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“It’s not that people really want to see someone bleeding on the pavement, but we don’t see that every day,” said Sparks. He compares this to slowing down for an accident on your usual commute. Sparks says we like to pay attention to things that change in our everyday environments. “So, there’s a mastery motivation here, being able to say you conquered it.”Īnother reason is the novelty. “ I went to that film that everyone’s talking about as being so grizzly and I watched it and I made it through,” said Sparks.
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That same feeling can apply to watching a scary movie. Sparks says what people like is the feeling at the end of the ride getting off and seeing that they conquered a fear or did something that everyone else was scared of. When people are at the top of the rollercoaster track and look down and think about the possibility of the car falling off-that’s not pleasant people don’t end up saying I really enjoyed that feeling.” “I sometimes compare this to going on a rollercoaster ride. “One very simple explanation for that is people have a desire to master something that is threatening,” said Sparks. But there are some people who enjoy watching scary films and voluntarily seek out things that scare them. It’s a projection on a screen.’ Our old brains, the brains that evolve for us, sometimes have trouble sorting that out because the images look real and to the extent that the filmmakers are trying to convince us that it is real, that causes some difficulty cognitively in sorting that out and so we react to it as if it is real.”įrom the sounds of it, it seems like watching scary movies can put a lot of stress on your body and your brain. “Some people talk about our old brains and our new brains, and some scholars talk about the new brain having difficulty with technology and being able to discriminate and say, ‘Hey, this really isn’t real. “The whole advent of new technology and being able to watch movies with things that look real,” said Sparks. You’ve been here before and this is how you felt.’”īut why can’t the brain tell the difference between something actually happening to you and something that you’re watching? “So, the Amygdala is sort of like a warning signal it’s like an alarm going off saying, ‘Hey, beware. “The brain has to have a way of telling us, ‘Hey, you’re coming under a threatening stimulus aga in and here’s what happened the last time you confronted this,’” said Sparks. Sparks calls it the lingering fear response and says the effects can stay with you for days, months, or even years. “People left the theater thinking, ‘Oh man, I’m vulnerable to this.’” “That film was done to convince viewers that this demon possession thing could actually happen, and it could actually happen to anybody, and there’s no way to protect yourself against this, we have no control over this,” said Sparks. Sparks gives the example of the movie The Exorcist. Even though these things aren’t happening to you, your brain thinks it is. Think about a movie where the main character is getting chased or hiding from a vicious killer. When a person is afraid in a film, it’s because they are perceiving that in some way, their own well-being is under threat in some way, they’re threatened,” said Sparks “That kind of negative emotion gets stored in the Amygdala in the brain, and the Amygdala functions for us to take those negative experiences and hold on to them for a long time so that they can be called up again if we ever get into a situation where the brain’s telling us, ‘Hey, this is that situation again. It all has to do with how your brain processes and stores the fear and emotions you go through when you’re watching a scary movie. He says there’s a scientific reason behind scary things staying with you longer. Sparks studies the effects media can have on the brain. “They do not want to go back and watch that again because they know how they reacted the first time.” “I’ve talked to people, adults, who will not go back and watch The Wizard of Oz because of the tornado scene or the winged monkeys that frightened them or upset them as a child,” said Glenn Sparks, a media effects expert at Purdue University. Some people like to get into creepy spirit by watching scary movies, but have you noticed that scary things may stick with you longer than funny things? WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Today is Halloween. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.
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