This Is A Creative Title (Something Witty In Parentheses)

Question: Should we consider the non-immediate reactions when discussing the severity of emotional reaction to fiction?

I do think that this is a very important aspect of our emotional reaction to fiction. Consider, for a moment, the grown adult who, after seeing a horror movie, is constantly looking back when he walks and is turning on all of the lights in his house. Though, he is fully aware that what he has just watched was fiction, he cannot help but to consider the possibility of something happening to him. Simply, the idea of something startling is great, he associates whatever that feeling is to the subject of startling in the fiction. These emotions associated with the initial fright carries into the future. People identify with characters and remember that connection for quite sometime thereafter.