ABSTRACT
T he purpose of this study is to identify adolescents' motivations for viewing graphic horror and to identify the cognitive and affective reactions that correspond to different viewing motiva tions. The graphic-horror film genre, for example, Halloween (Hill & Carpenter, 1981), Nightmare on Elm Street (Shaye & Craven, 1985), and Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980), is characterized by prolonged terror and the modeling of sadistic torture and hum an mutilation. The violence is often directed toward sexually attractive young females (Cowan & O'Brien, 1990), and the trium phant killer often survives for yet another sequel. Although adolescent viewers are the prim ary target for graphic horror, adolescents have to make some effort to view these films through video rental, pay-per-view movie channels, or sneaking into movie thea ters, because these movies are not ubiquitously available through stan dard television, and they carry restricted ratings. This "preexposure involve-
ment" (cf. Levy & Windahl, 1985) suggests that moderately powerful needs and motivations accompany adolescents' viewing behavior.
