My first experience with scary movies was Silence of the Lambs, of all things, when i was 10 years old. The demented acts of so-called 'Buffalo Bill' and psychotic mind of Hannibal Lecter seemed to make it all the more important that the killing was stopped--towards the end of this movie was when i first time in my life i actually experienced the emotion i would later call suspense.
There's an article at LiveScience that conjectures what's going on in the brain during these moments--something i've wondered since the day i first experienced the uptight feeling i've become so accustomed to (i now love scary movies.)
Evidently, the brain's primal fear systems are triggered by just the simple suggestion of a tense situation. It's either a credit to your wild imagination or to the quality of the movies that a scary reality can be so closely approximated.
So, why do we watch in the first place?
[Jeffrey Goldstein] and other social scientists suggest we watch for different reasons, which include enjoying the adrenaline rush, being distracted from mundane life, vicariously thumbing our noses at social norms, and enjoying a voyeuristic glimpse of the horrific from a safe distance
My thoughts were--maybe humans actually practice the fear response like, for instance, we imagine the future so we can be more ready for what might come.
How many kids did you say you wanted? Never mind.
http://layscience.net/trackback/733
The "practising" theory is quite a strong one in philosophical approaches to fiction - Kendall Walton has written impressively on the idea of "pretending belief", in which experiencing a fictional narrative is a way of rehearsing ethical responses to a given situation. Certainly, I think that your theory (and Walton's) gives the best insight into the pleasure that non-violent people can take in the representation of violent acts.
Thanks for the link to Walton's research--are there others who are studying this from a behavioral psychology perspective?