Research Symposium

BIO

Giuliana is a second year psychology major and criminology minor from Tallahassee. She is interested in social and forensic psychology and hopes to do research in those fields.

Is It all Just Jumpscares

Abstract

Horror video games are a niche media that often evoke fear amongst their players. However, horror video games are not widely studied within the persuasive realm of communication studies. This study investigates how, through the lens of the Elaboration Likelihood Model theory, decision-making can be effective within horror video games, as well as set the foreground for the researcher’s future studies. According to the model, persuasive information is collected and processed by the brain in two ways: central and peripheral routes. Where the peripheral route examines information on a surface level, only looking at explicit stimuli, the central route calls for a deeper analysis of the provided information to discover its implicit details. Through a content analysis of the video game Soma this phenomenon can be observed. Individually, two coders analyzed the same one-hour cut of the game, and a reliability score was assigned based on the subjectivity of the element and the agreement between both coders. The data collected will be examined to determine whether central or peripheral cues are more prevalent in the game. From there, conclusions can be drawn on which type of cue is utilized more by game developers in comparison to two other games: Until Dawn and Resident Evil 7.

Keywords: Jumpscare, Horror, Video Games