Study Shows That Horror Movie Buffs Are Better At Dealing With The Coronavirus
Image via IMDb
A group of scientists from University of Chicago, Penn State University, and Denmark’s Aarhus University has published findings from a new study claiming that horror movie buffs and “morbidly curious” people tend to display “greater preparedness for and psychological resilience toward the pandemic.”
The paper, entitled Pandemic Practice: Horror Fans and Morbidly Curious Individuals Are More Psychologically Resilient During the COVID-19 Pandemic, is yet to be peer-reviewed but is available for reading as a preprint.
The scientists conducted a questionnaire with 310 volunteers about their emotional and physical preparations regarding the COVID-19 outbreak. The study’s co-author Coltan Scrivner told The Guardian that, “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.”
He suggested that if you have seen the film a hundred times, “[the pandemic] doesn't catch you off-guard so much.”
It isn’t so much about mentally preparing what to do if someone chases you, but more of “building the knowledge you can draw on later, even if it’s outside your conscious awareness.”
So, those insomniac nights where you lay in bed crippled with fear after a horror movie might just be handy during times like these, after all.
The study is now under peer review at the Social Psychology and Personality Science journal. However, you can read the preprint here.
[via Happy Magazine, cover image via IMDb]
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