Why Do People Love Horror Movies? (Replay) AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast No Stupid Questions

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Episode: Why Do People Love Horror Movies? (Replay)

Author: Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
Duration: 00:33:10

Episode Shownotes

When are negative emotions enjoyable? Are we all a little masochistic? And do pigs like hot sauce? SOURCES:Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University.Sigmund Freud, neurologist and father of psychoanalysis.Paul Rozin, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology, neurology, and neurosurgery at Stanford University.George

Vaillant, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Mass General Research Institute. RESOURCES:"The 10 Scariest Horror Movies Ever," by RT Staff (Rotten Tomatoes, 2022)."Box Office History for Horror," (The Numbers, 2022)."Around the World, Adolescence Is a Time of Heightened Sensation Seeking and Immature Self-Regulation," by Laurence Steinberg, Grace Icenogle, Hanan M. S. Takash, et al. (Developmental Science, 2018)."Why Taste Buds Dull As We Age," by Natalie Jacewicz (The Salt, 2017).Horror Literature Through History, edited by Matt Cardin (2017)."Why We Love the Pain of Spicy Food," by John McQuaid (The Wall Street Journal, 2014)."Glad to Be Sad, and Other Examples of Benign Masochism," by Paul Rozin, Lily Guillot, Katrina Fincher, Alexander Rozin, and Eli Tsukayama (Judgment and Decision Making, 2013)."The Ignorant and the Furious: Video and Catharsis," by the Association for Psychological Science (2010).Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol S. Dweck (2006)."Adaptive Mental Mechanisms: Their Role in a Positive Psychology," by George E. Vaillant (American Psychologist, 2000). EXTRAS:Terrifier 2, film (2022)."How to Change Your Mind (Update)," by Freakonomics Radio (2022)."Why Is U.S. Media So Negative?" by Freakonomics Radio (2021)."Why Is Academic Writing So Bad?" by No Stupid Questions (2021).Han Dynasty restaurant.

Summary

In this episode, Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan explore the psychology behind why people enjoy horror movies despite the negative emotions they evoke. They introduce key concepts like 'benign masochism' to explain the pleasure derived from discomfort, particularly in experiences like watching horror films. The discussion also covers demographic trends in horror film audiences, the neurochemical responses associated with fear, and psychological theories such as Aristotle's catharsis and Freud's concepts. Ultimately, the episode encourages listeners to reflect on their personal experiences with horror and its complex emotional landscape.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Why Do People Love Horror Movies? (Replay)) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:03 Speaker_02
Hi, NSQ listeners. If you've been following us for a while, you know that Stephen Dubner used to co-host the show.

00:00:10 Speaker_02
To kick off the spooky season, we thought you might enjoy this classic episode in which he and Angela break down why certain people love horror movies. On Saturday, we'll be back with a brand new episode featuring Mike and Angela.

00:00:23 Speaker_04
I know everyone says this is dumb, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm Angela Duckworth.

00:00:32 Speaker_00
I'm Stephen Dubner and you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

00:00:36 Speaker_02
Today on the show, why do some people love horror movies?

00:00:41 Speaker_00
It is so gory it has caused audience members to pass out and vomit. Angela, we have a listener email from Skyo who writes to say, why are people into horror movies? I couldn't, for the life of me, bring myself to watch one from start to finish.

00:01:05 Speaker_00
By the way, Skyo, I am so on your side. Anyway, Skyo wants to know, what is the psychology behind fear-seeking when there exist many other ways to experience stimulation? Angela, this is a good question.

00:01:20 Speaker_04
It's such a good question.

00:01:22 Speaker_00
I want your answer.

00:01:23 Speaker_04
I can tell you about horror movies I've seen. You've seen at least one, right?

00:01:28 Speaker_00
Can I just give you a blanket no? What? I actually looked up on Rotten Tomatoes the 10 scariest horror movies ever.

00:01:34 Speaker_04
OK, tell them to me. I want to hear.

00:01:36 Speaker_00
All right. We'll see how many you've seen.

00:01:37 Speaker_04
And then each one, I guess each one you're going to say you haven't seen any of these.

00:01:41 Speaker_00
It's a waste of breath because I have not seen any of them.

00:01:43 Speaker_04
OK, you're zero for 10. I'm going to do my score.

00:01:45 Speaker_00
Alright, here we go. Number one, The Exorcist. Check. Hereditary. No. That's from 2018. The Conjuring from 2013. No. The Shining.

00:01:55 Speaker_04
Yes.

00:01:56 Speaker_00
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

00:01:57 Speaker_04
No.

00:01:58 Speaker_00
The Ring.

00:01:58 Speaker_04
I did not see that.

00:02:00 Speaker_00
Halloween.

00:02:01 Speaker_04
Yes.

00:02:01 Speaker_00
Insidious.

00:02:02 Speaker_04
No.

00:02:03 Speaker_00
And, let's see, this is capital IT. I can't tell if that's supposed to be it or if it's actually IT.

00:02:09 Speaker_04
It's it. Stephen King.

00:02:11 Speaker_00
I mean, I think IT can be pretty scary.

00:02:14 Speaker_04
No, this is not your system crashing.

00:02:15 Speaker_00
That I would watch, Angela. OK, so you've seen about what, four or so?

00:02:20 Speaker_04
Was that the list? Was that all?

00:02:21 Speaker_00
Yeah, that's the list. That's ten.

00:02:23 Speaker_04
I was also going to say like Poltergeist, Carrie, Silence of the Lambs.

00:02:27 Speaker_00
OK, so with a different list, you would have had a higher hit rate. But Skyo and I are on team do not watch horror films.

00:02:34 Speaker_04
OK, it's complicated, Steven. I just want to tell you I'm now on your team.

00:02:37 Speaker_00
What do you mean?

00:02:38 Speaker_04
I realized listening to that list that any of the more recent horror movies, really there's almost zero chance that I've seen them because I'm in my 50s now and I do not watch horror movies now.

00:02:51 Speaker_04
I don't think I watched them in my 40s and I don't think I watched them in my 30s either. So it was really like a teenager, young 20s thing.

00:03:00 Speaker_00
So I have to say, you fit the data really, really nicely. Horror film numbers are up lately, over the past five or six years, but they're still relatively low. So as a share of all ticket sales,

00:03:15 Speaker_00
I guess this is assuming that people actually go to theaters to watch movies. So we may actually be dealing with a different population too, because it may be that there are people who watch a lot of horror films at home and not in theaters.

00:03:27 Speaker_00
But it looks as though horror films represent 10% of all Tickets sold. Now, it could also be that only 10% of films made are horror films. That may be fairly representative. But if you look at age, it's definitely a younger person's game.

00:03:42 Speaker_00
So it's probably not so surprising that neither you or I are seeing any lately.

00:03:47 Speaker_04
I think it's also not surprising because the feature of behavior called sensation seeking, like, hey, let me try that. I've never done that before. I know everyone says this is dumb, but I'm going to do it anyway.

00:04:01 Speaker_04
That tends to peak during adolescence, late adolescence, early adulthood, you know, late teens, early 20s.

00:04:08 Speaker_00
So that makes sense. Horror films are one example, let's say, of sensation seeking. But what else might there be? There might be eating spicy foods or might be jumping out of a parachute. What do you count as that?

00:04:21 Speaker_04
Well, this is all what Paul Rosin, who is one of my favorite psychologists, he also is at my university, University of Pennsylvania. He calls all of these things benign masochism.

00:04:31 Speaker_00
Good phrase. Isn't that so good? Can I just say, as a non-academic who's read a lot of academic work, I am so appreciative when someone, whether it's a psychologist, an economist, anthropologist, whatever,

00:04:44 Speaker_00
has come up with a phrase to describe something that makes the lay brain really get it.

00:04:50 Speaker_00
But I feel that there are so many brilliant people out there doing research and they want to communicate their findings to the public and their peers, of course, but they don't have the ability or maybe the desire, or maybe they don't want to seem as though they're trying to dress it up or dumb it down or something.

00:05:06 Speaker_00
But I find that it's incredibly useful when there is a name.

00:05:11 Speaker_04
OK, I have to digress for a minute here. You're going to digress on my digression. I am just for a second. We'll come back to horror movies. But growth mindset is a pretty sexy phrase, right?

00:05:22 Speaker_00
Absolutely.

00:05:23 Speaker_04
And now if you ask a CEO or a head of a PTA committee at your kid's school, they probably know what a growth mindset is. But Carol Dweck only recently, relatively, started using that phrase. She used to call it implicit theories of incremental.

00:05:41 Speaker_04
I know, right? I can't even remember. It was like incremental intelligence theory. There was some multi-syllabic, multi-word phrase.

00:05:49 Speaker_04
And I believe she had to come up with some terminology when she was writing her first, last, only, at least for now, popular book for a lay audience. And, you know, implicit theories of intelligence and, you know, incremental versus whatever.

00:06:05 Speaker_04
These were not going to fly. And so growth mindset ended up being the terminology we all know and love today. So I agree with you.

00:06:12 Speaker_00
And can I just say, I don't mean to disparage any academics who don't come up with a phrase to describe an idea or a theory or their work overall.

00:06:21 Speaker_00
And I realize that for the most part, people like you, Angela, academic researchers are writing primarily for each other in journals. Now, we've talked about how journal writing typically is. What's the word? Horrible, maybe.

00:06:36 Speaker_04
Yeah, I think we use the word horrible. Yes.

00:06:38 Speaker_00
It's not writing that the average person would forget about enjoy but even comprehend. So I just do want to say to all of our academic listeners out there that I as a medium informed layperson really do appreciate when you take time.

00:06:56 Speaker_00
to essentially label your idea in a descriptive way because I think it leads to a lot more interest and therefore understanding and therefore theoretically application of that idea into fruitful policy and so on.

00:07:09 Speaker_04
Well, not only have you just sent Paul Rosin and his collaborators a little Stephen Dubner thank you note, you're going to want to keep that stationery out because this is the title of their paper. I love this title.

00:07:21 Speaker_04
Glad to be sad and other examples of benign masochism.

00:07:25 Speaker_00
That is good.

00:07:26 Speaker_04
which was published in the not-so-sexily-named Judgment and Decision-Making Journal. But, you know, isn't that great? Glad to be sad.

00:07:34 Speaker_04
So what Paul Rosen wants to argue is that he can explain not only going to watch, you know, The Exorcist, but also why you would get on a roller coaster, why you would listen to, like, sad music, why you would eat really spicy hot sauce

00:07:50 Speaker_04
The list goes on.

00:07:51 Speaker_04
In fact, he had people rate on a scale from, I think, zero to 100, how much they would want to do these things that are, you know, on the face of them, things that you shouldn't want to do, because all of these emotions that you know these activities produce are negative emotions.

00:08:09 Speaker_04
So, I want to tell you what the subscales are on this. Let's start with fear. That's one subscale. Sadness is another. Sad movies, sad novels, sad music, et cetera. The sensation of burning, particularly food.

00:08:23 Speaker_04
So, you know, spicy food, and then all the things that it makes you do, like cry and sweat and so forth. There's a disgust subscale. You know, of course, Paul Rosen is beloved for his... The king of disgust.

00:08:37 Speaker_04
the pioneer of the psychology of disgust, but, you know, like pinching pimples or like looking at like disgusting images. You're like, oh, my God, come here to check this out. And then you keep scrolling through like more.

00:08:52 Speaker_00
You keep scrolling through. I don't keep scrolling through.

00:08:55 Speaker_04
Oh, come on. You've never done that.

00:08:57 Speaker_00
I don't.

00:08:57 Speaker_04
You've never gone on YouTube and watched people like pop these like huge zits.

00:09:02 Speaker_00
Believe it or not, I haven't.

00:09:04 Speaker_04
It was just me.

00:09:05 Speaker_00
I'm getting a whole different image of what you do in your spare time. I thought you were just reading a bunch of academic journals, maybe seeing your family once in a while, but this is all about the zip popping. I contain multitudes.

00:09:16 Speaker_00
You know, separately, we got another listener email asking a very similar question about horror movies, but this one was more specific.

00:09:25 Speaker_00
So this is from a listener named Stephanie, who wrote to say, recently, a few friends of mine heard about a horror movie being shown in theaters. It is so gory, it has caused audience members to pass out and vomit.

00:09:37 Speaker_00
Although I know movies often make these claims to generate buzz, this still repulsed me enough to never want to see the film. My friends, however, upon hearing these claims, immediately decided they had to see it.

00:09:46 Speaker_00
When they went, someone sitting a few seats away from them did throw up about 15 minutes in, followed by at least one other person later in the movie.

00:09:55 Speaker_00
So my question, Stephanie writes, is why are many people drawn to consume media that they are pretty certain will horrify, disgust, and possibly traumatize them on a deep level.

00:10:05 Speaker_00
I was so intrigued by this email that I wrote back to Stephanie to ask her, what was the movie? The movie is called Terrifier 2, she says. And then she added, please don't watch it. I feel guilty for putting you onto it.

00:10:19 Speaker_00
And whatever you do, don't show it to Angela. She must be protected.

00:10:25 Speaker_04
Wait, I want to see Terrifier 1 and 2.

00:10:29 Speaker_00
Of course you do.

00:10:30 Speaker_04
Gory movies, by the way, on the Paul Rosin scale, for whatever reason, did not quote unquote load with the horror movies.

00:10:38 Speaker_04
And what I mean by that is, you know, I told you that he was asking people like on a scale from zero to 100, like how much do you like these activities, even though the emotion that they produce is negative?

00:10:48 Speaker_04
What loading means is like, does that item on this case, gory movies, does that correlate with the other items on the fear scale?

00:10:56 Speaker_00
And you're saying gory and fear don't correlate.

00:10:59 Speaker_04
Or they don't correlate enough. They probably correlate, but they don't hang together as much as you think.

00:11:04 Speaker_00
So I interrupted you. You gave us four categories. There was fear, sadness, burning hot food and disgust. What else?

00:11:11 Speaker_04
Yeah. And I have four more. OK, so there's pain. So do you enjoy, say, getting a really hard massage or, you know, the flash of pain when you experience your hand in ice water? There's the alcohol subscale. And this is in particular beer and scotch.

00:11:28 Speaker_00
I think I can get on board with this subscale. An attraction to those represents what?

00:11:32 Speaker_04
I think in this case, the argument is that these are bitter or burning, right?

00:11:36 Speaker_00
I think scotch has like... Unless you think they're just delicious.

00:11:40 Speaker_04
Well, you know, one way you can think about these things is that in many cases, babies would not like these things, right? Like babies don't like pain. They don't like fear.

00:11:47 Speaker_00
I tried so hard to get my babies to drink scotch and they were just terrible at it.

00:11:52 Speaker_04
Yeah, well, so there you figured it out. You didn't need a random assignment study for that one. Okay, just two more. One is the feeling of physical exhaustion. And then the last subscale was bitterness. I guess like coffee is on this scale.

00:12:06 Speaker_04
So maybe when I was talking about whiskey just then, which was on the alcohol subscale, maybe there's like a different feeling. But all of these things, they're all what Paul Rosin calls benign masochism.

00:12:21 Speaker_02
Still to come on No Stupid Questions, would Aristotle have been a fan of horror movies? Now back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about horror movies and benign masochism.

00:12:54 Speaker_00
So glad to be sad and other examples of benign masochism. The title alone suggests to me that many, many, many people are attracted to these difficult or weird or bitter things because it must trigger some positive response.

00:13:09 Speaker_00
Is that what we're being told?

00:13:11 Speaker_04
I actually asked Paul about this relatively recently. You know, the paper is almost a decade old.

00:13:17 Speaker_04
And he now believes that the reason why we like to do things that are suffering experiences, the reason why we put ourselves through pain, is because we have this kind of mind over body sense of control when we're able to withstand it.

00:13:33 Speaker_04
So he thinks that it's like this sense of, I've got this. I'm in a state of fear, but I'm making myself do this. And so it's kind of a sense of control.

00:13:43 Speaker_00
So you challenge yourself and you meet this challenge and feel better for that.

00:13:48 Speaker_04
That's right. You don't really think that you're in danger when you're in a horror movie. Right. You don't really think you're going to have a heart attack when you're eating like a spicy taco.

00:13:58 Speaker_04
So this kind of sense that you're subjecting yourself to something which is aversive, which is negative, but they're all safe threats.

00:14:08 Speaker_04
Also, you know, for example, when people go and exercise really hard, the body produces endorphins that then creates a kind of analgesic and even euphoric effect in large amounts. So you could also argue that, like, there's another mechanism at play.

00:14:25 Speaker_04
In addition to this sense of control that we get when we engage in these safe threats, there could be these like oppositional defenses that the body has against these threats. And then we get to enjoy them.

00:14:37 Speaker_04
Or even just the cessation, like when you get out of a horror movie, you're like, oh God, thank God that's over. And so the relief, the absence of pain.

00:14:46 Speaker_00
Those all make a lot of sense to me, and I appreciate the explanation. But let me just say, I don't have that desire. None? Well, you did use the phrase suffering experience to describe all of these. I would say scotch is not a suffering experience.

00:15:04 Speaker_04
Oh yeah, you would have had a little blip for the scotch and whiskey.

00:15:07 Speaker_00
And then bitterness too.

00:15:09 Speaker_04
Unsweetened coffee, which is you.

00:15:11 Speaker_00
And even hot food.

00:15:12 Speaker_04
Do you eat spicy food?

00:15:13 Speaker_00
You know, I didn't used to, and then I read two things that changed my idea about this.

00:15:18 Speaker_00
One was Robert Sapolsky writing about how many people get so fixed in their appetites and habits of everything, food, music, places they go, the people they see, by the time they're roughly 35 that they just sort of calcify.

00:15:33 Speaker_00
And when I read that, I thought, oh, crap.

00:15:35 Speaker_04
Not I, said Stephen Dubner.

00:15:38 Speaker_00
Yeah. And so I'm a person who I think is relatively eager to try out new things. But that sort of gave me even more motivation to do so. Additionally, then I read something about how as you get older, your taste buds sort of dull.

00:15:51 Speaker_00
And so I read that many older people, therefore, start eating spicy food even when they didn't like it before. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. I'm going to try. And in the last like five, 10 years, I've been eating a lot more of it.

00:16:03 Speaker_00
And it turns out that I just like it. And I don't think that has anything to do with taste buds being duller. I think I just was scared of it for some reason.

00:16:11 Speaker_00
I grew up eating a kind of, you know, meat and potatoes ish rural farmer bland diet and spicy things seemed a little bit strange and foreign. And now I eat a lot and I like it.

00:16:22 Speaker_04
I want to double click on this. Believe it or not, Paul Rosen has done a spicy food study with pigs. And so I'm going to tell you about it. But before I do, what spicy foods do you eat?

00:16:34 Speaker_00
So the primary spicy food I eat is from one restaurant in New York, which is just a really good Sichuan Chinese restaurant called Han Dynasty.

00:16:46 Speaker_04
Wait, is it the same one in Philly? It is. Oh my gosh. Philadelphia gave New York Han Dynasty. I go there all the time. It's very good. Very spicy.

00:16:57 Speaker_00
I love, love, love, love it. And every dish at Han Dynasty has a spice scale on it. Zero to ten. So what do you get there?

00:17:05 Speaker_04
I mean, my parents, well, my mother is from Sichuan province. That's like famously, you know, like the province in China with the hottest food. My grandmother used to make food for my father, who was not from that part of China. And he would weep.

00:17:20 Speaker_04
It was so spicy and my grandma, whatever, she was like 75 and like cooking this incredibly hot food. Anyway, my point is that at Han Dynasty, I am not a 10 person. I am more of a 3 or 4 person. I recommend the garlic chicken, which I think is a 3.

00:17:37 Speaker_00
Yeah, the garlic sauce is for wimps.

00:17:40 Speaker_04
I know it's like the equivalent of chicken breast, but I'm venturing up. And just today I put some, you know, that sauce that comes out of the rooster container, like hot sauce that everybody uses on every, what's it called?

00:17:52 Speaker_04
It's like a clear bottle and a green top. Anyway, I put it on my food just today.

00:17:58 Speaker_00
Congratulations. So what have we established? Spicy food is not unpopular among the two of us.

00:18:03 Speaker_04
That took us a while to establish that. But no, I wanted to tell you about this Paul Rosen study.

00:18:07 Speaker_00
Oh, about pigs.

00:18:09 Speaker_04
Yes, about pigs. But here's what Paul Rosen did. And I think it underscores this idea that benign masochism, like so many other things, has to be multiply determined. It can't just be the pleasure of escaping a safe threat or relief from pain.

00:18:24 Speaker_04
So Paul wondered how it is that we end up eating spicy food, because around the world, even in the province of Sichuan or the country of Mexico, where there's this long proud tradition of adults eating spicy food, babies and very young children don't, and they don't like it.

00:18:43 Speaker_04
No baby likes Sichuan peppercorns.

00:18:45 Speaker_00
Or scotch, as we've established.

00:18:47 Speaker_04
Or scotch, as Stephen has established with his own children. So what Paul was inspired to do, because I think at the time he was in Mexico, but I'm not 100% sure, and he was living in this rural village.

00:19:00 Speaker_04
And he noticed that the families would feed their pigs by just throwing out the slop of what was left over. Spicy slop. And then he thought to himself, well, how did the piglet learn to eat hot food? Do they like the hot food or are they just hungry?

00:19:15 Speaker_04
So what he did, and I think he did this with Cheetos, so he would take a Cheeto and he would put hot sauce on it. Basically, Paul made up his own flaming hot Cheeto. He should get credit for this. In the control condition, he just had the plain one.

00:19:29 Speaker_04
And then he would put them next to each other in the yard where the pigs were. He wanted to see which one it preferred, which one it would eat first. And to his surprise, over and over again, these pigs preferred the non-spicy Cheeto.

00:19:46 Speaker_04
They had lived for a long time on the spicy food, but clearly they didn't like it.

00:19:52 Speaker_00
So if the pig could talk, the pig would have said, hey, human handler. Enough. I've been eating this spicy slop you've been giving me. I've never enjoyed it.

00:20:01 Speaker_04
My eyes are tearing. I'm sweating here. Come on. So then Paul says, OK, now that's really interesting. Like babies, pigs don't like spicy food. How the heck is it that kids do eventually turn into adults who eat spicy food.

00:20:16 Speaker_04
So then he started just sitting in on these meals and he told me the story of this particular family. There was like three kids in the family. So there's little kid, middle kid, older kid.

00:20:27 Speaker_04
I guess they would have these like tortillas and there wasn't actually much to put on them, but you added spicy sauce to make it palatable.

00:20:35 Speaker_04
And then just as you would go down in age, the pattern was that the child would eat less and less of the spicy food.

00:20:43 Speaker_04
And what he saw was that the littlest kid would just like take their tortilla and then like all little kids, look to the older ones and just see what they were doing.

00:20:51 Speaker_04
But he speculated that when we have a role model, when we have a higher status person in our midst who does something like eat spicy food, watch a horror movie, go on the Internet and look at disgusting pimple pictures, whatever it is, we can learn that that is something that we should like.

00:21:10 Speaker_04
And this generally gets to a topic that Paul has been obsessed with for his whole life, which is like, how do we come to like what we like?

00:21:19 Speaker_00
To me, the dividing line is the things that are put in front of us, like the pigs and the kids, and the things that we seek out, like the horror films.

00:21:26 Speaker_00
I can see how we're adaptable, so that when things are put in front of us and when we have no choice set, really, we habituate to things, even though the pigs were probably not very happy about it.

00:21:36 Speaker_00
But to go to the trouble to make plans to go to a movie that I know I'm going to hate, that would make no sense for me. So then I realized, well, there are people who plainly really love that enough to go out of their way to do it.

00:21:51 Speaker_00
When I think about the appeal, what makes me different from that person or that person different from me, I try to think through how I would have to be to want to do that. So I could see two different directions.

00:22:03 Speaker_00
One is that I'm a very secure, settled, unafraid person.

00:22:09 Speaker_00
and I can watch a really horrible, scary film for what it is and have fun with it, like a tourist visiting a country that I wouldn't wanna live in, but it's okay, because I know I'll be going home. So that's one.

00:22:21 Speaker_00
The other is really opposite, which is I feel the world itself is so chaotic and scary and weird that it's nice to have that perception upheld to some degree in this film version, that I can see the darkest elements of human behavior

00:22:39 Speaker_04
Oh, interesting, like dystopian movies and TV series are all the rage right now because we seem to be living in dystopia itself.

00:22:48 Speaker_00
Exactly. And it makes me feel like I'm not wrong for seeing the world that way. And so it could actually uphold my perception of the world.

00:22:59 Speaker_04
I know that people these days are watching all kinds of dystopian miniseries and movies. I hate them. I'm like, oh my gosh, life is hard and the world is melting.

00:23:12 Speaker_04
The last thing I want to do is sit on the couch and watch disaster unfolding on the screen.

00:23:18 Speaker_00
So let me ask you this. If you avoid that kind of, we'll call it horror or dystopia or whatever, do you also avoid news about terrible things?

00:23:28 Speaker_04
I think I do.

00:23:29 Speaker_00
I would be very curious to know if the fans of horror films also consume a lot of social media and other media because, you know, media generally veers toward the negative.

00:23:42 Speaker_00
I believe we've talked about that on this show before, the power of bad and all that, but also it just sells. And when I look at social media,

00:23:50 Speaker_00
I think even more in the last year or two than it used to be, it can be remarkably nasty, negative, designed to enrage.

00:24:00 Speaker_00
And I do wonder if that is scratching a similar sort of itch as the horror film is scratching, especially keeping in mind what I mentioned earlier, that the demand for horror films has gone up in the last five years.

00:24:13 Speaker_00
So I do wonder if that and social media and bad real news in the world may be somehow connected.

00:24:19 Speaker_04
Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. At least I haven't seen any study that I thought really teased these things apart well, because anything correlational like that, you're like, yeah, but could it be this? Could it be that?

00:24:32 Speaker_04
Like, what else could be going on?

00:24:34 Speaker_00
Now, I've only glanced at this Paul Rosen et al. paper, and I did see there was a quick reference to Aristotle's notion of catharsis. And I see here that Aristotle did put forth a theory of horror as catharsis.

00:24:52 Speaker_00
So when talking about Greek tragic plays, which are full of very, very dark things, betrayals and stabbings and the murder of family members and others.

00:25:03 Speaker_00
So this piece is saying that such productions, the great philosopher argued, serve to purge viewers of their pent up emotions.

00:25:11 Speaker_03
Kind of like a pimple being squeezed.

00:25:13 Speaker_00
Yeah. In a safely walled off fictional world, thus preparing them to deal with the anxieties of real life. Do you buy that?

00:25:23 Speaker_04
You know, the idea of catharsis, which may have started as early as Aristotle but was a central part of Freudian psychoanalysis, has pretty much been debunked.

00:25:35 Speaker_04
So even though it's intuitive that we should, like, release our emotions, like, let me get the anger out, let me get it out of my system, it turns out that the modern science

00:25:45 Speaker_04
of emotion regulation and psychotherapy suggests that in most cases we just kindle, and it's worse to vent, to kind of like be cathartic, and it's much better to take some psychological distance, some space between you and the emotion.

00:26:02 Speaker_04
So it's a charming concept, like get it all out, but it turns out not to be true.

00:26:08 Speaker_00
So, let's go back to Skyo's original question, to the last part of Skyo's question. What is the psychology behind fear-seeking when there exist many other ways to experience stimulation? And let me add one last question onto that.

00:26:21 Speaker_00
I think I understand why we experience fear. We want to be scared of things that may endanger us. But why, when there is no real danger, why would we want to seek out the same emotion like fear in a horror movie? How does that make sense to you?

00:26:39 Speaker_04
Well, I said that on behalf of Paul, there is this idea of experiencing fear and other negative emotions, but knowing that it's imaginary or an unreal threat. So there's this feeling of mind over matter, this feeling of control.

00:26:55 Speaker_04
That's one thing that we talked about. We also talked about, you know, maybe there's the relief after the fear passes. You get the pleasure of not having the fear anymore. Right. The second reason. Third is like maybe there's some like social

00:27:09 Speaker_04
Peer and modeling influences like we watch other people and they you know go on roller coasters and watch horror movies and that Encourages us to do it as well, but there is just one additional thing that I'm now thinking about because you said catharsis and that brought up Freud and

00:27:27 Speaker_04
So, I spent some time with George Valiant, the Harvard psychiatrist who was, as most psychiatrists of his generation were, trained as a Freudian.

00:27:36 Speaker_04
And he pointed out to me Freud's idea of defenses, these ego defenses, things that we do to help us through life, and especially the pain of having what Freud thought were these like deep unconscious conflicts.

00:27:49 Speaker_04
So, one of the defenses is called anticipation. And in anticipation, you pretend in your mind that something truly horrible has happened. Like, you play out the worst case scenario.

00:28:02 Speaker_04
And I'm not even going to ask you to utter it in this conversation, but you can just imagine, like, what would be your worst fear come to pass?

00:28:09 Speaker_04
For me, it absolutely has to do with the loss of loved ones, but I can only use abstract language because I can't even bring myself to say it. When you play that out, when you imagine it happening, you're kind of habituating to it.

00:28:20 Speaker_04
You're like kind of coming to tolerate it. And so if and when that does happen or some version of that happens, you will be prepared. So that's another layer of this. We're kind of preparing ourselves.

00:28:35 Speaker_04
You know, we're practicing what it would be like and what we should do.

00:28:40 Speaker_00
So Angela, let me ask you one last question. Has this conversation made you more or less likely to watch a horror film in the near future, and why?

00:28:50 Speaker_04
It has not changed my aversion to horror movies.

00:28:55 Speaker_00
Has this conversation made you more or less likely or neither to engage in some form of benign masochism in the near future?

00:29:03 Speaker_04
This conversation has made me want to order hotter food from Han Dynasty in the very short term future, possibly tonight.

00:29:12 Speaker_00
What are the odds that you're going to see Terrifier 2 and Vomit?

00:29:15 Speaker_04
Oh, that? I'll get at least 20 percent. Maybe while I'm watching Terrorfire 2, I'll have some spicy dan dan noodles.

00:29:25 Speaker_02
Coming up after the break, a fact check of today's conversation. And now here's a fact check of today's conversation.

00:29:43 Speaker_02
In the first half of the show, Stephen reads Angela the media review website Rotten Tomatoes list of the top 10 scariest movies of all time.

00:29:52 Speaker_02
He actually skipped number nine, the 2012 movie Sinister, directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Ethan Hawke. As with the other modern horror movies, Angela has not seen this film.

00:30:05 Speaker_02
Later, Angela forgets the terminology that Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck originally used to describe the idea that she ultimately called growth mindset. The phrase Angela was looking for is an incremental theory of intelligence.

00:30:21 Speaker_02
This is the opposite of a fixed mindset, which Dweck originally called an entity theory of intelligence. Also, Angela has difficulty differentiating Paul Rosin's alcohol subscale from the bitterness subscale.

00:30:36 Speaker_02
Rosin and his colleagues write that the flavor of alcoholic beverages isn't bitter per se, but rather, quote, innately negative. Steven would obviously disagree.

00:30:47 Speaker_02
Next, Angela cannot remember the name of the hot sauce that she's been experimenting with. She was thinking of sriracha, a condiment named after the town of Siracha in Thailand, where it was first created by home cook Thanam Chakapak.

00:31:02 Speaker_02
It was later introduced to the United States in the 1980s by Vietnamese immigrant David Tran, who began selling his own version of the sauce through his company, Hui Fong Foods.

00:31:14 Speaker_02
Finally, Angela describes University of Pennsylvania psychologist and king of disgust, Paul Rosen's research on whether pigs enjoy spicy food. The experiment took place in the 1970s in Oaxaca and involved both pigs and dogs.

00:31:30 Speaker_02
Rosen did not, as Angela recalled, use Cheetos. Instead, he offered the animals a plain cheese cracker and one laced with hot sauce. Rosen said that the animals would eat both snacks, but always chose the mild cracker first.

00:31:45 Speaker_02
That's it for the Fact Check. No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.

00:32:05 Speaker_02
The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Lierke Voudic is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Eleanor Osborne, with help from Jeremy Johnston and Greg Rippin. We had research assistance from Catherine Moncure.

00:32:20 Speaker_02
Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter at nsq underscore show. If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to nsq at Freakonomics dot com.

00:32:32 Speaker_02
To learn more or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics dot com slash nsq. Thanks for listening.

00:32:44 Speaker_04
Oh my god, I'm looking at images of Terrifier 2.

00:32:47 Speaker_00
I have no desire to look. I'm not even gonna listen to any words you say. I'm gonna hang up now.

00:32:57 Speaker_01
The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything. Stitcher.