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Denial of fear fails sweat test, researcher says
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By Barb Albert
Indianapolis Star/News INDIANAPOLIS (Feb. 15, 1999) -- Think scary movies don't bother you? Check your hands. They're probably sweaty. A Purdue University communications professor found that college students who said they weren't frightened exhibited much greater physical signs of fear than those who admitted they were scared. The findings have implications, says communications Professor Glenn Sparks, for parents who let their children watch scary movies -- and even for adults who think they're immune to the frights. Sparks had 59 students watch an old suspense movie, When a Stranger Calls. In the movie, a baby sitter gets threatening calls from a man asking her whether she has checked on the children. Police trace the calls to the house where she's baby-sitting. The children are killed off screen, and the man chases her out of the house. The students, who watched the movie separately, were wired with electrodes on their fingers to monitor their sweating -- a classic anxiety reaction. The more sweating, the better the flow of electricity when a small current was applied. Those who sweat the most were the ones who reported that they weren't the anxious type in earlier psychological tests. They are what researchers call "repressive copers." They hide negative emotions as a way of dealing with unpleasant circumstances. Those students reported their level of fear as low after watching the movie. Their bodies told another story. The physiological reactions of those 30 students after viewing the film was two to three times greater than the reactions of the other 29 students who reported higher fear levels. "What that suggests is these people are really having an emotional reaction," said Sparks, a communications professor since 1986. "It's reasonable to assume that is actually an anxiety reaction." He says the students who reported low fear, but physically reacted more, are either denying the fear or don't recognize they are afraid. "They have truly pushed their emotions out of their consciousness," he said. "The body is telling us something is going here, but in terms of their consciousness they have truly repressed it and don't know they are afraid." Sparks doesn't think it's just a matter of not reporting the fear. Males are very unlikely to admit fear, so if underreporting was occurring in the study, more males would be expected to say they weren't afraid than females, Sparks said. That didn't happen. More study needs to be done to determine whether the 30 students are truly repressing their emotions. But the professor said it is clear that they are reacting physically more than those who said they were more frightened. Sparks conducted the study because research shows many people report they aren't scared after seeing a frightening film. He was curious about whether they are desensitized to violence or they just aren't reporting what they're feeling. Although the study dealt with young adults, Sparks said the results could be applied to children and older adults as well. He says parents should be careful about the scary or suspenseful films their children watch. Children might hold back their feelings because if they say they're afraid, parents could restrict their media diet. Or, the children repress fear as a way of coping with their feelings. "One bit of advice here for parents is you can't assume this kind of media is OK for kids simply because children say they aren't being affected by it," Sparks said. Parents should look for other physical signs -- clenched fists, lip biting, wide eyes and tense muscles. "The media is so explicit and so realistic, there really is cause for concern in letting children be routinely exposed to those images," said Sparks, whose study will be published in the April issue of the journal Communication Research. He even advises against children younger than 10 viewing television news because of the depiction of violence and natural disasters. Sparks, who has studied frightening television and movies since the 1960s, recognizes that means sheltering children from the real world. But he feels is it necessary because young children don't understand the notion of probability and are not used to coping with emotional situations in life. Some research, for example, shows that children who saw images of the Gulf War ask whether bombs will drop in their neighborhood. It's the horror movies that can give some adults lingering emotional reactions, despite gratification they think they get from them, Sparks said. One adult he knew didn't eat meat for six months after watching The Silence of the Lambs, a movie in which cannibalism is depicted. But some adults, especially men, find the horror movies exciting, novel or fun to watch, especially when someone conquers threatening situations, he said. "These scary films show us things you can't see anywhere else," he said.
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