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Professor Derek Matravers<\/p><\/div>\n
With Hallowe\u2019en just around the corner, Derek Matravers, Professor of Philosophy at The Open University, ponders why some people love the experience and seek out more while others hate it.<\/p>\n
So what kind are you? Do you remember your reaction when the severed head fell out the bottom of a boat in Jaws<\/em>?<\/p>\n Or when Jack Nicholson, playing the character going through a psychological breakdown in The Shining,<\/em> devilishly shouts \u201cHere\u2019s<\/em> Johnny!\u201d to his screaming wife, cowering the other side of the bathroom door, as he wields his axe into it again and again?<\/p>\n Derek says:<\/p>\n \u201cNot everyone likes being scared, so I think the answer to that is probably more complicated than one might initially think – why people put themselves into positions of being scared, say by going to a horror movie.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cFor evolutionary reasons it is linked to excitement \u2013 fright or flight instincts \u2013 so maybe being scared is about pushing the right kind of buttons for an effect that we enjoy.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cOne of the standard reasons why people deliberately put themselves into positions of being scared by seeing a horror movie is they can be scared without the thought they are in danger and therefore they enjoy it.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cTo me, that can\u2019t be the whole story. There are two things that are very bad about being scared \u2013 the first is the thought we are in danger and the second is that being scared is very unpleasant.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIf you ran the same experiment with respect to pain, it just wouldn\u2019t work. One of the evolutionary functions of pain is presumably to indicate damage to our body.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSo, if I said to someone that I could give them intense feelings of being in pain without the thought of damage to the body nobody\u2019s going to say, \u2018yes that sounds good\u2019.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s a bit of a puzzle. You would argue the film has compensating elements in that you might learn something from the film, or admire the camera work but that doesn\u2019t work for horror films as you wouldn\u2019t hear many saying \u2018I got something out of that despite the fact it was scary\u2019.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n He points out that people do seem to enjoy being scared. Even a toddler will run away screaming in delight when a father pretends to be a bear.<\/p>\n \u201cFear appears to be linked in our psychology to more positive feelings including arousal. It\u2019s telling that a bunch of emotions including fear and arousal tend to spill over into laughter because maybe we can\u2019t quite cope with it. There isn\u2019t an appropriate reaction if you can\u2019t cope with something that is a bit much or a bit silly.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So what part does curiosity play in having to know who is in the deep, dark, scary cellar of a haunted house?<\/p>\n \u201cA good point. I think we all like to know what happens at the end of a narrative. Even if you are watching something on the TV that\u2019s not terribly good, you don\u2019t want to go to bed until you find out whodunnit! I can imagine someone saying something similar about a horror movie.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Turning to The Shining<\/em> again, Derek added:<\/p>\n \u201cSo how does The Shining cause the emotions we feel whilst watching it? Well, we’re never really threatened by Jack Nicholson\u2019s character. It’s just a representation. We know it’s just pictures of made-up stuff.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n He quotes philosopher David Hume who wrote in 1757:<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems an unaccountable pleasure which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety and other passions that are in themselves disagreeable.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Derek said:<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough Hume thought he had a solution, I agree with his initial claim that it is unaccountable. I think there are two sorts of people in the world, those who enjoy scariness and those sort who just find it very puzzling. And I\u2019m of the second sort. Happy Hallowe\u2019en.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nNo true danger in watching a horror movie<\/h2>\n
Screaming in delight<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The appeal of having to know an outcome<\/strong><\/h2>\n