So perverted! But I like it

When you want to watch a horror movie on the big screen but don't dare to, when you step into a haunted house with the determination to "face death with indifference", when you stand on the skydiving platform and are about to fly freely, do you ask yourself: Why did I spend money to be scared?

Spending money to experience fear, including extreme sports, watching horror movies, and visiting haunted houses, is a "recreational fear" activity. Fear appears in pleasant activities, giving people a wonderful experience of a mixture of fear and pleasure. Completely certain phenomena make people feel boring and unmotivated, while too much uncertainty may cause uncontrollable and unpleasant chaos.

However, recreational fears like haunted houses, which only involve a small amount of uncertainty, can be seen as a form of play—low-cost, risk-free, exploration activities that induce fear experiences, just like the thrills experienced by children in a game of chase.

Horror film scholar Steven Schneider believes that this stems from a desire that is suppressed by social norms, which drives us to seek excitement on our own. The latest psychological research also confirms this view: humans may be obsessed with the complex emotions of fear and pleasure coexisting.

How can fear and pleasure coexist?

Go to the haunted house experiment

In order to explore the coexistence of fear and pleasure in entertainment horror, Danish researchers Marc Andersen and Uffe Schjoedt invited 110 visitors to the haunted house "Dystopia Haunted House" to participate in the experiment. Anderson asked visitors to wear heart rate monitors when entering the haunted house, and selected the three scariest places in the haunted house to shoot videos and evaluate the visitors' facial expressions and body language. At the same time, before entering and after leaving the haunted house, visitors are required to fill out a self-assessment questionnaire to evaluate their pleasure and fear of the whole process and the three scariest places mentioned above.

Three horror scene settings

The tourists encountered a mad scientist who, after delivering a disturbing monologue, kicked the metal barrel in front of him away, and zombies suddenly jumped out of the table next to him.

The tourists suddenly heard a loud noise, and a tall pig-headed butcher rushed over, chasing the tourists with a roaring chainsaw.

As the tourists just turned a corner, several zombies suddenly jumped up from the stairs and rushed towards the tourists, roaring.

The scariest scene in a dystopian haunted house: Left - Pig-headed butcher, Right - Zombie | Playing with fear: a field study in recreational horror

Of the 110 tourists who participated in the study, 18 were excluded from the final data analysis because 4 of them forgot to complete the questionnaire (which scared them so much), 4 did not complete the haunted house, and 10 lost or damaged their heart rate monitors (which the researchers paid a heavy price for). It seems that the tourists forgot that they were participating in the study (making money) when they fled. Although it is a pity that the study lost some data, it also proves from the side that this haunted house is really scary.

The results showed that for the three fear points, the fear and pleasure reported by tourists showed a ∩-shaped curve relationship, which shows that a moderate degree of fear can maximize the pleasure experience. The same conclusion can be drawn by combining the results of heart rate fluctuations: the heart rate value of tourists is positively correlated with the degree of fear. The more fearful they feel, the faster their heart rate. The degree of pleasure of tourists and heart rate fluctuations show a ∩-shaped relationship, which further shows that a certain sense of fear can maximize the pleasure. Haunted houses, in order to make me more excited, don't make it too scary, and don't make it too childish. The middle is the happiest.

However, analysis of visitors' facial expressions and body language did not show a similar relationship. Dr. Anderson believes this may be because facial emotions in entertainment horror situations are not real emotions. Previous studies have found that other people's joy is more difficult to accurately perceive than fear, and smiling masks can cover up pain, embarrassment and fear. For visitors in haunted houses, they may make such masking smiles to hide their fears - especially some male tourists who go with their girlfriends (dog heads).

The results of the study also show that our actual emotional experience, behavior and physiological state are not always consistent. We may feel happy but not show happy behavior (after all, dancing with joy in public will most likely be considered a fool).

Of course, the pleasure of fear varies from person to person.

The study also found that the motivation for going to a haunted house also affects the feeling of pleasure: visitors who voluntarily go to a haunted house will subjectively experience more pleasure than those who are accompanied by relatives and friends. Since entertainment fear is also a game, the joy experienced in the game played voluntarily is of course greater! So it is recommended that you do not force friends who do not want to go to a haunted house to accompany you. After all, a forced melon is not sweet, and he can only force a smile to watch you happy.

There are also gender differences in the enjoyment of haunted houses, with female visitors experiencing more fear and less enjoyment than males. Tamás Viktória, a researcher at the University of Pécs Medical School in Hungary, found similar conclusions: Men engage in more risky behaviors and may be more adapted to scary phenomena than women. Men are more enthusiastic about thrill-seeking behaviors and entertaining fear activities. They have accumulated rich experience, so they experience less fear and more happiness than women.

However, the above gender differences have not been established. For example, Anne Bartsch, a professor of communication at the University of Leipzig in Germany, came to a different conclusion in her study of horror movies: there is no gender difference between the audience's need for emotional stimulation and the emotional experience of the audience caused by horror movies, and women are more likely to need contradictory emotions of pleasure and fear coexisting. There is such a vivid example around me. I am a cool girl who has watched countless horror movies, but my editor is a boy who dares not even watch domestic horror movies (dog head).

The age of the tourists who participated in the study ranged from 12 to 57 years old, but the results did not find any age differences in the haunted house experience. Perhaps haunted houses are really an entertainment activity suitable for all ages.

I really hope that when I am 80 years old, I can still have a strong heart to run through the haunted house!

Haunted houses are really a waste of money.

Or please yourself?

As an ancient emotion, fear is generally considered to be an unpleasant feeling when people face threats, usually accompanied by physiological and psychological defense reactions. Fear is generally classified as a negative emotion. But why do we still spend money to buy fright? Because we need to express our emotions and fully experience various emotions, whether positive or negative.

According to psychologist Fritz Perls's view on Gestalt therapy: unfinished emotions will hinder our progress. Some people were afraid of caterpillars when they were young, but in order to create a strong image, they did not dare to show their fear - this is "difficulty in fully experiencing emotions". But whether you admit that you are afraid or not, these emotions have not disappeared, they will continue to appear and demand to be fully experienced. If you don't want to stop moving forward, you might as well take some time to perceive and sort out your past emotions, fully experience it again, and accept its existence. Then, you can truly "graduate" from this emotion. If you voluntarily go to the haunted house, you can enjoy the full experience of fear and the pleasure that comes with it!

The "smile mask" does not help to increase pleasure. Instead of wearing a mask and pretending to be happy, it is better to fully express fear, or do what you are really interested in, and experience the relaxation and pleasure from the heart. Of course, some people are really not interested in haunted houses. If you encounter an invitation to a haunted house and can't refuse it, you can send this article to him as a popular science!

References

[1] Andersen, M., Schjoedt, U., Price, H., Rosas, FE, & Clasen, M. (2020). Playing with fear: a field study in recreational horror. Psychological Science, 31(12), 1497–1510.

[2] Barrett, LF, Adolphs, R., Marsella, S., Martinez, AM, & Pollak, SD (2019). Emotional expressions reconsidered: Challenges to inferring emotion from human facial movements. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 20, 1–68.

[3] Bartsch, A., Appel, M., & Storch, D. (2010). Predicting emotions and meta-emotions at the movies: The role of the need for affect in audiences' experience of horror and drama. Communication Research, 37, 167–190.

[4] Perls, & Salomon, FSF (1970). Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Bantam books.

[5] Schneider, SJ (Ed.). (2004). Horror film and psychoanalysis: Freud's worst nightmare. Cambridge University Press.

[6] Tamás, V., Kocsor, F., Gyuris, P., Kovacs, N., Czeiter, E., & Büki, A. (2019). The young male syndrome—An analysis of sex, age, risk taking and mortality in patients with severe traumatic brain injuries. Frontiers in Neurology, 10, Article 366.

Author: Margaret

Editor: YeYeYe