RENEE CRONLEYMonsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win. —Stephen King Your friend is about to select a horror movie on Netflix; your reaction is… A) Are you crazy? I’m not watching that crap! At least watch it during the day and preferably when I’m not here. I’m serious, if you put that on, I’m locking myself in the bedroom and watching something else. B) Are you crazy? It’s not dark enough yet! At least wait until the sun goes down, then we’ll turn off all the lights and watch it before we go to bed. Interestingly enough, your selection of A or B is not just based on personal preference but brain chemistry and psychological need.
As person B, I understand the allure to horror books and movies that are created to inspire fear. But fear itself is not a pleasant feeling — it is, after all, a negative emotion and a natural response to threat or danger. So, it’s not unreasonable for someone like person A to wonder what would possess someone to seek out experiences designed to scare the living hell out of them. Why would anyone put themselves through fear and suspense and get pleasure out of it? As it turns out, some of us are wired differently to react to these types of content. According to research from David Zald, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, there seems to be a difference in dopamine, the chemical in the brain associated with pleasure and reward, for thrill-seekers compared to thrill-avoiders. The thrill-seeker – the one who seeks out scary experiences – has a harder time putting the brakes on dopamine release and have fewer dopamine-inhibiting receptors so their brains are more saturated with the chemical. It’s important to note that safety is key to enjoying a scary situation, because what we’re really looking for is ‘controlled’ fear. It’s all about triggering the fight-or-flight response to experience the flood of adrenaline, endorphins, and dopamine in a safe environment — like the movie theatre or at home. Us horror veterans have trained our brains to quickly evaluate scary situations to tell us whether or not we’re free from risk so we can calm our bodies down and enjoy the experience. We are what many people call ‘desensitized’ and have a controlled response to fear stimuli. A word of caution: the chemicals released during fight-or-flight build strong memories of scary experiences and are stored in the brain’s amygdala, which is resistant to letting go. So, if you’re too young to know that monsters aren’t real, these scary experiences can be traumatic and the effect can linger into adulthood. However, according to Margee Kerr, a sociologist who studies fear, people who had positive experiences when they were young with what researchers call “fun scary” ― an experience that startles, but does as not contribute to real fear ― built up an internal framework around certain scary activities as thrilling. “Fun scary” needs to be age appropriate, like a kid-friendly haunted house — don’t sit your three-year-old in front of the TV and put on Pet Sematary. One psychoanalytic theory says that we read and watch frightening material as a way to purge negative emotions and relieve pent-up aggression. Maybe we read and watch horror to project our own sense of evil onto the ‘the bad guys’ and enjoy watching them be defeated. Reading or watching something scary allows us to examine our fears and think about why they scare us. There’s a sense of self-satisfaction and confidence after enduring the fear and emerging triumphant.
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