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Trick or treat: The psychology of Halloween and horror movies
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The 'dark factor'
A love of horror movies is associated with an underlying dimension of entertainment preferences, dubbed "the dark factor".
Those with dark tastes value intensity, edginess and rebellion. Their personalities lean towards risk-taking, antagonism, imagination, and tough-mindedness.
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The pleasure paradox
Some derive enjoyment from negative emotional states, as when enjoying a "good cry", for instance.
A study found that people who liked sad films enjoyed a scene relative to how much sadness it elicited. The stronger the sadness, the higher the enjoyment.
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Trick or treat
Halloween seems to bring out excesses in costumed children and adults.
Several studies revealed that costumed children who were anonymous — by wearing masks for instance — were more likely to take extra candies. In adults, costumed Halloween celebrators tend to have higher blood alcohol readings than people in plain clothes.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Why some people savor scary movies, and others hate them
- The Excitation Transfer Process. How you feel AFTER the movie. When watching frightening films, the heart rate, blood pressure and respiration increases. After the film, the ...
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Primary factors that make horror films alluring
- Tension - Generated by suspense, mystery, terror, shock and gore.
- Relevance - The horror film may relate to personal relevance, cultural meaningfulness, the fea...
Viewing motivators for horror movies
- Gore watchers typically have low empathy, high sensation seeking, and a strong identification with the killer.
- Thrill watchers typically have both high empathy and sensation seeking;they identify themselves more with the victims and like the suspense of the film.
- Independent watchers typically have a high empathy for the victim along with a high positive effect for overcoming fear.
- Problem watchers typically have high empathy for the victim but are characterized by negative effect (particularly a sense of helplessness).
Theories on why we love to watch horror films
- Dr. Carl Jung believed horror films “tapped into primordial archetypes buried deep in our collective subconscious – images like shadow and mother play important role in the horror genre”.
- Horror films are watched as a way of purging negative emotions and/or as a way to relieve pent-up aggression.
- Horror movies are enjoyed because the people on screen getting killed deserve it.
- Cultural historian David Skal has argued that horror films simply reflect our societal fears.
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The Horror Movie
Horror is a genre that has a reputation of being a low, somewhat trashy, titillating genre that appeals to our basest instincts.
"Its also a wonderful, popular art form through which...
For a work to be classified as horror...
... it has to have a monster, which has to be threatening in some way. The monster is often otherworldly or violates the laws of nature, as in Alien or Jaws—but some argue that a human character can be a monster, as in Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and Halloween.
The monster generally is otherworldly or violates the laws of nature and is designed to elicit disgust as an emotion.
"The beast within"
This is the most popular theory explaining the genre’s popularity and it argues that an unconscious, repressed part of every human is actually savage; that the veneer of civility is very thin, and beneath that is essentially a monster.
Although we consciously disapprove of what the monster is doing, deep down part of us enjoys seeing the murder and mayhem the monster unleashes—because if we could, we would do that.