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study (Harrison & Cantor, 1999), 90% of the participants reported an
intense fear reaction to something in the media, in spite of the fact that the
respondents could receive full extra credit for participating in the study if
they simply said “no” (meaning “I never had such an experience”), and
thereby avoid writing a paper and filling out a three-page questionnaire.
Both studies revealed a variety of intense reactions, including general-
ized anxieties, specific fears, unwanted recurring thoughts, and distur-
bances in eating and sleeping. Moreover, Harrison and Cantor (1999)
reported these fears to be long lasting: One-third of those who reported
having been frightened said that the fear effects had lasted more than a
year. Indeed, more than one-fourth of the respondents said that the emo-
tional impact of the program or movie (viewed an average of six years
earlier) was still with them at the time of reporting.
The most extreme reactions reported in the literature come from psy-
chiatric case studies in which acute and disabling anxiety states enduring
several days to several weeks or more (some necessitating hospitaliza-
tion) are said to have been precipitated by the viewing of horror movies
such as The Exorcist, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Ghostwatch (Buz-
zuto, 1975; Mathai, 1983; Simons & Silveira, 1994). Most of the patients in
the cases reported had not had previously diagnosed psychiatric prob-
lems, but the viewing of the film was seen as occurring in conjunction
with other stressors in the patients’ lives.

A STIMULUS GENERALIZATION APPROACH
TO MEDIA-INDUCED FEAR

As can be seen from the literature summarized here, there is a good deal
of evidence regarding viewers’ experiences of fear in response to mass
media presentations. The next part of this chapter is devoted to specula-
tions about why such fear reactions occur and the factors that promote or
inhibit their occurrence.
Fear is generally conceived of as an emotional response of negative
hedonic tone related to avoidance or escape, due to the perception of real
or imagined threat (e.g., Izard, 1977). A classic fear-arousing situation is
one in which the individual senses that he or she is in physical danger,
such as on encountering a poisonous snake on a walk through the woods.
Fear can be conceived of as a response involving cognitions, motor behav-
ior, and excitatory reactions that, except under extreme conditions, pre-
pare the individual to flee from the danger.
Using this definition of fear, it is not difficult to explain the public terror
that was produced by perhaps the most infamous frightening media drama
on record—the 1938 radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Many
people who tuned in late thought they were listening to a live news bulletin