Why We Love Being Scared: The Psychology of Horror Films

People like being scared by horror movies because the fear is chosen and stays inside a safe, fictional threat, and leftover arousal from the suspense can turn into stronger relief once the threat is resolved. People higher in sensation seeking are especially drawn to that intensity, and they tend to expect positive feelings such as joy alongside the fear.

Horror can feel good when the threat stays fictional. Research on excitation transfer, sensation seeking, and recreational fear explains the appeal, and what it might do for coping.

A horror film asks for a strange bargain. You know the story is built to frighten you, and you watch it anyway. The research on that bargain is more specific than a taste for adrenaline. It separates the body's alarm from the meaning a viewer gives it, asks who wants the alarm, and looks at whether a chosen scare leaves any trace when life gets genuinely uncertain.

The leftover rush: excitation transfer

Dolf Zillmann's excitation-transfer theory is about timing. In a 1971 paper, he argued that the noticeable parts of physiological arousal fade slowly, and that the body does not stamp leftover arousal with a single cause. Residue from one response can blend into the arousal of whatever comes next. When that next moment gives a person a clear way to read how they feel, the reading is intensified by excitement that has not yet died down. The original experiments were about aggression after arousing communications, not about cinema. The mechanism is general: sympathetic arousal outlasts its cause, and the next emotion borrows the surplus (Zillmann, 1971).

Horror researchers use that mechanism for the end of a suspense sequence. G. Neil Martin's 2019 review describes Zillmann's account of suspense as a noxious, fearful apprehension about harm that may come to characters the viewer cares about. While the threat is open, the feeling is unpleasant and the body is aroused. When the threat is resolved, the negative feeling can give way to relief, and leftover arousal makes the relief stronger. Enjoyment, on this account, needs both halves: the buildup, and the positive turn. If the story never resolves the threat, Martin notes, the leftover negative feeling can deepen dysphoria instead (Martin, 2019).

Martin is frank that few studies have tested the theory. One he discusses, by Zillmann and colleagues in 1975, showed children animated cartoons that varied in suspense. Liking rose as suspense rose, and it was especially high when the threat was overcome. The study did not test whether fear itself predicted liking. A scare that pays off is not the same experience as a scare that simply continues.

The racing heart and the amygdala's head start are covered in our article on the neuroscience of fear. Excitation transfer does not replace that account. It asks what happens to the arousal once the plot lets go.

Who wants the scare: sensation seeking

The same film does not appeal to everyone. Marvin Zuckerman treated the difference as a trait. With Willibald Ruch, he restated the 1994 definition: sensation seeking is "a trait defined by the seeking of varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience." Since the early 1970s the Sensation Seeking Scale has used four components. Thrill and adventure seeking is the desire for physical activities that bring speed or a defiance of gravity. Experience seeking is novelty through the senses and through unconventional company. Disinhibition is sensation sought through other people, including partying, drinking, gambling, and sexual variety. Boredom susceptibility is a low tolerance for repetition. High sensation seekers, on this account, do not hunt risk for its own sake. They accept it as the price of the sensation (Ruch & Zuckerman, 2001).

Horror is one place the trait shows up. Mathias Clasen, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, and John A. Johnson surveyed 1,070 adults on horror use, personality, and paranormal belief. In their 2020 paper they found sensation seeking was the strongest predictor of horror enthusiasm: enjoying horror media, using it often, and preferring more intense material. The correlations were modest. Enjoyment correlated with the subscales from 0.12 for boredom susceptibility to 0.28 for thrill and adventure seeking and for the total score. Frequency of use ran from 0.12 to 0.26. People who enjoyed horror more also expected more joy from it (r = 0.33), plus more anticipation and surprise. Expected fear did not fall. Its correlation with enjoyment was 0.02 and was not significant. Liking the genre meant expecting fear and positive emotion together (Clasen, Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, & Johnson, 2020).

Smaller patterns sat beside that result. Enjoyment correlated with age at about −0.10, and frequency of use at about −0.11. Men reported slightly higher enjoyment than women (means of 3.50 versus 3.29 on a five-point scale). Women reported being more easily scared. Men also scored higher on sensation seeking. Being easily scared correlated negatively with enthusiastic use (r = −0.37): people who were rarely frightened by horror liked it most and preferred stronger doses, which the authors read as benign masochism. The same appetite shows up off screen, in our piece on the adrenaline paradox.

A threat you opted into

Clasen, Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, and Johnson call this threat simulation. Horror, they argue, carries a person into fictional danger so they can feel strong, mostly negative emotion within a safe context, and practice for fear at a cost far below a real encounter. A catharsis story — watch something awful and walk out emptied of negative emotion — does not fit what they found. Expected fear stayed high. What rose with enjoyment was the expectation of positive emotion beside it.

A field study measured that chosen scare directly. Andersen, Schjoedt, Price, Rosas, Scrivner, and Clasen studied recreational fear: frightening experiences people seek because they want to enjoy them. At a haunted attraction, 110 visitors aged 12 to 57 wore heart-rate monitors, were filmed at the biggest scares, and rated fear and enjoyment (Andersen et al., 2020).

Enjoyment had an inverted-U relationship with self-reported fear: too little was flat, very high was less fun, and the middle was better. Feeling frightened rose in a straight line with large heart-rate fluctuations. Enjoyment had an inverted-U relationship with smaller fluctuations. The authors call this arousal that is "just right." The fear was a real feeling. The threat was recreational, because the visitors had chosen a house built to frighten them. When a film sits too close to a real trauma, or the fear stops feeling optional, that frame no longer fits.

What the studies suggest about coping and anxiety

If horror is practice at feeling afraid while options remain, people who already practice might meet real uncertainty with less distress. Scrivner, Johnson, Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, and Clasen tested that idea in April 2020, about a month after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. "Pandemic practice" ran on 310 US adults. The journal issue is dated 2021; the work was done and released in 2020 (Scrivner et al., 2021).

They asked about horror fandom and about "prepper" genres — zombie, apocalyptic, and alien-invasion films — plus how many pandemic films people had seen and how morbidly curious they were. Positive resilience meant still having positive experiences during the pandemic. Psychological distress meant more depression, nervousness, irritability, or poor sleep than usual.

Horror fandom went with lower psychological distress (b = −0.10, p = 0.006). It did not go with positive resilience or with feeling prepared. Prepper-genre fans showed both lower distress (p = 0.030) and greater reported preparedness (p = 0.014). People who had seen several or many pandemic films felt more prepared than people who had never seen one. That past viewing was not related to distress or to positive resilience. Morbid curiosity went with greater positive resilience (b = 0.20, p < 0.001) and with more interest in pandemic films, not with lower distress or with preparedness.

The design is correlational. Another trait could sit behind both horror fandom and lower distress. The models controlled for age, sex, income, general enjoyment of movies and television, and broad personality scores, and the horror result remained. The authors also write that watching more horror would not necessarily build resilience, and that pandemic films could raise anxiety for some people. They suggest the distress finding reflects practice at regulating fear in a setting the viewer knows is safe. That is a fit with the correlations, not a clinical trial.

A phobia that shrinks ordinary life is not recreational, and a movie night is not treatment. Exposure therapy is a structured way of staying with a feared situation long enough to learn that the expected catastrophe does not arrive. Horror can be a pastime in which a racing heart is tolerable because the danger is fictional. The pandemic study does not claim it is a substitute for that work.

What the research adds up to

Leftover arousal can turn a resolved scare into relief. Sensation seeking marks who wants the intensity. Recreational fear is that intensity inside a threat you opted into, pleasant when it is strong enough to matter and still feels like play. A history with frightening fiction lined up, for some viewers, with less distress in a real crisis — as a correlation, not a cure, and not for every film.

A scare that stays fun can stay a pastime. Fear that runs the day needs a plan, not a louder movie.

Sources

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do people like being scared by horror movies?

People like being scared by horror movies because the fear is chosen and stays inside a safe, fictional threat, and leftover arousal from the suspense can turn into stronger relief once the threat is resolved. People higher in sensation seeking are especially drawn to that intensity, and they tend to expect positive feelings such as joy alongside the fear.

Why do people enjoy horror films?

Zillmann's excitation-transfer theory says leftover physiological arousal fades slowly and can intensify the next emotion. Horror researchers use that to explain stronger relief after a threat is resolved. Andersen and colleagues also found an inverted-U relationship between fear and enjoyment in a haunted house: intermediate fear was more enjoyable than very low or very high fear.

What is recreational fear?

Andersen, Schjoedt, Price, Rosas, Scrivner, and Clasen use recreational fear for frightening experiences people seek on purpose because they want to enjoy them. In their 2020 haunted-house study, 110 visitors aged 12 to 57 showed an inverted-U relationship between self-reported fear and enjoyment.

Does watching horror reduce anxiety?

Scrivner, Johnson, Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, and Clasen found that horror fans reported less psychological distress during the early COVID-19 pandemic. The study was correlational, horror fandom was not linked to feeling more prepared or to more positive experiences, and the authors warn that pandemic-themed films could raise anxiety for some people. It is not evidence that horror treats an anxiety disorder.