Horror Movies MANIPULATE YOUR BRAIN (the neuroscience of scary movies)

Horror movies can subtly manipulate the human brain, causing us to feel fear when there is not actually any danger. Scary movies do this by stimulating our brain’s fear circuit. But that’s pretty obvious. The more important question is: Why do people voluntarily submit themselves to such a scary experience? Why do some people enjoy horror movies while others can’t stand it? How do horror movies take advantage of our brain’s design to make us simultaneously feel terrified while knowing that nothing bad is actually happening? This video addresses all of those questions. At the end, I describe some unintuitive benefits of watching scary movies.

Chapters:
00:00 The neuroscience and psychology of horror movies
07:38 Benefits of horror movies

Follow @senseofmindshow for more neuroscience explainers

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Sources:
- Martin GN (2019) (Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films. Front. Psychol. 10:2298. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02298

- Nummenmaa, L. (2021). Psychology and neurobiology of horror movies. PsyArxiv. Preprint.

- Panksepp, J., & Biven, L. (2012). The archaeology of mind: neuroevolutionary origins of human emotions (Norton series on interpersonal neurobiology). WW Norton & Company.

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Music:
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

#scarymovie #neuroscience #scienceofhorror

[senseofmindshow]

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[mikegyoung]

I get a kick out of Horror and if it actually scares me I am impressed

[bht]

Why? Because they calm me. No movie has ever scared me. I don’t like slasher movies. I enjoy paranormal movies, and psychological thrillers. Yes, I have acute GAD and Social AD. Interesting. Real life is what scares me, not works of fiction.

[wimvanderstraeten]

Movies about werewolves, vampires and zombies can be fun, but they're also purely escapist . You're never going to run into a vampire, a werewolf or a horde of zombies in real life. Serial killers however really exist. That's why slasher movies like Halloween are scarier, because to a certain extent the things that happen in those movies could happen in real life.

[guraygulseren]

First of all, I appreciate your labour with these videos about neuroscience, especially your technical or biological approach to emotions. Because; we can find any information about psychology but people can not find neuroscientific explanations about human behaviour.
I think horror movies are cognitive preparation for dangerous events. In these horror movies and most of the movies; people may want to find out the prototypes of the criminals and, afterwards, to find out some new strategies for danger. Some crime - serial killer - assault etc. documentaries are being watched more than horror movies because of this and moreover these types of movies are watched more by women. I guess, we can not explain it by the pleasure or feelings of these scenes reveal. Another note; after these movies, people tend to talk about the events and seek protection or they actively change their door locks or change the city or neighbourhood where they live in.

[Empanada_Aletosa]

I want to start horror movies, could give me some examples to start if I like science fiction

[vasilisalohankina]

Personally, I like horror movies for the sublime humor that creators use to depict certain scenes and situations (for instance, The Brood 1979). This technical trick alleviates the effects of scary scenes. At the same time some scary movies are too scary to my taste (the original Blair Witch tops the list)

[dortiz]

Curious to know if there are any insight thought peices in developing games within the horror genre?
I love playing video games but i am seeing today a "trend" in scarry or horror genre video games where kids are running away from a fear, wether it is a person or thing chasing them. Iam not quite sure if this a good thing for developing brains, such as kids, to have pleasure i nthe persuit of fear? Curious to know your thoughts if there is something like this already studied.

[lookdawg]

I always feel alien when I hear ppl explain why humans like horror. A movie can be not be horror by definition, it's fake... what is scary about fake images? The horror genre is comedy to me, I always laugh when ppl get taken out by monsters. Friday the 13th for example had such hilarious trip scenes. Freddy Kruger was boring to me, if he entered my dream world then he enter a place where I am god. Just like IT was boring to me, oh no... a clown that preys on kids... so scary. I was sad there weren't monsters under my bed.

Horror is watch the news and seeing a child stuck in a mine, that's real. If it's not real, my brain can't even register fear because there's nothing to fear.

If I want to see horror, I'll look up cartel videos, where real ppl face all kinds of horrifying ends.

[lovelimbslife]

I hate jump scares they're not scary they're cheap and stupid the lazy way to get people's knee jerk response a forceful response. The only way it's effective is if it's used sparingly like in John Carpenter's The Thing. Otherwise it's stupid and just annoying! It takes me out of the movie and experience. CG and jump scares suck.

[MaeveMoonstone]

Heh apparently one of the few women who love horror 😅. Any other ladies