Around what age do children learn to fear monsters and scary stuff?

Question

errrr...my son is watching the first evil dead (good movie) and he is three.

Answer 1

The "Little Albert" Experiment showed that children can be affected by fear as young as nine months, if they are conditioned to.

Little Albert was given a lab rat to play with. He enjoyed playing with the rat at first, but then the researchers began making loud noises behind little Albert every time they gave him the rat, scaring him and causing him to cry. After a while, the sight of the right alone would simply cause fear in Albert.

In your case, however, you are simply showing your child a movie, not conditioning him over time to be afraid of something. It's really your choice, no one can say for sure whether this will affect him or not

Answer 2

Three or four years old.

Edit: Being afraid of monsters is entirely different than being afraid of loud noises as in the Little Albert experiment. Babies are born with a fear of noise and a fear of heights, so it's natural for a 9 month year old to cry at loud noises. 9 month year olds, however, lack the imagination and cognitive skills to know what "monsters" are.

At ages 3-4, children engage in what Piaget termed imaginative play. It's a great age to pretend blankets are a dark cave or a cardboard box is a race car. It's also the age where they imagine monsters under the dark realms of their bed or closet.

Answer 3

At what age do children learn to fear monsters and scary stuff? At whatever age they become aware of them. They don't "learn" it: it is pre-programmed into them (intuition, or whatever you choose to call it). Even babies have nightmares, even before they learn to talk.

Answer 4

my question would be, "when is it ok to stop?" my nite-lite went out!!!