It's Halloween tonight, but with New Zealand's Delta outbreak many will probably stay indoors and find pandemic-friendly ways to scare themselves.
Horror expert Professor Mathias Clasen says that fear may actually make us stronger - and being a fan of horror movies has even been shown to be a boost in coping with Covid-19 lockdowns.
Horror scholar Mathias Clasen from Aarhus University is the author of Why Horror Seduces. Photo: Jacob Papsoe
Danish academic Clasen, director of the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University, joined Sunday Morning to discuss horror movies, deriving pleasure from scary situations, and what watching horror can do for us.
Clasen's "fear lab" is a place that studies the impact fear has on people.
"We conduct empirical investigations of those activities in which people derive pleasure from fear," he said.
"For instance when children find great pleasure in peek-a-boo, which is a kind of jump scare that you expose very small children to."
Other games like chase play and hide and seek, or extreme sports and visiting haunted attractions, combine fun with a touch of fear.
"In many domains of life people evidently derive pleasure from things that are scary."
And while there are often worries about the effect scary movies have on children, those jolts of terror may actually be building stronger minds, Clasen said.
"I do think that one should be very careful about the kinds of frightening media that children are exposed to, but some of our recent research actually suggests that it might actually be good for children to get a chance to acquaint themselves with dark emotions such as anxiety and fear.
"But the trick is to find something that is not overwhelming, something that is age appropriate."
"You could ask almost anybody and they would have a story about being badly frightened by a horror movie, usually at the age of 10 or 11. I think that happens to almost everybody."
There can be negative effects, such as avoidance behaviour or nightmares.
"We also think controllable appropriate doses of recreational fear might actually be good for kids, because it allows them to acquaint themselves with anxiety, it allows them to practice emotion regulation strategies that are very important in life."
There is value in "... allowing people to play with fear, seek out fear in a safe context, practice coping strategies, get essentially a fear vaccine if you will, a little shot of self-chosen fear that allows them to engage with it and maybe learn how to control fear," Clasen said.
A taste for revisiting Bride of Frankenstein or Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood might actually help some people cope with the stresses of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, a study co-authored by Clasen has found.
"We did find that people who watched many horror movies actually had better psychological resilience (with the pandemic). Fewer symptoms such as problems concentrating or sleep problems, and we think the very simple answer is they had more training in keeping fear down.
"Because when you watch a scary movie, you will be very actively engaged in regulating your own fear."
There is even research into whether horror movie exposure might help with anxiety disorders, although evidence is still out on that, Clasen said.
By exposing yourself to a scary event on purpose, "you can switch off the movie, leave the haunted attraction" and establish a sense of control, he said.
"We need more empirical research into this peculiar phenomenon," he noted.
Fear studies are not exactly a huge career field, but Clasen found his way into it through his own childhood experiences.
"When I was a child I was very frightened of pretty much anything.
"I remember vividly going to a horror movie with my friends against my own better judgement when I was I think 14. It was so scary I had to leave halfway through the film, and that was not a good experience in any way.
"Shortly after that experience I saw some other horror movies that showed me how interesting the genre could be.
"I was fortunate enough and stubborn enough to be able to turn that personal fascination into a professional pursuit."
Fear can also push people, Clasen said. Some horror fans are adrenaline junkies, but others are what he calls "white-knucklers."
"They see it as a kind of personal challenge in making it through a frightening experience, learning where one's limit is and maybe even challenging that limit."
Visitors to a haunted house whom his academic work interviewed often showed a sense of pride after getting through the experience, he said.
"They would say things like, 'Now I know that I can actually handle more than I thought.'"
In the academic world, Clasen does face others who are not convinced that researching Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers is actually a valid field.
"Most of my colleagues study elevated subjects like the sonnets of Shakespeare or renaissance poetry and then I'm the Stephen King guy with the slasher movie posters in my office."
There's a longstanding misconception that horror movies appeal only to teenage boys, he said, but research shows that horror appeals across many demographics and ages.
Periodic moral panics over horror have been around a long time, from fears over the influence of Victorian penny dreadful fiction to EC Comics in the 1950s and torture-themed movies such as the Saw series.
But a love of horror doesn't make anyone a bad person, Clasen said.
"There's no evidence to suggest that horror movies make people un-empathetic or sadistic or blind to the suffering of the real world."
