It may be colder outside, but you’re shivering for another reason. On the screen a masked man jumps out from around a corner and you can’t help but shriek.
We love horror movies. We flock to them, especially around Halloween. There’s something about cinematic horror that makes being scared senseless okay.
One reason is because of the opponent process theory, said Scott Roberts, the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Psychology.
Basically, when we are frightened, our bodies experience many negative reactions. In order to return to a healthy balance, we rely on the release of good things. Our bodies combat fear with pleasure.
Eventually, after having been scared so many times, the feeling of pleasure outlasts the fear. So, you keep watching.
“What used to be mostly negative, now starts to balance out,” Roberts said.
This tells us that a love of horror movies is actually a learned trait. No one starts out loving horror movies.
Of course, every person is different. Some people may not experience enough pleasure to overcome the fear. Interestingly enough, people who find it difficult to watch horror movies, are also generally more empathetic than those who love the genre.
Some people only like watching horror movies when they’re with others. Not only is a big group of friends a good distraction from the frightful images on the screen, it also alleviates a basic human instinct.
When we watch horror movies we become aware of our own mortality.
“One of the immediate consequences of that is a desire to affiliate with other people,” Roberts said.
People are designed to survive with the help of other people. Therefore, we feel safer when we are around others. When we are around our friends it makes us feel even better because they are people we already know and trust.
“I don’t think that I would ever go and watch a horror movie by myself,” said senior community health major Rachel Shields. “It’s definitely more of a group activity for me.”
That group could easily be a group of two.
Horror movies are also the perfect date night film. This is due to a phenomenon called misattribution of arousal.
When we watch horror movies, our bodies enter a state of heightened arousal, that is; our heart rates speed up, our pupils dilate, our breathing quickens. While we understand that some of this is because of the chilling happenings on the screen, our brains attribute these reactions to something else as well.
“They misinterpret those physiological changes as attraction to you,” said sophomore psychology major James Raymond. “It’s kind of like tricking them into liking you.”
What happens is that your brain notices your body’s responses to the film. It knows that you’re watching a horror movie and that some of your reactions come from that. However, it also decides that, because your heart is beating so fast, you must be attracted to the person sitting next to you. Certainly the reactions couldn’t all be from the film, your brain thinks.
Therefore, you end up attracted to the person you’re watching with on date night, because your brain decided that it’s the only logical explanation.
Of course, if you were already attracted to them before you watched the movie, then perhaps, everybody wins.