Squicked by real gore, fine with fake gore...why?

February 11, 2013 12:34 PM

Have there been any actual studies shedding light on the disparate reactions of (most?) adult humans to real versus fake scenes involving blood, guts, injuries, etc.? More to the point, is there any sort of evidence that as a species we're good at identifying simulated blood, etc., at a glance despite it superficially "looking real", and what physiological markers might indicate this?

OK, so, between finding out I need to undergo a fairly nasty-sounding periodontal procedure (crown lengthening on a broken tooth) and watching the film "Hobo With A Shotgun" recently, I've been doing a fair bit of musing on the nature and manifestation(s) of squeamishness.

In general I tend to be fairly squeamish when it comes to "real" injuries, whether I or someone in my vicinity is the injured party. I have to wear gloves when cutting up meat for my cats in order to avoid being exceedingly grossed out. I've had mild vasovagal-type responses (sweating, light-headedness, sudden need to lie down) to even just looking at pictures of certain types of physical trauma. Etc.

When it comes to simulated gore, however...well, I've watched through several seasons of "Bones" and a number of other forensics-focused shows that don't skimp on the icky props while eating dinner. I've also seen my share of bloody action and/or horror movies and while occasionally something on the screen will elicit a startle response or a moment of disgust, the subjective experience is worlds apart from my responses to anything real.

Granted there are some films I simply will not watch because the mere idea of them just intrinsically grosses me out (e.g., "The Human Centipede") but still. It just sort of struck me how interesting it is that the brain is capable of internalizing the fact that something isn't real and adjusting autonomic responses accordingly. And that got me wondering what the mechanisms behind this sort of thing are, as I am certain this is a fairly common and entirely non-snowflakey state of affairs to which I refer.

So, in other words, why the heck does a photo of a fractured index finger in a first-aid book make me outright woozy, whereas an image on my TV of someone having their hand chopped off in a lawnmower merely makes me go "ew!"?

Obviously knowing the difference between fantasy and reality (and thus being able to acknowledge that nobody is actually being hurt) is a big factor, but I have to wonder what it is about human cognition that makes it possible for the knowledge that something is fake to penetrate all the way down past the visceral response and override what is actually being seen.

I'd be curious to check out any papers/articles/etc. that may have been written on this subject. I am also wondering (following unsuccessful googling) whether anyone has ever tested the ability of humans to quickly discern photos of real injuries from photos of fake injuries when they haven't been told which are which. So if anyone has any references along these lines, please feel free to share...anecdata would also be of interest to me, but primarily I'm looking for the science behind the phenomenon. Thanks!

posted by aecorwin to science & nature (18 answers total)

My guess is empathy. You know when you're looking at something real, that a real person was hurt, so all those mirror neurons that put you in the place of others are kicking in. When it's fiction, you kind of have a suspension of disbelief, but you're always a bit distant from the action.
posted by empath at 12:39 PM on February 11 [4 favorites]

A lot of this will be subtle clues like framing and lighting. You know immediately when you flip the channel and land on a movie, even if that movie happens to have a gory scene. Movies generally have professional cinematography, real life is often shitty looking and out of focus.
posted by 2bucksplus at 12:46 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]

I don't have an answer here, just a sort of amplification of the question, but I've often mused about similar subjects. I feel like there's a sort of uncanny valley of violence and gore -- the more cartoonish and over-the-top it is, the less it bothers me, even if it's got buckets of blood spurting all over the place. Whereas a relatively low key shot, even if fictional, of someone, say, breaking a leg, makes me more viscerally ill.

The things I react to don't seem to depend on how *much* blood it is, or even on whether I do or don't know that the blood is real, but on how much it feels like it could happen to me.

Possibly related -- I once had a scalpel incision done without anasthetic and it was ... err, unpleasant, shall we say? -- so real or fake or even fake on a dead body (autopsy scenes are very common on cop shows), close-ups of scalpel incisions make me flinch. Just hits too close to home. You could probably put the same fake hollywood body through a meat grinder and I wouldn't do much more than say "Eww".
posted by jacquilynne at 12:53 PM on February 11 [2 favorites]

I think some of it might have to do with the expectation/projection of pain, too. I was in the room watching while my partner got stitches in her leg, and I wasn't squicked out by it because I knew she had been dosed up with anesthetic and couldn't feel it. If I knew or could see that she was in pain, I think it would have been a lot harder to watch.
posted by nakedmolerats at 1:02 PM on February 11 [2 favorites]

What an AWESOME question.

In terms of articles, this was the only thing I could come up with. In addition to a fictional context, it seems as though personal experience of some kind makes a difference and actually might dictate physiological response. Perhaps real violence is more unsettling because we can imagine it happening to ourselves, whereas fictional violence tends to take place in scenarios we are comfortable excluding ourselves from psychologically? (For instance, I will never be killed and eaten by cannibals but I could very easily suffer barbed wire wounds.)
posted by WidgetAlley at 1:12 PM on February 11

Images on TV (movies too, to an extent, but definitely TV) are extremely sanitized even when they're "graphic".

I worked in the art department of a network crime procedural that did an episode wherein a serial killer was mutilating bodies. The TV detectives needed to have crime scene photos that looked like real mutilated bodies. I was tasked with doing online research to get the photos we needed. I pulled one real photo of what the scene described, one photo of general gory looking... something? ... and then took one of our standard "actor on our morgue set" autopsy photos and engrossened it in photoshop, to let the director choose exactly how gory we wanted to get. I don't remember which he picked, but it definitely wasn't the real thing, and it also was almost certainly the least disgusting looking of the fake options.

I'll also say, after years of looking at staged autopsy and crime scene photos with fake blood and makeup effects, the real thing (actual crime scene photos) makes me nauseated, and I can't even imagine touring a city morgue or the scene of a grisly murder. And, again, my job for years was to stage, alter, and reproduce fake autopsy and crime scene photos. Which involved sometimes researching the real thing, to an extent that you'd think would desensitize me.

TL; DR: Standards & Practices departments exist. What you're seeing on network TV as "gore" is not even remotely close to as graphic and horrifying as the real thing.
posted by Sara C. at 1:12 PM on February 11 [4 favorites]

Your experience is by no means universal. I'm squicked out by the blood and guts in Bones and similar shows. I have to cover my eyes during the gory scenes even though I know they're fake.
posted by Wordwoman at 1:14 PM on February 11 [2 favorites]

I'm bothered by pain and suffering more than pure gore. I've joked around with cadavers in anatomy classes and cartoonish violence is fine with me but can't bear anything that presents torture (or the threat) as entertainment.
posted by bonobothegreat at 1:35 PM on February 11 [2 favorites]

You can't smell fake gore
posted by fshgrl at 1:40 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]

Fear of blood is not a species-level biological thing. Humans as a species are comfortable with a substantial amount of routine real smelly gross stuff like killing and eating animals.
posted by steinwald at 1:50 PM on February 11

Yeah I just wanted to second this is not universal. I get visceral reactions to TV/movie blood and gore, and while I don't enjoy real-life gore, I can deal with it. I switch into "emergency" mode, and deal with what I need to handle. It might squick me out to remember it, but in the moment I'm fine.
posted by DoubleLune at 1:52 PM on February 11

Just a handful of brief points (trying not to threadsit, hopefully this level of response is ok):

(1) WidgetAlley: YAY, a relevant paper! Thanks for linking to that...it's paywalled but still definitely the sort of thing I was searching for to no avail.

(2) Re. my experience not being universal, of course it isn't...I just figured it was at least common enough such that maybe someone had studied it. Anecdata from people of differing disposition is nonetheless fascinating, so thanks to the squicked-by-tv-ers for weighing in.

(3) Re. smells, definitely that would figure into real-life squickery, but I squick at *photographs* of real injuries, which thankfully are not scratch-and-sniff!
posted by aecorwin at 3:20 PM on February 11

I don't have an answer here, just a sort of amplification of the question, but I've often mused about similar subjects. I feel like there's a sort of uncanny valley of violence and gore -- the more cartoonish and over-the-top it is, the less it bothers me, even if it's got buckets of blood spurting all over the place. Whereas a relatively low key shot, even if fictional, of someone, say, breaking a leg, makes me more viscerally ill.

I want to call this the 'Django Unchained Effect', where the crowd cringes and covers their eyes at scenes of slaves getting whipped but cheers at cartoonish action violence.

And yes, I'm another person who's uncomfortable with staged gore, but is fine with actual dead animals and being covered in stage gore myself.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 3:34 PM on February 11 [1 favorite]

There is something pulsating and glistening about real gore that fake gore lacks, I believe. It's a pretty subtle thing but television/movie gore just doesn't trick me into believing it is/was alive. Fake gore used to squick me out but now that I have observed some pretty intense surgeries it doesn't bother me at all.

Things that are wrong about fake gore: hue, saturation, viscosity, usually even anatomy, and YES, smell! And the pulsating movement of life.

In real-life situations to combat the vasovagal reflex, flex your calf muscles and clench and unclench your fists. This returns blood to your brain despite the low blood pressure response.
posted by bobobox at 4:57 PM on February 11 [2 favorites]

When I was a kid I was really scared of any kind of gore in movies or on TV. My mom would tell me "it's not real blood, it's just like ketchup!" I think eventually you learn to counter your physical reaction with rational thinking ("no need to get worked up, it's not real"). Except it doesn't work 100%, because I still hate movies with lots of gore or torture.
posted by walla at 6:31 PM on February 11

Different strokes for different sensibilities

I hate watching movie gore. It's not so much that I can't, I just refuse to watch known gory movies or look at a bloody violent scene if I can help it. It feels voyeuristic and nasty. I don't do Lookie-Loo at car wrecks for that reason, either.

Real life internet pictures and you tube videos don't bother me. I watched several knee replacements prior to having one. Brain and heart surgery are fascinating.

Documentaries and war pictures make me emotionally unsettled and sick inside.

I doubt if I'd be great as an EMT--not because of the squick factor, but because I'm not good at thinking and reacting in fast moving situations.

I'd be a great vet--I jump right in any time I can. I have cleaned handfuls of maggots out of a calf's 2 x 4 x 4 inch hip wound (lovely clean, pink flesh underneath.) I euthanized (shot) a dying pony and attended the necropsy. Before we disposed of the carcass, I removed the leg at the shoulder. After skinning, removing the flesh, I restrung the bones. (There are seven bones in the equine 'knee'.)

I've watched my own carpal tunnel sugery and various other repairs. All that said, I passed out watching my toddler get stitches for a bone-deep gash on her chin. When my son had a greenstick fracture across his forearm, I had to hold it together long enough to get him to the ER. "Look mom, it flops up and down." STOP THAT! No blood that time, but after they sedated him, I dry-heaved.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:23 PM on February 11

Hmm, looking over the responses here and thinking further about my own responses to various things, I think it might be worth clarifying that I was sort of thinking just mainly in terms of physical/bloody injuries in composing the original question.

I definitely have trouble with fictional (but realistic) depictions of things like torture and humiliation, and will leave the room if there's any scene where, for instance, someone isn't being allowed to use the bathroom (probably because that's a huge one for me, recalling situations like when I had a teacher who would literally take points off our grade if we had to get up to pee during class).

And...fictional injury *can* yank me around in bad ways if it's a matter of really deeply caring about the character(s), even if those characters aren't human (I read a fantasy book once where someone did something horrible to KITTENS, and there was definite nausea and hyperventilation in response to that). It seems to be a very specific thing where I (and plenty of others I've encountered) can tolerate massive levels of visible fake-gore well beyond what would have me in quite a state if it were real, but where suspension of disbelief gets harder to come by as situations become perhaps less overtly bloody but more uncomfortable.
posted by aecorwin at 9:30 PM on February 11

As another commenter said, I think empathy has a lot to do with it. Not only do we know the gore in movies and TV is fake, but it usually doesn't happen to characters we're expected to care about. Either the victim gets very little backstory and mostly exists to demonstrate how evil the killer is, or the victim has done something to make them unsympathetic to us, and now we're watching them get "punished" for it. It's rare that we'll see a likeable character getting gorily tortured or killed. If they do, it probably won't be lingered on the way the camera would linger on a bad person suffering.

I can almost always stand fake gore on TV, but I can't take movie gore at all. It's just so overwhelming, a movie surrounds you and there's no escaping it. Even silly horror comedies are usually too much for me on the big screen, but I can watch the sometimes spectacular gore on Supernatural, for instance, and it grosses me out but that's about it.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:19 AM on February 12