So I’ve been watching a let’s play of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which is basically a video of a person playing a game. So Amnesia is supposed to be the scariest game ever. But I’ve been watching it for a while, and the only scare factor is the atmosphere and, in particular, the sound. The developers did an amazing job with the sound. 

However, without the sound, there really hasn’t been anything scary. So I was thinking (as I often do), if someone watching a scary movie/game had never been exposed to the stereotypical scary movie music, would they still be scared? I mean, it’s a pretty classic question of conditioned versus learned behaviors, but I’m really uncertain. I never needed anyone to explain how I should feel about scary movie music, but is that because I began associating scary movie music with scary movies at a very young age, or is there a more primal reason? 

See, this is why I hate AP classes (wow, hi there, tangent). We never talked about this kind of stuff in AP Psych; it was all notes. And while I appreciate getting the bare bones of psych down, this stuff is much more interesting, and it is entirely possible to incorporate these kind of thought-provoking questions in everyday class. 

Just my two cents.