Edited by Carol Eugene Park
With Halloween season coming to an end, we obviously saw a surge in haunted houses and scary movies. There has always been a huge market for scary movies, with TV shows like Stranger Things and movies like It becoming huge hits. There is also an attraction for gore, with challenges like “Try Not to Look Away” and the “Reddit 50/50 Challenge” gaining some popularity over the summer. This got me thinking: why are we so attracted to scary and gory things while being well aware of their negative aspects?
First of all, what happens when we get scared?
Dr. Felipe Amunategui explains that when you are scared, you also experience what is known as the fight or flight response. The adrenal glands send large amounts of adrenaline throughout your body, which results in you experiencing an increased heart rate, dilated pupils so you can receive more light in your eyes, and faster breathing. Adrenaline also affects a part of your brain called the amygdala, which is responsible for our emotional reactions and motivation. Adrenaline’s effect on the amygdala causes you to immediately react to your situation without thinking your actions through, since all your brain’s resources are dedicated to dealing with the fearful situation you are in.
So what might potentially be attractive about these bodily reactions and cause us to actively seek out scary situations?
According to Dr. Margee Kerr, the adrenaline rush creates a “natural high” that could potentially be attractive for some people. However, not all people are attracted to being scared and feeling this high. Dopamine, another neurotransmitter that is mainly responsible for pleasure, is also sometimes released when one is scared. Some people might feel the effects of dopamine more intensely than others, resulting in only a portion of people enjoying the effects of fear. So if your friend is genuinely scared of something while you aren’t, it just might be due to a difference in brain chemistry.
People might also enjoy scary situations for the self-esteem boost it gives us. Think about the last time you came out of a haunted house or finish a “try not to look away” challenge on YouTube. Didn’t you get a feeling of pride knowing that you made it all the way through? However, haunted houses are designed in a way so we don’t feel an actual sense of fear like we would do in a genuinely scary situation, because while we experience part of the fight-or-flight response, we also have time to process that the situation we are in is not real.
Why are we attracted to and seek out potentially gory situations, such as the Reddit 50/50 Challenge?
For those of you who don’t know, the Reddit 50/50 Challenge involves clicking a link on the Reddit 50/50 page. The link has descriptions of two possible results: a fairly normal one and one that is gory/NSFW. The link can take you to any of these results, so you have a 50% risky of seeing something very gory. Although the challenge has been around on Reddit for a while, it did become popular over this summer, prompting various YouTube reaction videos. So why were many people motivated to actively seek out this challenge and take the risk of seeing some very gory images?
Research by psychologists at the University of Central Florida and Indiana University indicate that seeing gory or even erotic images can wipe our memory of what happened before said situations. It is argued that this overpowering of other memories by gory images is what keeps us invested and entertained, since it stays with us for a long time. A study performed by researchers Bridget Rubenking and Annie Lang, published in the Journal of Communication, observed college students who watched a movie with gory scenes on a large screen, using electrodes to measure various physiological indicators. Later, when they were asked about the movie, the participants could better recall the gory or disgusting scenes, since these scenes were so vivid in their memories. Their heightened focus during these scenes is also demonstrated by an increase in their heart rates, showing they paid extra attention to these scenes despite the initial disgust. This, added to the fear of not knowing what’s coming in challenges like Reddit 50/50, results in a combination of our natural attraction to gore and the adrenaline rush of fear, making these challenges very attractive.
All in all, our attraction to fear and gore is a very natural one, influenced by many biological, psychological, and evolutionary factors. So the next time you go to Casa Loma’s haunted house set-up, you know exactly what makes you want to step inside! (Unless you’re like me: the one waiting for the rest of your friends outside, watching their stuff. That’s alright, there’s no shame in that!)