Page 299 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

288 CANTOR

The predominant interest in this chapter is fright as an immediate emo-
tional response that is typically of relatively short duration, but that may
endure, on occasion, for several hours, days, or even longer. The focus
here is on emotional reactions involving components of anxiety, distress,
and increased physiological arousal that are frequently engendered in
viewers as a result of exposure to specific types of media productions.
Research interest in the phenomenon of fright reactions to mass media
goes back as far as Herbert Blumer’s (1933) studies of children’s fright
reactions to movies. Although sporadic attention was paid to the media as
a source of children’s fears in the succeeding several decades, research
attention began to focus on this issue more prominently in the 1980s. One
reason for this more recent focus on fright may have been the release of
several blockbuster frightening films in the 1970s. As anecdotal reports of
intense emotional responses to such popular films as Jaws and The Exorcist
proliferated in the press, public attention became more focused on the
phenomenon. Although many adults experience such reactions, the major
share of public concern has been over children’s responses. The furor over
children’s reactions to especially intense scenes in the 1984 movies Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins prompted the Motion Picture
Association of America to add “PG-13” to its rating system in an attempt
to caution parents that, for whatever reason, a film might be inappropri-
ate for children under the age of 13 (Zoglin, 1984). In addition, the rapid
expansion in the number of cable channels has meant that most films pro-
duced for theatrical distribution, no matter how brutal or bizarre, eventu-
ally end up on television and thus become accessible to large numbers of
children, often without their parents’ knowledge. Finally, as television
news became more graphically visual and sensational in the 1990s,
observers began speculating about the effects of such images on chil-
dren’s psychological health. The September 2001 terrorist attacks on New
York and Washington, DC, intensified these concerns.

Prevalence and Intensity of Media-Induced Fright Reactions

As early as the 1930s Blumer (1933) reported that 93% of the children he
questioned said they had been frightened or horrified by a motion pic-
ture. More recently, about 75% of the respondents in two separate samples
of preschool and elementary school children in Wisconsin said that they
had been scared by something they had seen on television or in a movie
(Wilson, Hoffner, & Cantor, 1987).
In other research, a survey of more than 2,000 third through eighth
graders in Ohio public schools revealed that as the number of hours of
television viewing per day increased, so did the prevalence of symptoms
of psychological trauma, such as anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic
stress (Singer, Slovak, Frierson, & York, 1998). Moreover, a survey of the