Tag: fear

Oct. 24, 2022 — Halloween Ends? Yeah, sure. Like that’ll happen.

The market for horror remains robust 44 years after the original Halloween movie premiered. Part of the reason (besides Michael Myers’s charm) is that we humans appear to be hard-wired to enjoy getting scared.

Whatever happens in Halloween Ends, the latest entry in the long-running film series, you’ll leave the theater with a sense of relief and satisfaction. You had fun and survived. It feels good.

And you and most of the rest of the world will do it again and again – go to other movies, play scary video games, listen to true-crime podcasts, read Stephen King books, visit haunted houses. A survey by the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark found that 55% of Americans enjoy scary media, and 90% had dipped into the horror world at least once in the past year.

Our penchant for fear dates back millennia. But new research is testing the theory that indulging in morbid curiosity and scary play can help us build psychological resilience, overcome phobias, and deal with genuine scares. So far, the answer is yes.

Zombies even play a role. In a pilot experiment, Siegle and colleague Margee Kerr, PhD, a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh, put actors in costumes and makeup for a virtual-reality film of zombies on a train. Subjects in VR goggles “enter” the train car to find zombies, but at the end, the actors strip away the makeup and everyone has a laugh.

It’s a 21st-century reboot of exposure therapy, the 70-year-old technique in which patients are exposed to something that makes them anxious until they can deal with it. “The problem with exposure therapy is that it’s horrible,” Siegle says. “People drop out rather than be exposed to their fears. What if we made it fun?”

Everyday moviegoers are doing a “home-brewed method” of exposure therapy, Scrivner says. “Morbidly curious horror fans spend time sitting with those feelings in a playful context,” he says. “They have a bit more experience feeling afraid or feeling anxious, and learn how to regulate those feelings.”

“The idea is that they’ve played with fear, or played with scary instances, played with anxiety, and presumably built some tools for dealing with those feelings,” he says.

You’ll Feel Better

Scary media is fun because it allows people “to engage with difficult feelings like anxiety or fear in a safe and playful setting,” Scrivner says. “You can draw your attention away from your cycle of rumination.” And you’re in control: You can turn the sound down and the lights up, cover your eyes, and know it’ll end in 90 minutes.

Scrivner, Clasen, and others examined three types of horror fans in a 2022 paper. Adrenaline Junkies seek maximum stimulation and feel great during the excitement. White Knucklers tolerate the fear but enjoy learning something about themselves. And Dark Copers get the mood boost and the self-enlightenment. 

Some people find horror an excellent head-clearing experience, says Kerr, author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear. In her research, people who go through a haunted-house attraction show “a global decrease in brainwave activity.” 

Or a crime scene photo or a graphic medical show. “Disgust is an emotion that raises arousal,” Siegle says.

People seem to find a personal “sweet spot” for their frightening and morbid experiences: not too scary, not too boring, Scrivner says. (Makers of adaptive video games use research from the Fear Lab to calibrate a game’s fright factor.)

The closer you can get to your sweet spot, the more you’ll get out of the experience, Scrivner says. “You want something that puts you near your limit, so you can test the waters.”

You’ll Get to Know Yourself Better

“Surviving” a haunted house or horror movie helps you become more attuned to your body, the researchers say. Part of that, Clasen says, is improving your “interoception” skills – perceiving and understanding bodily responses like a racing heart or sweaty palms. An anxious person feels that happening and becomes more anxious. Triggering those responses in a safe setting – like on your couch – may help break that cycle.

That’s right – “Morbidly curious people are somewhat more likely to be higher in anxiety,” Scrivner says. “A core aspect of anxiety is vigilance toward threats. Events or situations that pique our morbid curiosity are often threatening events or situations we can safely explore.”

It’s important to note that that strong agreement “doesn’t mean that there is something pathological or unhealthy about their curiosity.”

Horror fans aren’t sickos, in other words. “There are people who score really high in empathy and in compassion who also love torture porn and slasher movies,” Scrivner says. The movie Hostel, for one grim and graphic example, contains several scenes that focus on the victims’ suffering, not the sadist’s pleasure. “That’s a very powerful tool causing you to empathize with the victim,” he says. 

At the very least, Kerr says, a voluntary scary experience can stir self-reflection, feelings of growth and competency, and that can improve our “cognitive flexibility.” That flexibility helps us regulate our emotions and spurs us to engage with other people and new experiences – all of which promote well-being, she says. 

And though you’re not likely to face zombies, “Maybe you get better at handling a job interview, or a presentation at your company, or a date,” Clasen says.

That boost in emotion-regulating ability comes up in a 2016 paper in the scholarly journal Preternature (peer-reviewed articles about spooky stuff). The paper, titled “Grotesque Gaming: The Monstrous in Online Worlds,” examined “how players enjoy landscapes of the monstrous and the grotesque in order to engage with and tentatively conquer our inner fears and anxieties.”

“It is our human nature to be attracted to the horrific and obtain pleasure from encountering it, because this is how we gain a partial and temporary victory over ourselves,” the paper said.

“That these games exist shows that we need horror.” 

Oct. 24, 2022 — Halloween Ends? Yeah, sure. Like that’ll happen.

The market for horror remains robust 44 years after the original Halloween movie premiered. Part of the reason (besides Michael Myers’s charm) is that we humans appear to be hard-wired to enjoy getting scared.

Whatever happens in Halloween Ends, the latest entry in the long-running film series, you’ll leave the theater with a sense of relief and satisfaction. You had fun and survived. It feels good.

And you and most of the rest of the world will do it again and again – go to other movies, play scary video games, listen to true-crime podcasts, read Stephen King books, visit haunted houses. A survey by the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark found that 55% of Americans enjoy scary media, and 90% had dipped into the horror world at least once in the past year.

Our penchant for fear dates back millennia. But new research is testing the theory that indulging in morbid curiosity and scary play can help us build psychological resilience, overcome phobias, and deal with genuine scares. So far, the answer is yes.

Zombies even play a role. In a pilot experiment, Siegle and colleague Margee Kerr, PhD, a sociologist at the University of Pittsburgh, put actors in costumes and makeup for a virtual-reality film of zombies on a train. Subjects in VR goggles “enter” the train car to find zombies, but at the end, the actors strip away the makeup and everyone has a laugh.

It’s a 21st-century reboot of exposure therapy, the 70-year-old technique in which patients are exposed to something that makes them anxious until they can deal with it. “The problem with exposure therapy is that it’s horrible,” Siegle says. “People drop out rather than be exposed to their fears. What if we made it fun?”

Everyday moviegoers are doing a “home-brewed method” of exposure therapy, Scrivner says. “Morbidly curious horror fans spend time sitting with those feelings in a playful context,” he says. “They have a bit more experience feeling afraid or feeling anxious, and learn how to regulate those feelings.”

“The idea is that they’ve played with fear, or played with scary instances, played with anxiety, and presumably built some tools for dealing with those feelings,” he says.

You’ll Feel Better

Scary media is fun because it allows people “to engage with difficult feelings like anxiety or fear in a safe and playful setting,” Scrivner says. “You can draw your attention away from your cycle of rumination.” And you’re in control: You can turn the sound down and the lights up, cover your eyes, and know it’ll end in 90 minutes.

Scrivner, Clasen, and others examined three types of horror fans in a 2022 paper. Adrenaline Junkies seek maximum stimulation and feel great during the excitement. White Knucklers tolerate the fear but enjoy learning something about themselves. And Dark Copers get the mood boost and the self-enlightenment. 

Some people find horror an excellent head-clearing experience, says Kerr, author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear. In her research, people who go through a haunted-house attraction show “a global decrease in brainwave activity.” 

Or a crime scene photo or a graphic medical show. “Disgust is an emotion that raises arousal,” Siegle says.

People seem to find a personal “sweet spot” for their frightening and morbid experiences: not too scary, not too boring, Scrivner says. (Makers of adaptive video games use research from the Fear Lab to calibrate a game’s fright factor.)

The closer you can get to your sweet spot, the more you’ll get out of the experience, Scrivner says. “You want something that puts you near your limit, so you can test the waters.”

You’ll Get to Know Yourself Better

“Surviving” a haunted house or horror movie helps you become more attuned to your body, the researchers say. Part of that, Clasen says, is improving your “interoception” skills – perceiving and understanding bodily responses like a racing heart or sweaty palms. An anxious person feels that happening and becomes more anxious. Triggering those responses in a safe setting – like on your couch – may help break that cycle.

That’s right – “Morbidly curious people are somewhat more likely to be higher in anxiety,” Scrivner says. “A core aspect of anxiety is vigilance toward threats. Events or situations that pique our morbid curiosity are often threatening events or situations we can safely explore.”

It’s important to note that that strong agreement “doesn’t mean that there is something pathological or unhealthy about their curiosity.”

Horror fans aren’t sickos, in other words. “There are people who score really high in empathy and in compassion who also love torture porn and slasher movies,” Scrivner says. The movie Hostel, for one grim and graphic example, contains several scenes that focus on the victims’ suffering, not the sadist’s pleasure. “That’s a very powerful tool causing you to empathize with the victim,” he says. 

At the very least, Kerr says, a voluntary scary experience can stir self-reflection, feelings of growth and competency, and that can improve our “cognitive flexibility.” That flexibility helps us regulate our emotions and spurs us to engage with other people and new experiences – all of which promote well-being, she says. 

And though you’re not likely to face zombies, “Maybe you get better at handling a job interview, or a presentation at your company, or a date,” Clasen says.

That boost in emotion-regulating ability comes up in a 2016 paper in the scholarly journal Preternature (peer-reviewed articles about spooky stuff). The paper, titled “Grotesque Gaming: The Monstrous in Online Worlds,” examined “how players enjoy landscapes of the monstrous and the grotesque in order to engage with and tentatively conquer our inner fears and anxieties.”

“It is our human nature to be attracted to the horrific and obtain pleasure from encountering it, because this is how we gain a partial and temporary victory over ourselves,” the paper said.

“That these games exist shows that we need horror.”