What Is The Psychology Of Horror Movies? A Social Psychology Podcast Episode.
- Connor Whiteley
- 2 days ago
- 11 min read
For some people, horror movies are some of the most entertaining films out there. Over the decades, there have been massive, massive hit films like IT, Us and the Saw series. All of these twisted, terrifying horror films have captured our imaginations and utterly terrified us, and some people keep going back for more. However, this raises a lot of fascinating questions about human behaviour, why are we scared of horror movies, why do some people enjoy horror films but others do not and most importantly, what is the psychology of horror movies. By the end of this social psychology podcast episode, you’ll understand why do we find horror movies scary, why do some people find them scary but not others and so much more. If you enjoy learning about horror movies, media psychology and fear, then this will be a great episode for you.
Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
What is Fear?
I wanted to add in this little definition first of all so we’re all on the same page about fear, what it is and why the fear response is flat out critical. Therefore, the fear response is important because it allows us to protect ourselves against physical and emotional danger. Since it allows the body to prepare a fight-flight-freeze response to combat this danger. And if we didn’t feel fear or anxiety then we would regularly walk into dangerous situations and this increases our risk of death and a failure to pass on our genetic material. At least from an evolutionary point of view.
What Is the Psychology of Horror Movies?
Personally, I am not a fan of horror movies because they are not interesting to me. I was talking with my boyfriend yesterday and I said to him that the world is scary enough at times, why would I want to watch something scary in my relaxing time. Movies like IT, Psycho and a whole bunch of other horror movies I just don’t find enjoyable.
However, a lot of people do enjoy horror movies, and if you enjoy them then more power to you. I am really glad that you find them relaxing, enjoyable and it is a form of entertainment you enjoy in your free time. I am just not one of them.
In addition, research suggests that there are certain elements of horror movies that people find particularly scary and this helps us to understand who tends to avoid horror films and who enjoys them. Therefore, in the rest of the psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn what makes horror movies scary, who avoids them and who seeks out horror movies.
How Does The Dark Make Horror Movies Scary?
If you think about any horror movie, you’ll probably remember that a lot of it happens in the dark or at night. The reason for this is because humans have a fear of the dark and this is a factor that makes the movies scary. We typically develop a fear of the dark in our early childhood because of what the darkness could hide. To be able to defend or prepare our body against threats, we need to be able to see them, or at least detect them. It is a lot, lot harder to detect threats in the dark compared to the light, so we develop a fear of the dark as a response.
This fear response is only increased by watching the horror movie in a dark cinema or in a dark living room. This is why I know quite a few people who only watch horror films with the lights on or during the day.
In fact, I remember as a child, me and my mum were reading a Goosebumps book and it was a horror book. I was only small and my mum said we’re going to have to read this together in the daylight, so that shows we also have a vested interest in decreasing our fear response when possible by removing the fear that the dark brings us. Especially if you don’t like horror movies or scary entertainment.
Personally, as a kid, I used to be terrified of the dark and I needed a night light. I would see shapes, I would be scared and I couldn’t sleep because I really didn’t like the dark. The dark was just terrifying as a kid and nowadays I really don’t mind it.
How Does the Fear of Death Make Horror Movies Scary?
We are all scared of death. It is a major psychological and existential fear that all of us have inside us. This is one of the reasons why horror movies always make sure to include people being killed or facing the very real possibility of death. There are a few exceptions but they are few and far between. It’s why if you think about the latest remake of the film IT, it opens with the scene of the little boy George getting his hand bitten off and then the kid dies and all we see as the viewer is the rainwater turning blood red.
Personally, that is not my idea of entertainment and the IT film wasn’t bad, but after a while it just became more jump-scares than anything else. Instead of making use of other forms of fear which I’m rather grateful for.
How Do Sudden Movements and Noise make Horror Movies Scary?
I remember when I was watching the IT film with my best friend and another friend of ours at a sleepover, I was watching it then my best friend’s cat leapt up on the sofa at me. I jumped and screamed a lot more at that cat than the actual film itself. And this is why “jump scares” can be so effective in my experience, because sudden movements make humans very scared.
This is because a loud noise, a sudden light or movement after a period of quiet creates a startle response and produces an adrenaline rush. It is this biological response that makes jump scares so effective and a main feature of horror movies.
Personally, I would also add something that slightly relates to this is “someone just appearing”. For example, if you’re alone then you turn around and someone is suddenly there. That is another example of a jump scare that can terrify people, get the blood pumping and makes someone experience an adrenaline rush. This is something that I used to do a lot to my dad when I was growing up. I would go down into the garden, I would be very light-footed (I couldn’t be light-footed these days to save my life) and I would make him jump. I wouldn’t try to do it on purpose but he would jump and get scared.
Those moments would make me die of laughter and make him almost have a heart attack.
How Does Suspense Make Horror Movies Scary?
Suspense makes the best horror movies, like one of the reasons why we know Alfred Hitchcock films so well and they are considered the best horror films ever, is because they’re so suspenseful. This makes horror movies scary because suspense creates an anticipation that something bad is going to happen. Typically, this is seen as unpredictable by the viewer and some of the most shocking horror films violate the audience’s expectations. For example, the killer is one that the audience least expects or the hero gets killed.
Granted, I will add here as a writer, pulling that off successfully is very skilful and it can go wrong in a million different ways.
Anyway, I love suspense in a way because you really can feel tense, uneasy and on the edge of your seat as the scene unfolds. You know something is going to happen, you know it’s not going to be good and because you care about the main characters and their team, you want them to be okay. This suspense is a direct threat to their safety so the suspense builds and builds and builds. Then the scary point happens and you feel utter fear.
How Does Spooky Music Make Horror Movies Scary?
Visual media is nothing without sound. For example, my favourite media of all time is Demonslayer. It is an amazing anime, an epic film and it is sensational. I encourage every single person to watch it. Yet it wouldn’t be anywhere near as good without the epic music that is so tense, so dramatic and so perfect for each scene that the music elevates the media to another level entirely. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sweet, positive scene, a heartbreaking death of a character or the victorious slaying of an upper rank demon. The show always nails the music so well.
Horror movies do the same.
Since horror movies need to make effective use of music to set the mood, as well as by intensifying the music, they can make a scene even more intense in terms of shock and suspense. For example, the most famous example might be the “showering scene” in Psycho because of the intense bursts of music that accompany the slashing knife.
Equally, if you watch any of your favourite programmes and put them on mute. You’ll find the programme doesn’t have anywhere near the same emotional impact on you as it does with the music and other sounds that film makers, crew and other parts of production crew layer in expertly.
How Does Dismemberment and Disfigurement Make Horror Movies Scary?
A lot of horror movies make use disgustingly disfigured villains. For example, you never see an attractive zombie, as well as the Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein’s monster are all disgusting creatures. This is because studies show in early child development, young children show a fear response to asymmetrical or disordered faces. It could be argued that because most people don’t have disfigured faces when a young child sees a disfigured face, they might perceive it as “abnormal, strange or even dangerous”, because if something did that to someone’s face, then the young child might want to avoid the same fate. Therefore, their fear response to seeing the disordered face might be their young bodies trying to prepare their fight-flight-freeze response to protect them.
It's a possibility.
Personally, when it comes to horror movies, I flat out hate anything to do with teeth and eyeballs. I cannot deal with scenes that involve those body parts in the slightest, and now because of my rape, there are a lot more horror scenes that I cannot watch. For example, yesterday, my boyfriend was recommending the film Alien to me because it is a brilliant horror film that he flat out loves. Yet the entire point of the Alien movie is an analogy for sexual violence and rape.
I am not watching that. I lived through that. I don’t want to watch it for entertainment.
Of course, I will admit that this fear response does have a negative real-world impact on individuals with facial disfigurements. I remember there was a debate around the time the James Bond film “No Time To Die” came out. People with facial disfigurements were arguing why were they always cast as the villain and why were people always made to feel scared of them.
And to some extent, I can definitely understand this concern because it is flat out horrible to see myths, misconceptions and lies pumped out about you. That is what always happens with the LGBT+ community and there are so many lies and misconceptions about the trans community. Therefore, I understand how frustrating it must be for people with lived experience of these facial disfigurements to always be cast as the villains.
However, there is a primal fear response in all of us that gets triggered when we see something disfigured, and it is that response that Hollywood and other film producers tap into when it comes to horror movies. And whether this is ethical or morally right is a debate for another time.
Who Enjoys Horror Movies?
As I mentioned earlier, I am not one of the people who enjoy horror films in the slightest, but who does?
Researchers have found that people who are high in the sensation-seeking personality dimension prefer as well as enjoy horror films. Since it gets them scared, they get to feel a wide range of emotions that they don’t normally get to experience and it gets the blood pumping in ways they don’t typically get to experience. As well as men tend to be more attracted to horror movies than women. As well as social psychological research suggests that taking a date to a horror film could stimulate feelings of physical attraction as the daters might misattribute the arousal from the scary movie as feelings of sexual attraction.
I think that is quite a mind-blowing finding, and a slightly insane one because I’m blown away by it.
Although, it must be noted that there seems to be a negative relationship between empathy and watching horror movies. Since if a person has more empathy then they’re less likely to enjoy horror films and this is even more true for people who experience emotional contagion. This is the ability to feel the pain of others.
Social Psychology Conclusion
At the end of this social psychology podcast episode, we’ve learnt a lot about how music, disfigurement, dismemberment, the dark and many factors help to make horror movies as terrifying as they are. As well as we learnt that men and people lower in empathy are more likely to enjoy horror movies than women and people higher in empathy.
Finally, whilst there is some research on the psychology of horror movies, there are still a lot of unresearched and unanswered questions about this film genre according to Martin (2019). Therefore, if you’re looking for a research project topic, maybe have a think, design a study and help push our understanding forward.
You never know what fun, brilliant and weird results you might find.
And I’m actually writing this podcast episode on Halloween, so to wrap up today’s episode, here are some questions for you:
· Do you like horror movies?
· Why or why not?
· Think about the different factors we learnt about today and which factors do you think are the most important.
· Think about your favourite film (horror or not) and consider what the movie would have been like if you removed the elements we spoke about today.
I really hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology podcast episode.
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Social Psychology: A Guide To Social and Cultural Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
Social Psychology References and Further Reading
Derry, C. (2009). Dark dreams 2.0: a psychological history of the modern horror film from the 1950s to the 21st century. McFarland.
Martin, G.N. (2019). (Why) do you like scary movies? A review of the empirical research on psychological responses to horror films. Frontiers in Psychology October. Doi:10:3389/psyg.2019:02298
Norman, J. (2018). PERSONALITY TYPES AND THE ENJOYMENT OF HORROR MOVIES. Journal of Social & Psychological Sciences, 11(1).
Nummenmaa, L. (2021). Psychology and neurobiology of horror movies.
Sultana, I., Ali, A., & Iftikhar, I. (2021). Effects of horror movies on psychological health of youth. Global Mass Communication Review, 6(1), 1-11.
Werner, M. (2010). Why Do We Crave Horror? Evolutionary Psychology and Viewer Response to Horror Films. Bright Lights Film Journal, 68.
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