- DETROIT (AP) -- If Jaws scared you out of the water or Psycho changed
your shower habits, you probably aren't alone a new study suggests.
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- A survey of 150 students at the Universities
of Michigan and Wisconsin found that one in four had some lingering "fright"
effect from a movie or TV show they saw as a child or teenager.
-
- Some people who saw the thriller about
a man-eating shark never went into the ocean again, said Kristen Harrison,
a University of Michigan communications professor who co-wrote the study.
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- And Psycho?
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- "There are people who shower with
the door open, even though they're quite sure there isn't a killer in the
house," Harrison said Tuesday.
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- Ninety per cent said they were scared
by a TV or movie from their childhood or adolescence and 26 per cent said
they still experience "residual anxiety."
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- The younger children were when they were
frightened, the longer the reaction lasted.
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- Ranny Levy, president of the Coalition
for Quality Children's Media in Santa Fe, N.M., said her own 27-year-old
son was frightened about taking a swim in the sea a few years ago and blames
it on seeing Jaws as a boy.
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- "He had to force himself,"
she said. "He really identified it with watching Jaws when he was
little."
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