As if prepared for it all their lives, fans of horror fiction plunge now into a real pandemic. A new study looks at their psychological prospects. “Pandemic Practice: Horror Fans and Morbidly Curious Individuals Are More Psychologically Resilient During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Coltan Scrivner [pictured here, stylistically], John Johnson, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, and Mathias Clasen, PsyArXiv, […]
Tag: horror
Psychological Responses to Horror Films
Neil Martin scared up a bunch of psychological research about how people respond to scary movies: “(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films,” G. Neil Martin, Frontiers in Psychology, epub 2019. The author, at Regent’s University London, UK, explains: “Despite a century of horror […]
Three concepts of monstrosity
“What is a monster? At least three concepts have been proposed: Aristotle thinks a monster to be a “mistake of purpose” in nature; Noël Carroll thinks a monster to be a scientifically impossible being that arouses disgust and fear; Cynthia Freeland thinks a monster to be an evil being. Thus a two-headed calf is an […]
Music for Sharks and Subs
Which styles of music might be best at representing an underwater silent menace? Specifically, the underwater silent menaces of submarines and sharks? Musicologist Linda Maria Koldau, professor of musicology at the Institute of Aesthetic Studies, Aarhus University, in Denmark, examines this problem in the current (inaugural) issue of the scholarly journal Horror Studies. The essay, […]