This week I had the pleasure of being contacted by a reporter from the Orange County Register (our local paper) with the question: "Q: Why do so many people enjoy going to scary movies, or putting themselvesin scary situations?"
Such a fun question, I figured it was blog-worthy. Below is my un-edited response. Hopefully, he will use a line or two that works for his purposes. More likely, I (ironically) scared him away for good. Perhaps it will add something to your Halloween experience, or scare you away too. Either way...
Nearly every theory of personality can provide an answer to this question, "Why do we like to be scared?" In my opinion each "theory" contributes a piece of the overall puzzle, which when put together can shed some light on the simple question about the paradoxical joy of Halloween, and also some of the suprisingly coherent properties that connect each of us across scales, from biological to cultural, and across both time and space.
Starting at the smallest scale, on a biological level each person has his or her own distinct level of baseline arousal. This is the level of stimulation in our nervous system when we are at rest. Some people are more "amped up." Others are "under-aroused." Paradoxially, the underaroused people are the ones most likely to enjoy scary movies, as well as motorcycle rides, tatoos and piercings, roller-coasters, gambling, recreational drugs, playing contact sports, and so on. One source of motivation for thrillseekers is their low level of resting physiological arousal. Being underaroused is uncomfortable; and they will describe it as a special kind of antsy boredome. Incidentally, I am one of these folks and as such I love both Halloween and also horror films, the nastier the better. Ironically, folks like us find the effects calming. Again it is paradoxical. Thrilling information from the environment ramps us up to a more comfortable level.
People who are high in baseline arousal (e.g. my wife) tend to avoid such activities. These are your more mild mannered folks, apple bobbing, friendly costumes, passing out the candy while enjoying a good book, a warm fire, and a warm beverage at home - this is their cup of decafeinated tea. They are naturally ramped up, so feel more comfortable with low stimulation information from the environment. Incidentally, people's baseline levels of arousal tend to increase with age, and I believe there is a general difference between men and women (men are lower), helping to explain why younger males would be the primary audience for these types of films and for Halloween mischeif.
Levels of baseline arousal are neither good nor bad - it depends upon how people learn to accommodate. Some sensation-seeking individuals will raise their levels of arousal by working hard in stressful environments (e.g., fire-fighters), by playing sports, or through recreational gambling. On the other hand, research has demonstrated that psychopaths and violent criminals (even serial killers) have a tendency toward lower baseline arousal. Thus, the intesity of their crimes actually make them feel calmer. In my clinical work, I once came across a juvinile offender who increasingly sought out higher and higher levels of stimulation - moving from small-scale fire-setting, to blowing up public property, to eventually robbing a store using a sawed-off shotgun while on LSD. We therapists who became involved were of little help. We couldn't find anything wrong with the young man, or his family, who appeared as the pillars American Lifestyle. It was the forensic investigators who got to the bottom of things.
Incidentally, most people would find the LSD by itself to be way too much stimulation, or would survive the "trip" in a more common manner - with low lighting, a bean-bag chair, and some Almond Brothers albums (for example). Indeed, this young man's sexual response became linked to these events, providing an extra boost of arousal and excitement to situations that would send the rest of us hiding and shaking under a blanket somewhere. This process of linking similar arousing bio-emotional phenomena is quite common - helping to explain why serial killers so often sexualize their crimes - e.g., Jeffrey Dahmer was said to have kept the severed head of a victim in his work locker at Briggs and Stratton for the purpose of ongoing sexual stimulation when he was briefly in work-release county jail in Milwaukee for some minor offense. They should have put that in the movie (Dahmer, 2002) about him. Thus ends the scary part of this blog.
On a MUCH milder note - the same process occurs with healthy attraction and stimulation that provides increased arousal. This is why roller coasters, the tops of Ferris Wheels, and of course scary movies are ideal situations for early romance-building. One key facet to attraction is increased physiological arousal. As such, courters will typically misconstrue or comingle the titilation of a scary film with fatuous feelings for a dating partner - so long as the film is not too gross or upsetting (e.g., I would not recommend Hostel II for a first date).
The other personality theories - behavioral, cognitive, trait-oriented, and psychodynamic each may be arranged heirarchically - explaining larger-scale personality factors, above and beyond the biological level. What ties them all together is the concept of balance. For example, research on moral development suggests that individuals implicitly keep a moral balance sheet in the back of their mind's, informing their decisions over time. This can help explain small paradoxes such as the diet coke with pizza syndrome, as well as larger paradoxes like Bill Clinton's sex scandal.
Jung's analytic theory is one of the broadest, vaguest, and most difficult to research of these balance-oriented personality theories. Yet, Jung's thinking can broaden and and deepen ones understanding of our motivation to be scared. Jung suggested that everyone has a persona - the face they put on for the world, and also a shadow-side - the darker more hidden aspects of personality that run counter to the persona. The two sides run in balance to one another, such that the bigger one's persona becomes, the larger is the shadow that is cast. Again, recall any of the recent or past moral scandals of beloved religious and political figures from American Culture for examples of this dynamic.
When considered in this regard, scary movies may allow people to project themselves into the films, perhaps in the role of the "monster" or simply through an observer role - the passive voyeur to horrible things. I suspect that few identify exclusively with the victim, and less so with the first victim (i.e., in a slasher film). It is possible that this type of experience may not only balance some people's physiology, in a relatively non-harmful manner (i.e., the world of graphic make-believe trauma), but may also balance their psyche's as their shadow-sides have the opportunity to experience great and terrible darkness. Indeed, many of us horror fans enjoy the experience of being shocked to the point of our own discomfort, where we must remind ourselves that the film is not real, or to the point that we experience dissonance at the fact that we are viewing it. I had one such experience sitting solo in a horror film (again - Hostel II, truly horrible and embarassing film to view) as a new father and solo middle aged man who snuck out for a break from nigh feedings and over the top positive fatherly contributions in my role as husband and father. I looked a few rows down and saw a young couple, I recognized her as a teen-aged check out girl from my local grocery store in the same mall as the theater. Oh shame on them! (I thought to myself). What's wrong with them? I was mildly frightened walking out, as I imagined the darkness in the hearts of my fellow theater-goers. And all the while, supressed shame for my own attendance, balanced with something quite positive and helpful.
Through experiences such as these, one may gain a healthy balance at various scales of personality, from physiology up to the broadest reaches of their psyche. Of course, for those rare individuals who are in more fragile circumstances, who are well out of balance and prone to some type of violent thrill addiction - violent horror films would not be healthy. I would contend, however, that the vast majority of these very rare individuals would become violent without regard to any influence of horror films.
Jung also had a lot to say about the common themes and the common role of myth, ritual, and the sacred in human lives and culture. I would suggest that from this perspective, horror films may provide a rather sick, yet familiar balance within our culture. Just as football plays a simular to the ancient gladiators of the colleseums, and raves are similar to ancient mystery cults from ancient Greece and Rome, horror films are like the ancient sacrificial rituals from our ancestors. The ancient Myans went into the jungles to hunt for human sacrifices to the Sun, in order to ensure the health of their crops and protection from disease. In the name of such "progress," they cruely committed small-scale genocides to the more indiginous people's of the forest, all in the name of large-scale balance, sending thier heads bouncing down the steps of those grand pyramids. Then, on an even grander scale, the Spaniards arrived and committed even larger attrocities. By the way, I am no cultural scholar, but was out sick the other day and saw Apocolypto on cable. Talk about a scary horror film, wrapped around the hack Mel Gibson motife of a man's revenge for brutality to mother and child (see every film he has ever made from Mad Max on). There's likely some sort of balance in there too, particularly when one considers includes the alcoholism and antisemetic remarks in this film-maker's experience. It was, in my opinion, still one heck of a horror film. Glad I got to see it without paying out of pocket.
Horror films, on the grandest scale, are likely a balancing act within our culture as a whole, a means of sacrifice to our dark pagan ancestry. They are likely a recent branch of a longstanding human ritual, which attempts to control one manifestation of the world's barbaric cruelty, and thereby come closer to understanding it. These modern rituals allow us to leave the dark terror of the theater with a renewed appreciation for life's parallel wonders and beauties.
Indeed, Halloween more broadly is the remaining branch of the pagan rituals that came before it. It is a ritual we have heald on to for strong and complex sets of reasons, and that we have woven into our current traditions - and it is stronger than ever, even in this time of global-society and mind-bending human achievement. Halloween provides the human balance we collectively require, from the hormones in our bodies all the way up through our multifaceted cultural dynamics. I see it as no coincidence that "All Hallows Eve" arives along with "All Saints Day." Each serves to balance the other. In modern times, Halloween cleans our bodies, our minds and our spirits, and prepares us for the coming of traditions of goodness - like Thankgiving, Christmas (and other holidays), and the New Year. All are reflections of the cycles of balance, small to large, in space, in time, in size, and in life.
