Fans of horror movies are just as kind and compassionate as everyone else

By Matthew Warren What kind of person wants to watch a movie where a boatload of people gets gruesomely cut in half by a wire, or where a man saws off his own foot to escape the sadistic games of a serial killer? You’d have to be pretty coldhearted and cruel to enjoy that kind of thing, right? That’s certainly how horror fans have historically been portrayed, at least by some commentators. But a new study finds no evidence for this stereotype. Fans of horror films are just as kind and compassionate as everyone else, according to the preprint published on PsyArXiv — and in some respects may be more so. First, Coltan Scrivner from Aarhus University examined whether people really do believe that horror fans lack empathy or compassion. He asked 201 participants to view a series of profiles which each presented information about a person, including their age, name, and favourite genre of movie: action, comedy, drama, or horror. Participants had to judge how kind, empathetic, and compassionate each person was. Participants did indeed see horror fans in a more negative light: they rated these people as significantly less kind than comedy, drama or action fans, and less empathetic and compassionate than comedy or drama fans. Scrivner then set out to see whether there was any truth to this stereotype. A new group of 244 participants rated the extent to which they enjoyed five sub-genres of horror film: gore/splatter, monster, paranormal, psychological, and s...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Media Personality Social Source Type: blogs