After typing “psychology in horror movies” into google scholar, I eventually found this paper entitled “The Lure of Horror”. This source is a psychological essay published by the British Psychological Society on the attraction of horror movies. I decided to use this source because it gives a very comprehensive analysis of potential causes of horror in the movie Paranormal Activity by citing a myriad of different experiments done on this topic. From this, it is a gateway to finding more sources to potentially use. Furthermore, there is a good mix of observational analyses and hard core neuroscience, in contrast to pure psychological analysis as many of the other sources were. These conclusions were along the lines of, horror films allowing us to “rehearse” similar scenarios and release dopamine in order to learn from it. The source delves into why horror movies are appealing even though they are unpleasant, what makes horror movies scary in terms of psychological studies and in terms of brain imaging studies. It changes how I am approaching the topic because I feel as if I should incorporate more psychological analysis in my analysis of Paranormal Activity, as these studies are also important in synthesizing a conclusion for the movie.
Jarrett, Christian. “The Lure of Horror.” The Lure of Horror. The British Psychological Society, 1 Nov. 2011. Web. 5 Nov. 2015.
This is a great source, Alex! I think this source and others that tap into similar questions will be great places for you to research.
For articles on a web magazine (that seems what this is closest to), I found this on the Purdue OWL site–yours is close, but you’ve doubled up the name of the article instead of including the name of the website, which it looks like is “The Psychologist.”
Bernstein, Mark. “10 Tips on Writing the Living Web.” A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites. A List Apart Mag., 16 Aug. 2002. Web. 4 May 2009.