The Psychological Effects of Horror Movies on The Brain

Combining my interests for psychology and horror, I stumbled upon this article here. Upon reading it gave me extra insight as to why we may be so attracted to horror movies. While also giving me the base to come up with my own ideas using my psychology knowledge. There are a few key things that give us our natural attraction towards horror. There are basic human instincts such as fight or flight, the need to protect ourselves in the face of danger and the thoughts of pure fear that these events could actually happen to us. All of these combined allow movie creatures to establish films that are derived straight from people's internal concerns. Why would we want to experience these things? Well it's the adrenaline of course. We are able to reach that high without even putting our self in harms way. We can have the full experience, without even leaving the comfort of our home, or by simply traveling to the theater.

Perhaps one of our most common instincts of survival is fight or flight. Just as it seems, this is our natural reaction when danger comes at us head on, we wither chose to stay and fight off the dangerous stimulus, or we run away from the issue. While fighting or running, adrenaline gives us extra abilities. With the adrenaline coursing through your blood, you are able to fight harder than you normally would have been able to and you're able to run farther and faster than ever before. I believe that the idea of being able to come as close as possible to a fight or flight situation, without actually being in danger, is the key reason as to why we enjoy horror.

This article got me thinking of neurotransmitters, specifically dopamine. When we do something we enjoy, our body rewards itself with dopamine, that is what gives you that feeling of "wow I enjoyed that, lets do it again." When we add adrenaline to our system, as I talked about before, dopamine is released. As a result, we naturally have a desire for horror, even if it is not realized.

Each person has an evolutionary instinct to keep themselves alive, this is derived from our internal instinct to carry on our genes to a new generation. This is a perfect base for horror creators to make their villi ans off of. By developing these characters around people's fears, they are able to create the perfect figure for any movie. This is precisely what a slasher film is, a killer who stalks their prey, and seeks to kill them. We all have a fear that this could happen in real life, and that this would effectively destroy the evolutionary instinct to carry on our genes. Again, horror naturally influences us.

The primary source of fear is our visual cortex. Simply put, visually seeing a horror movie acts directly upon our bodies, and induces the fear head on. Also, perhaps seeing the violence first hand allows us to "purge our negative emotions," as Aristotle suggested. This may lead to cognitive dissonance. As Aristotle believe, we may have negative thoughts within all of us that are brought through in horror movies. As we subconsciously realize these thoughts, perhaps we deflect them back onto the movie in order to give our selves a piece of mind.

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