New Study Reveals Horror Fans Coping With COVID-19 Pandemic Better Than The Average Person
In what isn’t exactly surprising news, a new study by Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture reveals that horror movie fans are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic better than the average person.
Psychologist Coltan Scrivner conducted the study at the University of Chicago and found horror fans have “an adaptive predisposition” towards “learning about the dangerous and disgusting aspects of a threat.”
Specifically, Scrivner says: “If it’s a good movie, it pulls you in and you take the perspective of the characters, so you are unintentionally rehearsing the scenarios. We think people are learning vicariously. It’s like, with the exception of the toilet paper shortage, they pretty much knew what to buy. You’ve seen it a hundred times in the movies, so it doesn’t catch you off-guard so much.”
Scrivner writes in the study: “Increased interest in these genres may imply that morbidly curious individuals felt more interested in information about threats more broadly in response to the increased salience of the Coronavirus threat. However, another possibility is that the broader interest in scary/supernatural and mystery/thriller genres among morbidly curious individuals during the pandemic is due to escapism. Because morbidly curious individuals are generally more tolerable of and even drawn toward morbid phenomena, they may find morbid entertainment more amenable as a form of escapism while they are quarantined at home, whereas those who are less morbidly curious may partake in escapism via other genres.”
Read the full study HERE.
What do you think? Make sure to hit us up and let us know in the comments below or over on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram!
Categorized:News
