WEBVTT

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

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That stuff is terrifying, you know.

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I'm sure many of you
recognize this situation.

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You put on a horror film,

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you turn down the lights,

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turn up the volume, and sit back.

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

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in search of prey.

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

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

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Your pulse accelerates,

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your palms get sweaty,

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and your hair stands on end.

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This is when you begin
to throw nervous glances

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into the corners of the room.

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What was that sound?

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Surely it didn't come from the television?

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Was that movement in the shadows?

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The horror that's on the screen

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bleeds in through your system
and into the surroundings.

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The world around you
turns threatening and scary.

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

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Pretty soon, you'll have to switch off.

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

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You'll probably have nightmares tonight.

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

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You are kind of curious, after all.

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That's my Saturday night in a nutshell.

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(Laughter)

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Anybody else ever been in that situation?

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Of all the strange things that humans do,

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

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

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

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Why do we do it?

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Why do we watch horror films
and read horror novels

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and play horror video games?

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

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And what is horror?

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

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

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Think Stephen King
and "Paranormal Activity"

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and "The Exorcist."

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It's a consistently popular
and profitable genre.

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Stephen King has sold
more than 350 million books worldwide.

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In the last 20 years,
in the United States,

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horror films grossed
close to 8 billion dollars.

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It's weird.

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

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A good horror film
inspires negative emotion.

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

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Let me ask you -

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

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Show of hands, please.

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Raise your hand if you
sometimes seek out horror.

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Okay, that's about half.

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That matches my own research.

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Along with some colleagues,

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

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and we're finding that more than half,

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or about 54%,

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answer in the affirmative
in response to the statement

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"I tend to enjoy horror media."

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

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

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(Laughter)

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

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(Laughter)

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

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(Laughter)

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Anyway,

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people really do tend to like

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

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

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

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and here is what I've found out.

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Horror, in whatever medium,

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from films and literature
to video games and virtual reality,

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

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

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If we want to understand
how that system works

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and why it became part of human nature,

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

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Now, our evolutionary ancestors

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found themselves in a world
that was full of danger.

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There was the threat
from predators and creepy-crawlies

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and invisible microorganisms or disease,

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and the threat from other humans.

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In response to those dangers,

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our ancestors gradually
evolved a fear system

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that would keep them alert and alive.

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

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because being hypervigilant
and highly fearful

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kept our ancestors alive
in a dangerous world.

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

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at least in terms of predation:

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we're not in any immediate danger

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

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But we are no less vigilant
and no less fearful

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than our evolutionary ancestors.

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

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So horror entertainment works
by transporting us imaginatively

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into virtual worlds
that are full of danger.

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In horror films and literature,

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we follow and mirror protagonists
as they confront terrifying threats.

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

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

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In the novel's most famous scene,

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the young boy, Danny, goes into room 217.

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He walks nervously around the room
and into the bathroom

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where a hotel guest killed herself
some years before.

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The hotel is now supposed to be
empty of guests,

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

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or some thing.

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

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

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She's lying there,

NOTE Paragraph

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bloated and purple
and with glassy, wide eyes.

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She's rotting like meat
festering in the trash.

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And then she starts to get up.

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King provides a detailed
and really vivid description

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of this moving corpse,

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

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That's bad enough.

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But we're also given
a detailed description

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of Danny's response to the situation.

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We learn that he tries to scream
and wets himself.

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We are made to mirror
his fear and revulsion,

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and that strengthens our own responses
to the horrible image.

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Our fear and revulsion

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become mixed with sympathetic anxiety
for a character in danger.

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It's a strong emotional cocktail.

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

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Horror video games, for example,

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

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In a haunted attraction,

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visitors walk through scary sets
populated by scare actors.

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Here's a picture
from Dystopia Haunted House,

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Denmark's scariest haunt.

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What you see is a couple of visitors

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who were confronted
by a big guy with a machete.

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He's called "Le Chef,"

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

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(Laughter)

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Around 5,000 people
pay for this every Halloween,

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

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(Laughter)

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

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

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Why do they do it?

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Why do people pay good money

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to experience true fear
and genuine terror

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like the people in this picture?

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They do it because they have
an evolved appetite

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for vicarious experience
with threat scenarios.

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And those scenarios,
our horror entertainment,

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

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Just consider the monsters
that populate our horror entertainment,

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from scary folk tales
to haunted attractions.

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Such monsters are universal
in the human imagination,

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and the most horrifying ones
reflect ancestral threats.

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

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You know -

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

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

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

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by engaging the evolved fear system.

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Now, the film itself
is pretty unrealistic,

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but that doesn't matter.

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

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they have to engage
the evolved fear system.

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

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

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It's like an ancestral predator on speed -

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faster, bigger, stronger,
and much more dangerous.

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Media psychologists have documented

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how thousands of people
were traumatized by "Jaws."

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

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after watching the film.

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(Laughter)

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Consider another well-known
and highly unrealistic monster:

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the zombie.

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

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

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

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You know, their groaning,

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(Zombie groans)

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the outstretched but limp arms,

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and the classic stumbling walk.

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

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A zombie is a terrifying concept

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because it effectively targets
the evolved fear system.

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

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because it combines
the threat of predation

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with the threat of contagion.

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

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

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It is visibly decomposing,
creeping with rotten pathogens.

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I mean, look at the poor creature.

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(Laughter)

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Shoo.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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

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from the behavioral
and physiological effects

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of the good horror film.

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

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These are all evolved defensive reactions.

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Goose bumps are a relic
from a distant past,

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when we were covered in fur.

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

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

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Cats do the same thing, by the way.

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

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so that we're ready for fight or flight.

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And screams send a signal
to other people -

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

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Horror taps into the evolved fear system,

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but that's not all.

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Horror can help us calibrate that system.

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

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

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and he or she will make sure

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

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Hopefully, you'll never need them,

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because you don't want
to get into a situation

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that requires an airbag to deploy,

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but you certainly want them to work.

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Same with the fear system.

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

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

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

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and it lets us learn
how to handle negative emotions.

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It lets us maintain
and refine coping skills

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

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There isn't yet much
experimental research into this,

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but we do have some support
from psychological science.

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One study suggests

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that hardcore horror fans
require more extreme stimulation

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than do less avid fans,

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which means that the hardcore fans

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

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Other research suggests
that by exposing ourselves to horror,

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

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

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for how much negative
stimulation we can handle.

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

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

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in the name of science.

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

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

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(Laughter)

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So horror can help us
calibrate the fear system,

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and horror can help us
refine our coping skills.

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

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

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

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or in a haunt,

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just remember that you are, in fact,

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tapping into and calibrating
an ancient biological defense system.

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Never mind the fear
and the screams and the nightmares -

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who's up for a horror film tonight?

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Thank you.

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(Applause)