It’s October! The one month of the year where evil creatures and sinister ghouls are actually celebrated. With this glorious month of spookiness comes a lot of scary activities, and of course scary movies. Whether you like them or not, they are extremely popular and enjoyed by many. I know I, as well as many others, love getting cozy and getting a good scare. But why do we enjoy watching unsettling films that startle us? It’s actually a lot deeper than you think.
Horror movies affect our brain and body significantly. The real reason that they are enjoyed by many is because the movies trigger our “flight or fight response”. While this sounds like an unpleasurable experience, the science behind it shows that our bodies like this reaction.
Steven Scholzman, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and Margee Kerr, a sociologist in Pittsburg both shared their studies on this topic.
“These involuntary responses can have a major effect on your body, causing it to release adrenaline”, Kerr says. The fight or flight response causes increased respiration, increased heart rate, and sweating.
While this sounds bad it actually makes you feel great and a variety of chemicals, like neurotransmitters and hormones, are released.
Scholzman proclaims, “One example of these chemicals is endorphins— painkillers that your body produces naturally whose feel-good effects have been compared with morphine.” This chemical is usually released when you are exercising, experiencing emotional stress, or even by the consumption of spicy food or chocolate. So watching a scary movie triggers the same effect.
Unsurprisingly, dopamine is also released while watching a scary movie. The classic chemical we get from our reward system is wired in our brain. One study in the journal Nature Communications says that overtime, exposure to dopamine might actually lessen our reaction to fear. This could be why people that watch a lot of scary movies “never get scared”.
Of course, certain people like certain amounts of horror in scary entertainment but everyone likes horror in different aspects. Coltan Scrivner, a research scientist at Aarhus University’s Recreational Fear Lab, says there are certain types of horror advocates. Adrenaline junkies are simple and get a mood boost from the movies while some are more complicated, these are called “white knucklers and dark copers”. Scrivener says, “For white knucklers and dark copers, feeling fear for fun is more about self-learning and self-efficacy.” White knucklers try to get a certain amount of horror to hit their “sweet spot”, and dark copers like the horror because it makes them deal with anxieties about their own lives and realize things could be worse. These horror watchers have different ways to enjoy it due to how their brains deal with their flight or fight response.
Furthermore, horror movies’ effects are deeper than you think. It isn’t just entertainment, it has an effect on your brain. If you are an avid horror watcher, think about why you enjoy it. Are you an adrenaline junkie, white knuckler, or dark coper?
