'Morbidly Curious' explores the fascination with horror movies and the macabre

Transcript

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William Brangham: On Halloween night, after the ghosts and goblins are done trick-or-treating, chances are you will be watching something spooky. And you’re far from alone. Horror is the fastest rising film genre in the U.S., more than quadrupling its market share in the past decade.

A new book delves into our fascination with the macabre, arguing that a little fright might just be good for us.

Stephanie Sy spoke with its author.

Stephanie Sy: That new book is called “Morbidly Curious.” And its author is a psychologist and a researcher at Arizona State University.

Coltan Scrivner joins us now to try and convince me, I guess, to like horror movies, because I’m one of the people, maybe a few people, that hates them.

Give us a little history, Coltan, of horror. How long does it date back in human history?

Coltan Scrivner, Author, “Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away”: Probably about as long as language.

As soon as we were telling stories, we were telling scary stories. And that kind of makes sense, right? Ancient humans in particular lived in a very dangerous world with a lot of real threats around them. And so telling stories about those threats would have been a useful thing for our ancestors.

Stephanie Sy: Of course, that’s become much more elaborate with the introduction of film. And we had horror in early literature, sure, but now you have very, very scary movies.

But you say in your book that there is a reason our brains, at least some of our brains, evolved to be attracted to this type of entertainment. Explain that.

Coltan Scrivner: Yes, so we see morbid curiosity actually in many animals, not just in humans. So this could be a very old drive that many animals who have been preyed upon have.

So, if you look at zebras, for example, in the savanna or gazelles, they have a drive or an inclination to actually pay attention to and even sometimes approach and inspect their predators under the right circumstances. And so it’s useful to gather information about them, what they look like, how they behave, where they might be found.

And the same can be true for humans. We face all sorts of dangers, from predators to other people to sort of apocalyptic environmental disasters that we may want to simulate and explore through stories.

Stephanie Sy: OK, but what’s the difference between, like, watching the news, where you see a lot of actual horror…

Coltan Scrivner: Yes.

Stephanie Sy: … and watching a Stephen King movie in the movie theater?

Jack Nicholson, Actor: Here’s Johnny.

Coltan Scrivner: Well, there are a few differences. One would be that fiction can provide you with scenarios that maybe nobody has news coverage of, for example, or events that haven’t happened yet, so, for example, the movie “Contagion” that came out in 2011.

Actress: Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t touch anyone. Stay away from other people.

Coltan Scrivner: It was fairly popular when it came out, and then it kind of faded away from the public eye, and then in March of 2020 it became the most popular movie in America again, because it was a great simulation of something that many people were frightened of, but were going through.

Stephanie Sy: I think what’s interesting is, your book sort of argues that there are not necessarily harms in consuming this type of content. In fact, you seem to argue that there is benefit to it psychologically.

Coltan Scrivner: There can be, yes.

In particular, I think playing with the emotions of fear and anxiety in safe contexts can be very useful for people. So, for example, if you go through life and you have shielded yourself entirely from feeling anxious and feeling afraid, when you become an adult, you are inevitably going to face some situations that elicit fear or elicit anxiety or both in your life.

And you may not be very well equipped to handle those emotions if you haven’t experienced them before. In 2020, I did do a study with some colleagues, that we collected data in April and May, so right after COVID kind of peaked in March.

And what we found is that, when we control for demographics and general personality traits, we still find that people who were horror fans and people who scored higher in morbid curiosity were more likely to score better on measures of psychological resilience in those early months of the pandemic.

Stephanie Sy: I find it interesting that horror movies are at an all-time high in popularity. Does it say anything to you about the times we live in that these have become very popular?

Coltan Scrivner: Yes, it’s maybe not a coincidence that, since 2020, horror has really been on the rise. When COVID hit, horror had its highest share of the box office in recorded history.

If you’re experiencing anxiety, and particularly generalized anxiety, where you don’t really have a source for what’s making you feel stressed or uncomfortable, it’s really difficult to get out of a cycle of rumination. And one thing that many horror fans have found is that horror movies are actually really good at providing kind of an off-ramp for those feelings of anxiety.

And what’s probably going on here is that they’re kind of fighting fire with fire in their mind. So if you’re feeling anxious, about the only thing that can consume your attention is something else threatening. And so if you turn on a scary movie or read a scary book, it can actually draw your attention away from generalized feelings of anxiety and give it a source.

Stephanie Sy: Fascinating.

That is Coltan Scrivner, the author of “Morbidly Curious.”

Thank you so much for joining the “News Hour.”

Coltan Scrivner: Yes, thank you for having me on.