Why Do We Like Horror Movies?

Even though horror movies trigger negative feelings such as fear and disgust, they are quite popular among many viewers. Similar to actual threatening stimuli, a horror movie activates the sympathetic nervous system, resulting in increased cardiovascular function, alertness, and shallow breathing among the audience.¹ Folks who perceive this to be exciting and desirable may find horror movies enjoyable.

Neurobiology of Fear

In contrast to neutral scenes of a horror movie, scary scenes strongly activate the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), thalamus, and visual areas of the brain, which are involved in regulating emotional states and anxiety.²

Amygdala activation occurs in response to threat signals that induce fear, instead of sustained anxiety. Scientists observed a similar mechanism in people watching horror movies. They hypothesized that highly reactive amygdalae could induce thrill and enjoyment in horror films. There is a possibility that the amygdala becomes increasingly active with greater stimulation, and an individual’s experience intensity correlates with the degree of amygdala activation while watching.³

In Brief: Why Do People Enjoy Scary Movies? Fear is an evolutionary response that protects against danger; when triggered, it activates circuits in the hypothalamus, midbrain, amygdala, and cortices, which generate a fight or flight response. The pupils dilate, breath quickens, and the heart beats faster as one assesses their surroundings and prepares their next move. In contrast, pleasure circuits throughout the brain respond to experiences that individuals enjoy or are good for survival, acting like rewards that drive people to seek them out again. This makes the notion of enjoying a sensation that mimics a survival threat seem contradictory, yet horror movies continue to draw crowds that voluntarily scare themselves. However, there is more going on between neurons than meets the eye. “It's kind of a fluctuation between the threat systems and these pleasure systems that's likely going on in the brain,” said Lauri Nummenmaa, a neuroscientist and physiologist at the University of Turku. He and his team used functional magnetic resonance imaging while people watched horror movies and found that sensory regions contribute to the feeling of suspense and prepare the acute fight or flight circuits that activate when a reactionary fear response is triggered. The physiological response is also important to the overall satisfaction with the thrill, as studies investigating haunted house experiences showed a correlation between heart rate fluctuations and reported enjoyment. However, the fear itself doesn’t bring viewers back to their seats. “Part of the enjoyment of horror movies comes from the relief of the suspense,” Nummenmaa said. When the credits roll and movie-goers realize they survived the film, their brain’s pleasure circuits activate in response to the relief. Meanwhile, the exhilarating rush of adrenaline lingers, sparking a desire to relive the thrill. “The enjoyment, then, often results from the fact that we actually can experience these powerful emotions in a safe environment,” said Nummenmaa.

The Thrill of Watching Horror Movies

The horror genre is a fictional art form that focuses on deliberately inducing fear. The key behavioral, psychophysiological, and mental impacts of horror movies include the following.^4-6

• Behavioral: Watching a horror movie may cause an individual to shiver, startle, close or shield their eyes, tremble, scream, or heave.
• Psychophysiological: An individual who is watching a horror movie may experience an altered heart rate that can cause fainting, called vasovagal syncope. The strength of the fear response determines the changes in heart rate. Typically, the heart rate increases for a short duration, followed by a decrease.
• Mental: Horror movies can trigger fear, empathy, and thoughts of disgust. For some movie-watchers, horror movies cause sleep disturbances and trigger anxiety.

Theories that Explain Human Attraction to Fear and Excitement

As a survival instinct, fear can motivate people to seek quick escape from potential threats.⁷ However, folks who enjoy horror movies deliberately and proactively seek fear instead of escaping it. Scientists have proposed different theories to explain people’s attitudes towards enjoying the scare induced by a horror film.

Evolutionary theory

Scientists proposed that certain objects or conditions that once posed a threat to human ancestors continue to trigger fear responses because of evolutionary predisposition.⁸ Spiders, for example, are a staple in horror movies, although only 0.1-0.3 percent of spider species cause significant morbidity or mortality in humans.⁹ The fear triggered by seeing spiders in a scary movie could be associated with evolutionary conditioning that activates the fight or flight response for survival, although the viewer is not in any real danger.¹⁰

Excitation transfer theory

According to this theory, the audience derives enjoyment from the invocation of fear and suspense.¹¹ Subsequently, when the suspense ends and the threat resolves, the negative feeling converts to euphoria. In contrast, if proper resolution does not occur, the residual negative effect increases to dysphoria.

“If you're visiting a zoo, and you're standing next to an alligator cage or tiger cage or whatever, and if the animal suddenly jumps at you, you get this big, big, strong startle response, and you probably jump back off a bit, because that's the ultimate automatic response,” said Lauri Nummenmaa, neuroscientist at University of Turku. “Your brain thinks that this might be life threatening, and you better get away. But in a while, you'll calm down because you're outside [the cage]. Higher order cognitive systems can dampen the fear.” Similarly, the scary stimuli in a horror movie may transfer excitement into enjoyment through fear resolution when the movie ends.

Gratification theory and personality traits

Some individuals with sensation seeking personalities enjoy the horror genre because the jolt of horror is exhilarating and invigorating for them.¹² These individuals seek out horror movies because of the thrill they experience from the fear crafted by the movies is enjoyable and satisfying.

The sensation seeking personality trait encompasses an individual’s willingness to take risks to experience different, novel, complex, and intense sensations.¹³ Besides sensation seeking, empathy and curiosity are also important traits that determine an individual’s preference for horror movies.

Empathy constitutes cognitive and emotional components.⁵ An empathetic person is more imaginative towards fictional situations and sensitive to the emotional welfare of others. High sensation seekers and low empathizers are less frequently scared while watching horror movies and enjoy these movies more. Additionally, curiosity drives some people to watch horror movies; morbid curiosity combines interest, excitement, and fear related to unpleasant events such as death, and often correlates with both sensation seeking and horror movie enjoyment.¹ Psychologists have also correlated dark personality traits such as sadism, psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism with enjoyment while watching horror movies.⁵

Benign masochism hypothesis

This hypothesis states that watching horror movies is an adaptive behavior, as it prepares an individual for a theoretical negative stimuli that may occur.¹⁴ While watching these movies, people may experience strong emotions that they have not previously experienced but may in the future, such as a feeling of fear or despair when relationships break, a loved one dies, or even encountering a bear in a forest. Consciously or subconsciously, people might be drawn to horror movies to practice and prepare for those feelings that they may experience in real life. “Horror movies or drama or comedies, they give us a chance to experience or rehearse these kinds of strong emotions in a safe environment,” explained Nummenmaa.

FAQs

Why do people like horror movies?

• Some people enjoy the negative feelings that are induced while watching a horror movie such as fear and anxiety. Several personality and cognitive traits such as sensation seeking and empathy determine whether an individual finds a horror movie enjoyable.⁵ Horror movies also provide people with the enjoyment of scary stimuli without the risk of adverse situations.

What is the psychology of fear?

• Psychological theories propose fear to be a basic and universal human emotion.¹⁵ It is a response to an imminent threat that prepares an individual to make an appropriate decision whether to fight or flee. An individual experiences fear in the mind, which may trigger many physiological reactions such as shivering, screaming, anxiety, and changes in heart rate.

What is evolutionary psychology?

• Evolutionary psychology is a branch of science that deals with human behavior.¹⁶ It is based on natural selection that shapes psychological characteristics underlying behavioral adaptations to environmental conditions to increase the odds of survival and reproduction. Both cognitive psychologists and evolutionary psychologists focus on explaining human behavior through internal psychological mechanisms.