Lessons from a terrified horror researcher | Mathias Clasen | TEDxAarhus

Horror researcher Mathias Clausen tells us the science of why we love to be scared half to death. Mathias Clasen is a specialist in horror media and has spent years getting to the bottom of the paradox of horror: Why do people seek out the kind of entertainment that’s designed to make them feel bad?

Drawing from research on human cognition and evolution, Mathias argues that our appetite for horror and our fascination with monsters run deep in our nature and that horror entertainment serves important functions for us by satisfying a deep-seated need for imaginative experiences with scenarios of danger.

Despite his sustained professional engagement with the genre, Mathias still cannot watch a horror film alone.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

I really don't like
to watch horror films alone.

That stuff is terrifying, you know.

I'm sure many of you
recognize this situation.

You put on a horror film,

you turn down the lights,

turn up the volume, and sit back.

You're watching as monsters
come creeping out of the dark

in search of prey.

Your heart goes out
to the poor characters in the film,

and you start squirming in your seat
as the monsters get closer.

Your pulse accelerates,

your palms get sweaty,

and your hair stands on end.

This is when you begin
to throw nervous glances

into the corners of the room.

What was that sound?

Surely it didn't come from the television?

Was that movement in the shadows?

The horror that's on the screen

bleeds in through your system
and into the surroundings.

The world around you
turns threatening and scary.

You cover your eyes, but it doesn't help.

Pretty soon, you'll have to switch off.

But even though you shut off the film,
your heart keeps hammering away.

You'll probably have nightmares tonight.

Still, maybe you ought
to put the film back on.

You are kind of curious, after all.

That's my Saturday night in a nutshell.

(Laughter)

Anybody else ever been in that situation?

Of all the strange things that humans do,

watching horror films
has got to be one of the strangest.

It's also a really interesting behavior,
scientifically speaking.

As a horror researcher,
I have thought about it a lot.

Why do we do it?

Why do we watch horror films
and read horror novels

and play horror video games?

And why are there so many spooky creatures
in our worlds of make-believe?

And what is horror?

Horror is a kind of entertainment
that's designed to spook people,

to make them scream and shiver with fear
and break out in a cold sweat.

Think Stephen King
and "Paranormal Activity"

and "The Exorcist."

It's a consistently popular
and profitable genre.

Stephen King has sold
more than 350 million books worldwide.

In the last 20 years,
in the United States,

horror films grossed
close to 8 billion dollars.

It's weird.

It's weird because horror is by definition
designed to make its audience feel bad.

A good horror film
inspires negative emotion.

It makes us feel disgust and dread
and terror and anxiety and fear.

Let me ask you -

how many of you seek out
horror films from time to time?

Show of hands, please.

Raise your hand if you
sometimes seek out horror.

Okay, that's about half.

That matches my own research.

Along with some colleagues,

I'm looking into the personality
profile of horror fans,

and we're finding that more than half,

or about 54%,

answer in the affirmative
in response to the statement

"I tend to enjoy horror media."

Only 29% say they don't agree
with this statement,

and the remaining 17%
can't make up their mind.

(Laughter)

You know, they're probably the ones
who would die first in a horror film.

(Laughter)

Next would be the ones
who say they don't like horror.

(Laughter)

Anyway,

people really do tend to like

the kind of entertainment
that's designed to make them feel bad.

Why is that the case?
And how does horror even work?

Those are the kinds of questions
I've been researching,

and here is what I've found out.

Horror, in whatever medium,

from films and literature
to video games and virtual reality,

works by exploiting an ancient and evolved
set of biological defense mechanisms.

Let's call it the "evolved fear system."

If we want to understand
how that system works

and why it became part of human nature,

we have to look at the evolutionary
history of our species.

Now, our evolutionary ancestors

found themselves in a world
that was full of danger.

There was the threat
from predators and creepy-crawlies

and invisible microorganisms or disease,

and the threat from other humans.

In response to those dangers,

our ancestors gradually
evolved a fear system

that would keep them alert and alive.

In other words, our species evolved
to be hypervigilant and highly fearful

because being hypervigilant
and highly fearful

kept our ancestors alive
in a dangerous world.

The world may now be less dangerous
than it was in ancestral times,

at least in terms of predation:

we're not in any immediate danger

of being attacked by a saber-toothed cat
on our way home from work.

But we are no less vigilant
and no less fearful

than our evolutionary ancestors.

And horror entertainment takes advantage
of that aspect of human nature.

So horror entertainment works
by transporting us imaginatively

into virtual worlds
that are full of danger.

In horror films and literature,

we follow and mirror protagonists
as they confront terrifying threats.

Take Stephen King's
"The Shining," for example.

Here, we follow a family
who is snowed in at a haunted hotel.

In the novel's most famous scene,

the young boy, Danny, goes into room 217.

He walks nervously around the room
and into the bathroom

where a hotel guest killed herself
some years before.

The hotel is now supposed to be
empty of guests,

but to Danny's surprise,
there is somebody in the bathtub -

or some thing.

To Danny's horror, it's a corpse.

It's the corpse of the woman
who killed herself.

She's lying there,

bloated and purple
and with glassy, wide eyes.

She's rotting like meat
festering in the trash.

And then she starts to get up.

King provides a detailed
and really vivid description

of this moving corpse,

and as readers, we are forced
to hold that image in our minds.

That's bad enough.

But we're also given
a detailed description

of Danny's response to the situation.

We learn that he tries to scream
and wets himself.

We are made to mirror
his fear and revulsion,

and that strengthens our own responses
to the horrible image.

Our fear and revulsion

become mixed with sympathetic anxiety
for a character in danger.

It's a strong emotional cocktail.

Interactive and live-action media
turn the screw on horror entertainment.

Horror video games, for example,

make you feel as if you're the protagonist
in a digital world populated by monsters.

In a haunted attraction,

visitors walk through scary sets
populated by scare actors.

Here's a picture
from Dystopia Haunted House,

Denmark's scariest haunt.

What you see is a couple of visitors

who were confronted
by a big guy with a machete.

He's called "Le Chef,"

and you can take a guess
at what's on the menu here.

(Laughter)

Around 5,000 people
pay for this every Halloween,

and around 300 visitors never make it
all the way through the haunt.

(Laughter)

They have to abort their visit
because it's too scary.

They have fainted from fear,
and they have wet themselves in terror.

Why do they do it?

Why do people pay good money

to experience true fear
and genuine terror

like the people in this picture?

They do it because they have
an evolved appetite

for vicarious experience
with threat scenarios.

And those scenarios,
our horror entertainment,

work because they are structured
to target the evolved fear system.

Just consider the monsters
that populate our horror entertainment,

from scary folk tales
to haunted attractions.

Such monsters are universal
in the human imagination,

and the most horrifying ones
reflect ancestral threats.

Just think of the enormous
white shark from "Jaws."

You know -

(Hums "Jaws" theme song)
doo doo; doo doo; doo doo.

The threat depicted here is the threat
from an enormous, man-eating predator.

That kind of threat really captures
our attention and sparks our imagination

by engaging the evolved fear system.

Now, the film itself
is pretty unrealistic,

but that doesn't matter.

Horror monsters don't
have to be realistic to frighten us;

they have to engage
the evolved fear system.

They have to have qualities that match
or overmatch those of ancestral dangers.

And the white shark in "Jaws"
has that in spades.

It's like an ancestral predator on speed -

faster, bigger, stronger,
and much more dangerous.

Media psychologists have documented

how thousands of people
were traumatized by "Jaws."

Many viewers even became afraid
of swimming in pools and freshwater lakes

after watching the film.

(Laughter)

Consider another well-known
and highly unrealistic monster:

the zombie.

Now, zombies don't exist
in the real world,

and we have no archaeological evidence
to suggest that they ever did.

But every well-raised child is able
to mimic the behavior of a zombie.

You know, their groaning,

(Zombie groans)

the outstretched but limp arms,

and the classic stumbling walk.

The monster has really infected
our popular culture in a big way.

A zombie is a terrifying concept

because it effectively targets
the evolved fear system.

In fact, the zombie targets
the fear system from two angles

because it combines
the threat of predation

with the threat of contagion.

A zombie is a predator -
it wants to eat you.

It is also contagious -
it will infect you with its disease.

It is visibly decomposing,
creeping with rotten pathogens.

I mean, look at the poor creature.

(Laughter)

Shoo.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

You can tell that these horror monsters
engage the evolved fear system

from the behavioral
and physiological effects

of the good horror film.

You know, the goose bumps
and the hammering heart and the screams.

These are all evolved defensive reactions.

Goose bumps are a relic
from a distant past,

when we were covered in fur.

The goose bumps, or piloerection,
would make our fur stand on end

and so make us look bigger
to scare off an attacker.

Cats do the same thing, by the way.

Our hearts beat faster
to pump blood to the big muscle groups

so that we're ready for fight or flight.

And screams send a signal
to other people -

a signal for them to help
or get the hell away.

Horror taps into the evolved fear system,

but that's not all.

Horror can help us calibrate that system.

It's like when you take your car
to the mechanic for a checkup.

The mechanic carefully goes through
all the vital parts of the car,

and he or she will make sure

that the airbags and the anti-lock
braking system work.

Hopefully, you'll never need them,

because you don't want
to get into a situation

that requires an airbag to deploy,

but you certainly want them to work.

Same with the fear system.

Through exposure to horror,
you give it a test run,

make sure it works properly,
and keep it nicely tuned.

Horror lets us learn
what it feels like to be truly afraid,

and it lets us learn
how to handle negative emotions.

It lets us maintain
and refine coping skills

that we may apply in critical
situations in our own lives.

There isn't yet much
experimental research into this,

but we do have some support
from psychological science.

One study suggests

that hardcore horror fans
require more extreme stimulation

than do less avid fans,

which means that the hardcore fans

build up some resistance
to fear-provoking stimuli, with exposure.

Other research suggests
that by exposing ourselves to horror,

we build a sense of mastery,
which may be transferred to our own lives.

In this way, horror can help us find
and even expand our limits

for how much negative
stimulation we can handle.

I'm not sure I'd be standing here today

if I hadn't forced myself
to watch all those horror films

in the name of science.

Sure, my heart is hammering
and my palms are a little sweaty,

but you guys are a lot less scary
than Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

(Laughter)

So horror can help us
calibrate the fear system,

and horror can help us
refine our coping skills.

That's why so many of us
are drawn to the genre

even if we don't like
to watch horror films alone.

The next time you are terrified
of a novel, a film, a video game,

or in a haunt,

just remember that you are, in fact,

tapping into and calibrating
an ancient biological defense system.

Never mind the fear
and the screams and the nightmares -

who's up for a horror film tonight?

Thank you.

(Applause)