen, these waking problems would have normally lasted at least seven years It is instructive to see these long term problems described in the respondents' own words The emotional intensity of the writing is notable Each entry is a different respondent Enduring Waking Effects Poltergeist I still do not like clowns of any sort, whether they are dolls or real life clowns To this day I am scared of clowns and will never have one in my house, even when I have children I still hate clowns To this day, I think clowns are scary instead of funny I had a fear of clowns for years after, and to this day they really scare me To this day, I cannot go into Maureen's room without thinking of that clown, and clowns in general still disturb me I now hate watching the shadow of the trees outside of my bedroom window Even now, I certainly don't leave my TV on after the station goes off the air, and I still always make sure that my closet door is closed before I go to sleep The horrifying images eventually stopped my fears of going to bed, but even now at 20 years old I never look underneath my bed Jaws I feel intuitively that I am destined to die as a result of a shark attack therefore, whenever I swim in the ocean, or even a murky lake, where I cannot see beneath my feet, I feel increasingly panicky and claustrophobic and in a short time, must leave the water As far as the lasting effects, to this very day, when floating in a body of deep water, I still occasionally have that feeling that something could come up and grab me Today that fear still lurks in the back of my mind every time I go swimming in a lake even though I try to tell myself it was only a movie that I had seen To this day, I sometimes think of the movie Jaws when I am in the water Today, I still fear swimming in the ocean, and I look over my shoulder whenever I am swimming in a fresh water lake Sharks have become a terrifying creature to me to the point that I am not able to watch Discover Channel documentaries or National Geographic presentations A mere unexpected glimpse of hem in magazines and newspapers causes me to gasp and increases my heart rate Friends and family are always quite amused by this phobia and have gone to such lengths as to offer me money to view Deep Blue Sea without covering my eyes I wouldn't even do It for the hundred dollars my father offered me These pictures created thirteen years ago are still vivid in my mind today The shark in Jaws was pieces of metal and plastic put together, but knowing that even now does not remedy what occurred in the past To this day, I am still afraid of sharks and will not watch any type of movie or television show that involves them I also refused to swim in a lake or pool that summer for fear that I would be attacked by a shark My parents tried to convince me that there could not be a shark in the lake, but I was firm in my belief This paranoia is still with me today I know that sharks are not found in lakes and pools, yet, whenever I am in the deep end at a pool, I swim really fast to get to the edge (always looking behind me) I was scared in any type of water body even though I knew that sharks couldn't live in rivers, streams, or public swimming pools I still to this day, think about the movie when I am about to go swimming The entire time I was in the ocean, I thought a shark was going to swim up and eat me I couldn't enjoy the ocean because I was constantly looking for sharks To this day, I am a little apprehensive whenever I swim in the ocean Nightmare on Elm Street Even now writing this paper the thought of it makes me sick to my stomach To this day I cannot stand to hear screeching noises For example when your classmates would really try to be funny and take their nails and scrape them down the blackboard in school so that it would make an evil, ugly, terrible high pitched noise It hurts to even talk about it as I speak The movie Nightmare on Elm Street definitely had that effect on me And from that day on, I always grind my teeth when I hear such a noise I remember mass quantities of blood spilling out everywhere in the film Perhaps that has something to do with why, to this day, I cannot give blood or stand watching myself bleed from the most minor of cuts I have a terribly irrational fear of the dark which comes and goes I often wonder if this could be the result of seeing horror movies at such a young age Certainly when I am afraid of the dark I recall feelings from about this age I feel like a 9 year old I still get frightened when I am alone It has been about 8 years since I have seen a Freddy Krueger movie When I walk up the back stairs at my parents' I have to run up them with light feet I am afraid I will sink in, get stuck and Freddy will come and get me Thriller Still, to this day I get frightened when the video is on, or if I hear the song on the radio The same fear I felt when I was a little girl comes back again It Today I am still scared of clowns and people wearing masks or face paint I, to this day, hate clowns I avoid them at all costs and will not force them upon my daughter It's scary because you never really do know what is lurking underneath that jolly painted face of a clown I still think that that is the ugliest clown I ever saw in my life, and I still have an overwhelming dislike, and slight fear, of clowns The image of the clown's wicked face gazing at the camera from across a pond still sticks out in my mind The movie and especially the evil clown in it had some psychological effects on me To this day I still hate clowns and think of them all as evil I can definitely attribute that to the movie If I were to go back in time I wouldn't have watched the movie because it took a lot of sleep out of me I remember I had so many nightmares about that ugly, evil clown He freaked the hell out of me From that day on I did not see clowns as funny entertainers I saw them as freaky creatures that could kill me and torture me but I know for sure the clown scared me because until today April 24, 2000, I still have the image of the clown in my memory and that scares the hell out of me Since viewing it, I honestly find clowns to be disturbing, and unnerving Now, I can't see a clown without immediately picturing the clown from It If I can manage to get that image out of my head, I still see clowns as unpleasant people and I always ask myself What kind of sick person would be a clown To this day, because of the movie, clowns are one of the only things that eerily terrify me Since that summer, I have been in many situations in the presence of clowns, and due to that one night over ten years ago, I have never looked at them the same way E T , The Extraterrestrial This is an extremely difficult assignment for me, because I have been traumatized my entire life by the movie ET I have never had to write a paper about the way that the movie has affected my life, so hopefully this will be a bit therapeutic When I would go play at friend's houses, they would have to hide al of their ET toys and dolls When my mom took me to toy stores, she would have to avert my attention away from the ET aisle I am actually getting flushed even writing this paper because I am so worked up as I picture the images that I remember in my head So far this paper has not been therapeutic, as I am still disturbed by the movie I don't like hearing, writing, or saying his name This is the most time I have ever spent by myself thinking about it, and I really would like to get my mind on something else I think I am a perfect example of how a mass media stimulus that causes fright can truly affect someone for the rest of his or her life But to this day, I am still scared by that scene and the thought of space aliens still frightens me This is not something that I like to admit to anyone, but I am still to this day, terrified of themovie E T The thought that life existed on other planets really scared me to death Nothing else in the movie, like the plot, scared me, but E T himself still gives me the creeps I was very anxious the whole movie and to this day when people bring it up I become very tense and agitated I am actually getting flushed even writing this paper I don't like hearing, writing, or saying his name The Wizard of Oz My spine continues to crawl today at the thought of The Wizard of Oz Every time the green witch was shown I would plug my ears I am 21 years old and I still plug my ears at scary scenes After reading the excerpt of the article above about scary movies and a study done by Kristin Harrison, Ph D and Joanne Cantor, Ph D , entitled Media Psychology, Tales From the Screen Enduring Fright Reaction in Scary Media answer the following questions What type duration of physical and mental reactions do people have to television films 2 Why do you think that Jaws was voted the scariest movie of all time when it is not classified as a horror movie 3 How may the media's portrayal of attorneys affect a person's perception of them 4 What could Bar Associations do to improve the public's esteem of Lawyers

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Instructions: Read the following article then answer the questions at the end. Abstract College students who wrote narrative accounts of their exposure to popular frightening

Instructions: Read the following article then answer the questions at the end.

Abstract

College students who wrote narrative accounts of their exposure to popular frightening

television programs or movies before the age of 14 often included descriptions of sleep

disturbances (58% of participants) as well as interference with their waking life (58%), including

long-term avoidance of, or anxiety in situations not normally considered threatening. These

surprisingly strong and seemingly irrational reactions are consistent with LeDoux's two-system

conceptualization of fear memories.

Background

There is a growing body of literature demonstrating that exposure to frightening contenton television and in the movies is associated with intense emotional reactions that extend well beyond the time of viewing. For example, a survey of elementary and middle school children reported that the more television a child watched, the more likely he or she was to report the symptoms of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress. A survey of parents of elementary school children reported that more hours of television viewing (especially at bedtime) were associated with higher rates of nightmares, difficulties with falling asleep, and the inability to sleep through the night. Nine percent of the children studied experienced television-induced nightmares at least once a week. A more recent survey involving a representative sample of students in Belgium reported that approximately one-third of 13-year-old boys and girls said they experienced media-induced nightmares at least once a month.

Harrison & Cantor (1998) asked research subjects to describe a television program or movie that had produced a fear reaction that lasted beyond the time of viewing. Although subjects could receive full extra credit for simply replying that they had had no such experience, more than 90% acknowledged having a media-induced fear experience and wrote a paper and filled out a 3-page questionnaire about their reactions. Their papers were content analyzed using a coding scheme derived from the DSM-IV criteria for specific phobia, and 52% of respondents reported difficulties eating or sleeping, 36% reported avoiding or dreading the situation depicted in the

movie, and 23% reported mental preoccupation or obsessively thinking about the movie. More than one-fourth of the respondents said that some of the fright symptoms were still present at the time of assessment, although the average time since media exposure was more than six years.

Method

Because the students' papers were so revealing of their long-term emotional reactions, I

began saving the papers from a similar assignment in one of my classes. Between 1997 and 2000, I collected 530 papers (virtually all of the papers on this topic written in my upper-level undergraduate class on media effects.I analyzed responses to the four movies writtenabout most frequently in this group of papers (Poltergeist, Jaws, Scream, and The Blair Witch Project.)

Content analysis of papers about these movies explored fright symptoms that endured beyond the time of viewing. These symptoms were placed into two major categories: reactions occurring while the respondent was attempting to sleep (bedtime problems); and reactions that occurred during the daytime (waking effects). Bedtime problems included nightmares or the inability to sleep, not wanting to sleep alone or requiring special adjustments (e.g., needing the light on, "protective" positions, etc.). Interference with waking life involved anxiety in normally nonthreatening situations (e.g., swimming, being alone) or discomfort near otherwise benign objects or beings (e.g., clowns, machines, or animals). The problems were characterized as

enduring if they were described as still occurring in the respondent's life at the time of writing.

Results

Combining all these media offerings, 58% of the papers reported bedtime problems, but

only 6% reported that sleep problems were ongoing. Fifty-eight percent of the papers reported problems with waking life, and 30% reported that these reactions were continuing. Thirty percent of respondents reported both bedtime and waking problems as a function of media exposure. Equal numbers of students (28%) reported one type of problem but not the other (waking problems without bedtime problems or vice versa.)

Analyses of Individual Shows

What seems so intriguing about these reports of long-term reactions is that a substantial proportion of those who viewed five of the seven shows reported enduring problems. The made for-TV movie It, about a murderous clown and the blockbuster shark extravaganza Jaws produced the greatest number of enduring effects. Given that the respondents were mostly in their third year of college and the experience occurred at or before the age of thirteen, these waking problems would have normally lasted at least seven years. It is instructive to see these long-term problems described in the respondents' own words. The emotional intensity of the writing is notable. Each entry is a different respondent:

Enduring Waking Effects

Poltergeist

I still do not like clowns of any sort, whether they are dolls or real life clowns.
To this day I am scared of clowns and will never have one in my house, even when I have children.
I still hate clowns.
To this day, I think clowns are scary instead of funny.
I had a fear of clowns for years after, and to this day they really scare me.
To this day, I cannot go into Maureen's room without thinking of that clown, and clowns in general still disturb me!
I now hate watching the shadow of the trees outside of my bedroom window. Even now, I certainly don't leave my TV on after the station goes off the air, and I still always make sure that my closet door is closed before I go to sleep.
The horrifying images eventually stopped my fears of going to bed, but even now at 20 years old
I never look underneath my bed.

Jaws

I feel intuitively that I am destined to die as a result of a shark attack; therefore, whenever I swim in the ocean, or even a murky lake, where I cannot see beneath my feet, I feel increasingly panicky and claustrophobic and in a short time, must leave the water.
As far as the lasting effects, to this very day, when floating in a body of deep water, I still occasionally have that feeling that something could come up and grab me.
Today that fear still lurks in the back of my mind every time I go swimming in a lake even though I try to tell myself it was only a movie that I had seen.
To this day, I sometimes think of the movie Jaws when I am in the water.
Today, I still fear swimming in the ocean, and I look over my shoulder whenever I am swimming in a fresh-water lake.
Sharks have become a terrifying creature to me to the point that I am not able to watch Discover Channel documentaries or National Geographic presentations. A mere unexpected glimpse of hem in magazines and newspapers causes me to gasp and increases my heart rate. Friends and family are always quite amused by this phobia and have gone to such lengths as to offer me money to view Deep Blue Sea without covering my eyes. I wouldn't even do It for the hundred dollars my father offered me! . . . These pictures created thirteen years ago are still vivid in my mind today . . . The shark in Jaws was pieces of metal and plastic put together, but knowing that even now does not remedy what occurred in the past. To this day, I am still afraid of sharks and will not watch any type of movie or television show that involves them. I also refused to swim in a lake or pool that summer for fear that I would be attacked by a shark.
My parents tried to convince me that there could not be a shark in the lake, but I was firm in my belief. This paranoia is still with me today. I know that sharks are not found in lakes and pools, yet, whenever I am in the deep end at a pool, I swim really fast to get to the edge (always looking behind me).
I was scared in any type of water body even though I knew that sharks couldn't live in rivers, streams, or public swimming pools. I still to this day, think about the movie when I am about to go swimming.
The entire time I was in the ocean, I thought a shark was going to swim up and eat me. I couldn't enjoy the ocean because I was constantly looking for sharks. To this day, I am a little apprehensive whenever I swim in the ocean.

Nightmare on Elm Street

Even now writing this paper the thought of it makes me sick to my stomach.
To this day I cannot stand to hear screeching noises. For example when your classmates would really try to be funny and take their nails and scrape them down the blackboard in school so that it would make an evil, ugly, terrible high pitched noise. It hurts to even talk about it as I speak.
The movie Nightmare on Elm Street definitely had that effect on me... And from that day on, I always grind my teeth when I hear such a noise.
I remember mass quantities of blood spilling out everywhere in the film. Perhaps that has something to do with why, to this day, I cannot give blood or stand watching myself bleed from the most minor of cuts. .. I have a terribly irrational fear of the dark which comes and goes. I often wonder if this could be the result of seeing horror movies at such a young age. Certainly when I am afraid of the dark I recall feelings from about this age - I feel like a 9-year-old.
I still get frightened when I am alone. It has been about 8 years since I have seen a Freddy Krueger movie. When I walk up the back stairs at my parents' I have to run up them with light feet. I am afraid I will sink in, get stuck and Freddy will come and get me.

Thriller

Still, to this day I get frightened when the video is on, or if I hear the song on the radio. The same fear I felt when I was a little girl comes back again.

Today I am still scared of clowns and people wearing masks or face paint.
I, to this day, hate clowns. I avoid them at all costs and will not force them upon my daughter.
It's scary because you never really do know what is lurking underneath that jolly painted face of a clown.
I still think that that is the ugliest clown I ever saw in my life, and I still have an overwhelming dislike, and slight fear, of clowns.
The image of the clown's wicked face gazing at the camera from across a pond still sticks out in my mind... The movie and especially the "evil clown" in it had some psychological effects on me. To this day I still hate clowns and think of them all as evil. I can definitely attribute that to the movie.
If I were to go back in time I wouldn't have watched the movie because it took a lot of sleep out
of me. I remember I had so many nightmares about that ugly, evil clown. He freaked the hell out of me. From that day on I did not see clowns as funny entertainers. I saw them as freaky creatures that could kill me and torture me. ... but I know for sure the clown scared me because until today April 24, 2000, I still have the image of the clown in my memory and that scares the hell out of me.
Since viewing it, I honestly find clowns to be disturbing, and unnerving. Now, I can't see a clown without immediately picturing the clown from "It." If I can manage to get that image out of my head, I still see clowns as unpleasant people and I always ask myself: What kind of sick person would be a clown?
To this day, because of the movie, clowns are one of the only things that eerily terrify me. Since that summer, I have been in many situations in the presence of clowns, and due to that one night over ten years ago, I have never looked at them the same way.

E.T., The Extraterrestrial

This is an extremely difficult assignment for me, because I have been traumatized my entire life by the movie ET. I have never had to write a paper about the way that the movie has affected my life, so hopefully this will be a bit therapeutic. ... When I would go play at friend's houses, they would have to hide al of their ET toys and dolls. When my mom took me to toy stores, she would have to avert my attention away from the ET aisle. . . I am actually getting flushed even writing this paper because I am so worked up as I picture the images that I remember in my head. So far this paper has not been therapeutic, as I am still disturbed by the movie. I don't like hearing, writing, or saying his name. This is the most time I have ever spent by myself thinking about it, and I really would like to get my mind on something else. I think I am a perfect example of how a mass media stimulus that causes fright can truly affect someone for the rest of his or her life! But to this day, I am still scared by that scene and the thought of space aliens still frightens me.
This is not something that I like to admit to anyone, but I am still to this day, terrified of themovie E.T. The thought that life existed on other planets really scared me to death . . .Nothing else in the movie, like the plot, scared me, but E.T. himself still gives me the creeps... I was very anxious the whole movie and to this day when people bring it up I become very tense and agitated. I am actually getting flushed even writing this paper . . . I don't like hearing, writing, or saying his name.

The Wizard of Oz

My spine continues to crawl today at the thought of The Wizard of Oz.
Every time the green witch was shown I would plug my ears. . . . I am 21 years old and I still plug my ears at scary scenes.

After reading the excerpt of the article above about scary movies and a study done by Kristin Harrison, Ph.D. and Joanne Cantor, Ph.D., entitled Media Psychology, Tales From the Screen: Enduring Fright Reaction in Scary Media answer the following questions: