Turns out all those hours of watching post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows weren’t wasted and everyone who started watching movies like ‘Contagion’ at the beginning of the pandemic had the right idea.
A new study found that people who watched those types of horror films were actually better prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic than people who didn't binge seasons of The Walking Dead.
“After factoring out personality influences, which were actually quite strong, we found that the more movies about zombies, alien invasions and apocalyptic pandemics people had seen prior to Covid-19, the better they dealt with the actual, current pandemic. These kinds of movies apparently serve as mental rehearsal for actual events,” explained on of the study authors John Johnson, a professor emeritus of psychology at Penn State.