Page 312 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

11. FRIGHT REACTIONS TO MASS MEDIA 301

ing the snake-pit scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark (Wilson & Cantor,
1987), children were either exposed or not exposed to reassuring informa-
tion about snakes (e.g., the statement that most snakes are not poisonous).
Although this information tended to reduce the fear of older elementary
schoolchildren, kindergarten and first-grade children seem to have only
partially understood the information, responding to the word poisonous
more intensely than to the word not. For them, negative emotional reac-
tions were more prevalent if they had heard the supposedly reassuring
information than if they had not heard it.
Data also indicate that older children use cognitive coping strategies
more frequently than preschool children do. In the survey of reactions to
The Day After (Cantor et al., 1986), parents’ reports that their child had dis-
cussed the movie with them after viewing it increased with the age of the
child. In a laboratory experiment involving exposure to a scary scene
(Hoffner & Cantor, 1990), significantly more 9- to 11-year-olds than 5- to 7-
year-olds reported spontaneously employing cognitive coping strategies
(thinking about the expected happy outcome or thinking about the fact
that what was happening was not real). Finally, Harrison and Cantor’s
(1999) retrospective study showed that the tendency to employ a cogni-
tive strategy to cope with media-induced fear increased with the respon-
dent’s age at the time of the incident.
Studies have also shown that the effectiveness of cognitive strategies
for young children can be improved by providing visual demonstrations
of verbal explanations (Cantor et al., 1988) and by encouraging repeated
rehearsal of simplified, reassuring information (Wilson, 1987).

GENDER ISSUES AND MEDIA-INDUCED FRIGHT

Gender Differences in Media-Induced Fear

There is a common stereotype that girls are more easily frightened than
boys (Birnbaum & Croll, 1984), and indeed that females in general are
more emotional than males (e.g., Fabes & Martin, 1991; Grossman &
Wood, 1993). There is quite a bit of research that would seem to support
this contention, although the gender differences may be less strong than
they appear at first glance. Moreover, the observed gender differences
seem to be partially attributable to socialization pressures on girls to
express their fears and on boys to inhibit them.
Peck (1999) conducted a meta-analysis of the studies of media-induced
fear that were produced between 1987 and 1996. Her analysis, which
included 59 studies that permitted a comparison between males and
females, reported a moderate gender-difference effect size (.41), with