![]() ![]() “If people are not very scared, they do not enjoy the attraction as much. The attraction used a variety of scare tactics to frighten guests, including frequent jump scares, in which zombies or other monstrous abominations suddenly appeared or charged toward the guest. The nearly 50-room haunted house produced an immersive and intimate live-action horror experience. The researchers fitted each participant with a heart rate monitor, which recorded real-time data as they walked through the attraction. To explore this connection, Andersen and his colleagues studied how a group of 110 participants responded to a commercial haunted house attraction in Vejle, Denmark. “No prior studies have analyzed this relationship on subjective, behavioral, as well as physiological levels,” said Andersen. Until now, however, a direct relationship between arousal and enjoyment from these types of activities has not been established. “Our study provides some of the first empirical evidence on the relationship between fear, enjoyment, and physical arousal in recreational forms of fear.”įor years, researchers have suspected that physiological arousal, such as a quickening pulse and a release of hormones in the brain, may play a key role in explaining why so many people find horror movies and haunted houses so attractive. “By investigating how humans derive pleasure from fear, we find that there seems to be a ‘sweet spot’ where enjoyment is maximized,” said Marc Malmdorf Andersen, a researcher at the Interacting Minds Center at Aarhus University and lead author of the paper. That fine line between fun and an unpleasant experience can vary from person to person. New research accepted for publication in the journal Psychological Science reveals that horror entertains us most effectively when it triggers a distinct physical response-measured by changes in heart rate-but is not so scary that we become overwhelmed. But what makes such fearsome experiences so compelling, and why do we actively seek them out in frightful recreational settings? Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological ScienceĬhainsaw-wielding maniacs and brain-munching zombies are common tropes in horror films and haunted houses, which, in normal years, are popular Halloween-season destinations for thrill seekers. ![]() Psychological Science in the Public Interest.Current Directions in Psychological Science. ![]()
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