The Psychology of People Who Love Being Scared — Transcript

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1. 0:01Your heart is pounding.
2. 0:02Your palms are sweaty.
3. 0:04Every instinct is screaming at you to run.
4. 0:07And then the scare happens and you run for the exit.
5. 0:10And here's the thing.
6. 0:11You paid good money to be scared.
7. 0:14And you'd do it again.
8. 0:16But why do we do that?
9. 0:17Here are five reasons from psychology,
10. 0:20and the last one isn't what you'd expect.
11. 0:22The first reason is
12. 0:24that your body gets a real rush,
13. 0:26and your mind knows it's safe.
14. 0:28In 2013,
15. 0:30psychologist Paul Rozin asked nearly
16. 0:32four hundred people about twenty-nine things
17. 0:34that are supposed to feel bad,
18. 0:36like spicy food, sad movies, and thrill rides.
19. 0:39And plenty of people liked them.
20. 0:41Rozin calls this benign masochism.
21. 0:44Your body reads danger,
22. 0:47but your mind knows you're safe,
23. 0:49and that is where the pleasure comes from.
24. 0:52So what does it actually do to you?
25. 0:53Sociologist Margee Kerr
26. 0:55and her colleagues tried to find out
27. 0:57at an extreme haunted attraction in Pittsburgh.
28. 1:00They surveyed two hundred
29. 1:02and sixty-two people who had bought tickets,
30. 1:04before and after,
31. 1:05and about a hundred of them also wore sensors
32. 1:07that recorded their brain activity.
33. 1:10Kerr's name for these experiences is a mouthful:
34. 1:13voluntary arousing negative experiences.
35. 1:17The key word is voluntary.
36. 1:19Same hallway, same stranger, same chainsaw,
37. 1:24but if you hadn't bought the ticket,
38. 1:25that wouldn't be entertainment.
39. 1:27That would be a very bad night.
40. 1:30The result is more
41. 1:32interesting than "everyone felt great."
42. 1:34About half of the people felt better afterward.
43. 1:37About a third felt no different.
44. 1:39And around one in six actually felt worse.
45. 1:43The second reason is
46. 1:45that the relief is bigger afterward.
47. 1:47The biggest lift went to
48. 1:48people who walked in tired,
49. 1:50bored or stressed.
50. 1:52And among the people whose mood improved,
51. 1:54their brains reacted less to later tasks,
52. 1:57like something had been switched down.
53. 2:00Kerr compared it to a runner's high.
54. 2:02The authors call their findings exploratory,
55. 2:05so treat that as a clue, not a verdict.
56. 2:08But notice the pattern:
57. 2:10the fear itself isn't the prize.
58. 2:12The prize is what comes after.
59. 2:14One idea
60. 2:15that may explain this comes from Dolf Zillmann.
61. 2:18In 1971 he proposed
62. 2:20that your body doesn't switch
63. 2:22off the moment something stops.
64. 2:24The leftover arousal hangs around,
65. 2:26and it gets added to whatever you feel next.
66. 2:29His experiments were about anger, not horror.
67. 2:32So this part is borrowed,
68. 2:34not proven in a haunted house.
69. 2:36But it fits the story.
70. 2:38When the scare ends
71. 2:39and the next feeling is relief,
72. 2:41that leftover charge makes
73. 2:42the relief hit harder.
74. 2:44You didn't just stop being afraid.
75. 2:46You stopped being afraid with
76. 2:48your whole body still turned up.
77. 2:50Kerr points to a
78. 2:51related idea called pain offset:
79. 2:54things feel better than baseline right
80. 2:56when something painful stops.
81. 2:58It would also explain why the first
82. 3:00few minutes after the exit are all laughing
83. 3:03and talking over each other.
84. 3:05So if it's all about relief,
85. 3:07the biggest scare should feel the best.
86. 3:09It doesn't.
87. 3:11By the last door, you'll see why.
88. 3:13The third reason is that there's a sweet spot,
89. 3:16and we like to find it.
90. 3:18Now, how scary is too scary?
91. 3:21A Danish team studied
92. 3:22that in a real haunted house.
93. 3:24They put heart-rate monitors on a hundred
94. 3:26and ten visitors, aged twelve to fifty-seven,
95. 3:29and asked how scared they were
96. 3:31and how much they enjoyed
97. 3:32it at three of the scares.
98. 3:34Enjoyment followed an upside-down U.
99. 3:37Barely scared, it's boring.
100. 3:40Terrified, it stops being fun.
101. 3:42The fun peaks in the middle.
102. 3:44And the heartbeat data matched:
103. 3:47fear followed the big swings in heart rate,
104. 3:49while enjoyment peaked in
105. 3:51a moderate, just-right range.
106. 3:53The best scare isn't the biggest one.
107. 3:56It's the one right below too much.
108. 3:59Which also explains why a bad haunted house
109. 4:02and a great one can cost the same.
110. 4:05And why not everyone enjoys the same thing.
111. 4:08Researchers in Denmark
112. 4:09and the United States have
113. 4:11sorted horror fans into three types.
114. 4:14Adrenaline junkies want the rush,
115. 4:16as big as possible.
116. 4:17White-knucklers don't enjoy the fear itself.
117. 4:20They enjoy getting through it.
118. 4:22And dark copers use scary
119. 4:24stories to work through real-world worries,
120. 4:27in a place where nothing can really hurt them.
121. 4:30That sorting comes from a 2023
122. 4:33study of about five hundred horror fans
123. 4:35and haunted house visitors.
124. 4:37If you've ever watched a movie
125. 4:39with one eye through your fingers,
126. 4:41you're a white-knuckler.
127. 4:42And it works.
128. 4:43In a study of two hundred
129. 4:45and eighty haunted house visitors,
130. 4:47people who tried to push the fear up
131. 4:49and people who tried to push
132. 4:50it down ended up about equally satisfied.
133. 4:53Either way, people were steering their own fear.
134. 4:57Thinking, like telling yourself it's fake.
135. 4:59Doing, like looking away.
136. 5:02Or leaning on a friend.
137. 5:03There's even a trait behind some of this.
138. 5:06Psychologist Marvin Zuckerman called
139. 5:08it sensation seeking: wanting varied,
140. 5:11new, intense experiences,
141. 5:13and being willing to take risks for them.
142. 5:15Rozin's team found it was linked,
143. 5:18moderately, to enjoying fear in particular,
144. 5:21more than the other
145. 5:22kinds of discomfort they tested.
146. 5:23It's not the whole story.
147. 5:25It's one road in.
148. 5:27Don't be afraid to hit like and subscribe.
149. 5:30The fourth reason is
150. 5:32that we're curious about the dark,
151. 5:34and a little practice may be useful.
152. 5:36So what pulls us toward
153. 5:37the dark in the first place?
154. 5:39One answer is morbid curiosity.
155. 5:42Researcher Coltan Scrivner built
156. 5:44a scale to measure it,
157. 5:46and found it splits into four kinds.
158. 5:48Curiosity about the minds of dangerous people.
159. 5:51About harm to the body.
160. 5:53About violence between people.
161. 5:55And about the paranormal.
162. 5:57Scrivner's argument is that this isn't a glitch.
163. 6:00Danger is information.
164. 6:02If something can hurt you,
165. 6:04you'd like to know how it works,
166. 6:05preferably from a safe distance.
167. 6:07In his work,
168. 6:08morbid curiosity turns out to be the
169. 6:10strongest predictor of being a horror fan.
170. 6:13Which makes a haunted house a very expensive,
171. 6:16very safe way to look at danger.
172. 6:19It shows up in simple choices too.
173. 6:21In 2017,
174. 6:23researcher Suzanne Oosterwijk gave people a
175. 6:25free choice of what to look at,
176. 6:28and in three studies,
177. 6:29they chose to look at
178. 6:30negative scenes over neutral ones.
179. 6:32Curiosity about the dark isn't just
180. 6:34something people say on a survey.
181. 6:36It's something they do.
182. 6:38There's an even bigger idea hiding here.
183. 6:41In 2021, during the pandemic, Scrivner
184. 6:44and his colleagues surveyed three hundred
185. 6:46and ten adults.
186. 6:47Horror fans reported being more resilient.
187. 6:50And fans of zombie, apocalypse
188. 6:52and alien-invasion films reported
189. 6:54being both more resilient
190. 6:56and more prepared.
191. 6:58That's a correlation.
192. 6:59Maybe horror fans were
193. 7:01just tougher to begin with.
194. 7:02The authors say it's
195. 7:04consistent with a "practice" idea:
196. 7:06that rehearsing fear on the safe side
197. 7:09makes the real thing a bit less strange.
198. 7:11Consistent with.
199. 7:13Not proof.
200. 7:14But it does make
201. 7:15the zombie-movie friend who stayed
202. 7:17weirdly calm during the
203. 7:18pandemic a little less weird.
204. 7:21Now, the thing everyone assumes.
205. 7:23That people who enjoy
206. 7:25horror must be missing something.
207. 7:27Less empathy, a colder heart.
208. 7:29That idea came partly
209. 7:31from an older meta-analysis
210. 7:33that linked horror enjoyment to lower empathy.
211. 7:36Scrivner points out
212. 7:37that the strongest results in it came
213. 7:39from just two studies using clips of torture
214. 7:42and brutal murder,
215. 7:43and says the link disappears without them.
216. 7:45In his own three studies in 2024,
217. 7:48horror enjoyment wasn't tied to
218. 7:50lower empathy for other people's feelings.
219. 7:52It was linked to better understanding of them,
220. 7:55and to less coldheartedness.
221. 7:56And it didn't make people any
222. 7:58less generous with their own money.
223. 8:00Liking the scare isn't the same as not caring.
224. 8:04And the last one is the one nobody expects.
225. 8:07The fifth reason is
226. 8:09that it's more fun with someone beside you.
227. 8:11Notice who you go with.
228. 8:13Nobody does this alone.
229. 8:15In 1986,
230. 8:17Zillmann's team had seventy-two
231. 8:18students watch a horror
232. 8:20film beside a companion who acted either brave,
233. 8:23indifferent or frightened.
234. 8:24How much they enjoyed it
235. 8:26changed with their companion's reaction.
236. 8:28The pattern split along gender roles
237. 8:31that look dated now, and the study was small.
238. 8:33But the point is easy to believe:
239. 8:36part of the fun is somebody else's face,
240. 8:38and how they take the
241. 8:39scare changes how you take it.
242. 8:41You may have heard the date-night version:
243. 8:44that scary experiences make
244. 8:45people fall for each other.
245. 8:47The famous bridge study from 1974 did find it.
246. 8:51But a 1979 paper reported
247. 8:53four failed attempts to repeat it.
248. 8:56So treat that one as unproven.
249. 8:58What is real is simpler.
250. 9:01Sharing a scare changes it.
251. 9:03So, why do we pay to be scared?
252. 9:06Because your body gets a real rush,
253. 9:09and your mind knows it's safe.
254. 9:11Because the relief is bigger afterward.
255. 9:13Because there's a sweet spot,
256. 9:16and we like to find it.
257. 9:17Because we're curious about the dark,
258. 9:20and a little practice may be useful.
259. 9:22And because it's more
260. 9:23fun with someone beside you.
261. 9:25And if you just hate being scared,
262. 9:28that's okay too.
263. 9:29Even in Kerr's haunted house study,
264. 9:31not everyone felt better afterward.
265. 9:34But if you're the one in
266. 9:35the queue this Halloween, shaking, grinning,
267. 9:38already planning your next one,
268. 9:40now you know a little more
269. 9:41about what's going on in there.
270. 9:43A body that's alarmed.
271. 9:45A mind that knows better.
272. 9:47And a very good reason to
273. 9:48hold on to your friend's arm.
274. 9:50You're not broken.
275. 9:52You might just be practicing.
276. 9:54Another episode is on screen now,
277. 9:57about the people who
278. 9:58choose to suffer on purpose:
279. 10:00Dark Souls players.
280. 10:02Watch it next.
281. 10:03If you enjoyed the video, like and subscribe,
282. 10:05because there's always more of your
283. 10:07brain to explore with Biased Mind.