Behavior/Humans

Why Do People Enjoy Watching Horror Movies?

Some really enjoy the feeling of fear

By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

28th of July 2007, 08:32 GMT

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The cheapest formula: blood and guts everywhere, flies and spiders that grow as big as a cow and suck you up. The pervert human nature is also revealed also through our pleasure of watching horror movies. Why do we pay for two hours of fear, disgust and terror, which are elicit negative feelings? (not to mention in most cases the bad taste...)

Two classical

theories are employed to explain this. The former states that the person is not actually afraid, but turned on by the movie. The latter hypothesis claims that people are eager to endure the terror just to experience a euphoric sense of relief at the end.

But a new research by Eduardo Andrade (University of California, Berkeley) and Joel B. Cohen (University of Florida) challenges both these theories. "We believe that a reevaluation of the two dominant explanations for people's willingness to consume "negative" experiences (both of which assume that people can not experience negative and positive emotions simultaneously) is in order. The assumption of people's inability to experience positive and negative affect at the same time is incorrect," explained the authors.

Thus, horror movie watchers really enjoy to be unhappy. This new research shows that people experience both negative and positive emotions at the same time and they can actually enjoy being scared, not just wait for the relief when the threat is gone. "The most pleasant moments of a particular event may also be the most fearful," pointed the authors.

They developed and employed a novel methodology to detect negative and positive feelings at the same time. Their method could be tested on other experiences that elicit terror, risk, or disgust, such as the extreme sports. "When individuals who typically choose to avoid the stimuli were embedded in a protective frame of mind, such that there was sufficient psychological disengagement or detachment, they experienced positive feelings while still experiencing fearfulness," the authors explain.

TAGS:

human | horror | behavior | feeling | fear

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