Why Horror Seduces

by Mathias Clasen

  Future research on horror should use a variety of empirical methods for throwing light on important questions. We need case studies, naturalistic observation studies, correlational survey studies, and experimental lab studies to get deeper into the mysteries of horror. We need quantitative methods from the digital humanities, such as text-mining of large corpora, to unearth large-scale content trends, for example across historical periods and across cultures. We need experimental psychology to help us figure out whether, and to what extent, and by which mechanisms, exposure to horror calibrates our fear system. Maybe watching a horror film or reading a scary short story makes us faster at detecting partly hidden threats in the environment. Neuroimaging studies would help us figure out what happens in the brains of horror consumers and horror artists as they delve into dark imaginative worlds. Biofeedback studies could investigate individual differences in strength of response to particular horror experiences. Structured interviews would get us closer to horror fans’ motivations. Observational studies could look into whether social horror experiences bring people together or drive them apart—do individuals leaving a movie theater after having seen a horror film talk more, do they stay closer together (for protection), than do people leaving a historical drama? Conversely, do zombie film audiences increase interpersonal distance because they have been sensitized to pathogen disgust? Does horror exposure make us more prosocial toward in-group individuals? And what about out-group individuals? We just don’t know. But these are all empirical questions, eminently worth investigating. The field of experimental and quantitative horror research is wide open, and only the imagination—and institutional barriers, such as a lack of training and funding opportunities (Carroll 2010)—put a limit to growth in this domain.

  Why does horror seduce? Why are we irresistibly drawn to the dark side of entertainment, to artworks and interactive experiences designed to produce pleasure through negative affect? Based on our best current knowledge about human nature, the answer is that we have an adaptive need to face the darkness in a safe context. Horror seduces because it so effectively satisfies our appetite for looking into the abyss, for imaginatively facing the very worst that we can conceive. The things we don’t know about the functions and effects of horror outnumber the things we do know, but the quest for understanding the darkest of genres is well underway.

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