Science
Experts weigh in on the biological and psychological response that makes fear pleasurable.
ByTerry Ward
Published October 16, 2023
• 7 min read
This year, more than 1,300 people entered for a chance to pay for one night in a hotel room in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Specifically, a supposedly haunted room where Annalisa Netherly was decapitated in 1927 by her lover.
The lottery’s popularity is just one example of the widespread devotion to scaring ourselves silly. There are good reasons, psychological and physical, we like to spook ourselves.
Our biological fear response is incredibly complex, involving neurotransmitters and hormones affecting areas across the brain from the amygdala to the frontal lobe, says Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine and chief of the Anxiety Disorders Section. This complex response activates other emotions, both unpleasant, like stress, and pleasurable, like relief.
Our bodies have evolved to respond to what’s scaring us by preparing to fight or run: by dilating our pupils so we can see better, widening our bronchi so we can take in more oxygen, and diverting blood and glucose to vital organs and skeletal muscles, Aboujaoude says.
The full-body effect of fear can be exhilarating, and psychologically, we can feel satisfaction or even triumph when the object of fear goes away. Experts break down why getting scared can be so addictive.
The biology of thrill
Adrenaline, dopamine, and cortisol are three important chemicals that humans have evolved to release when under threat.
When danger is detected, our fight or flight instincts are triggered by the release of adrenaline. This increases bodily functions like heart rate, blood pressure and respiratory rate, says David Spiegel, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Medicine and director of the Stanford Center on Stress and Health.“It can provide a ‘rush’ like a ‘runner’s high.’ You can feel vigorous and energetic.”
Our bodies’ stress hormone, cortisol, is released all the time to regulate a number of bodily functions. But cortisol may spike when we strain to get through a situation or experience.
The hormone can help you stay alert after the initial burst of “fight or flight” hormones, including adrenaline, and even trigger the release of glucose from your liver for energy during an emergency.
When someone has chronically high levels of cortisol, “it’s not good for your body,” Spiegel says. “Your body is in a chronic war footing when it shouldn’t be.”
Both adrenaline and cortisol are associated with stress, which can lead to physical symptoms of chest pain, headaches or shaking, exhaustion, muscle tension—and emotional symptoms of irritability, panic attacks, sadness.
Dopamine is more of an all-around feel-good neurotransmitter. It’s associated with pleasure and the expectation or experience of a reward, which can include the surmounting of a threat “such as overcoming fear, winning a race, receiving respect and approbation from others,” Spiegel says.
That doesn’t mean the object of fear needs to be gone before dopamine hits: it’s the anticipation of the reward, Spiegel says. For drug addicts, dopamine gives them a high during the chase, even before the drug is scored.
When fear is fun
Whether in a haunted house or on a roller coaster, Aboujaude says the fear can become thrilling if we know we will ultimately be safe.
“Certain kinds of experiences can give us the illusion that we can indeed master and survive threatening situations,” says “Facing the threat feels like a victory, and it can indeed be good to face what you fear.”
Facing scary things can desensitize some people to their triggering effects since nothing bad happened, but it can also have a downside.
“Some people get more pleasure or relief from such encounters and may find themselves flirting with danger when they shouldn’t,” Spiegel says. A healthy person may go skiing, knowing the risks, and be cautious, he says. Someone chasing a thrill might go faster than they know is safe. “Danger involves risk assessment and if you come out the other end having survived the risk you feel good about it.”
If you’ve noticed that scary fun like haunted houses and horror movies often target teenagers and young adults, there’s a connection there, too.
“That’s the age demographic really trying to come to grips with mortality– what they do fear and how brave they can be,” says Tok Thompson, a professor of anthropology at USC Dornsife who teaches a course on ghost stories. Facing fears is part of adulthood across cultures, he says.
“It’s very often a social undertaking, very often it’s youth, they’re testing themselves to see if a haunted house is really haunted,” he says.
What scares us?
Some human fears are “pre-programmed” through evolution, says Alice Flaherty, associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at Harvard University. Our ancestors learned to avoid scary stimuli, which helped them survive and pass those instincts to us.
“Children don’t need to learn to be afraid of loud noises, spiders, snakes, blood, and rapidly approaching objects,” Flaherty says, referring to what are called innate fears, which she says are “hard-wired.”
But most other fears are developed through experience, she says. These are as varied as there are individuals to learn them–anything from a lifelong fear of dogs after suffering a bite as a child, to fearing bees after having an allergic reaction to a sting.
When it comes to these scary stimuli, research shows that it doesn’t need to be real to frighten you, but heightened realism does make it scarier.
“A real snake would be expected to be scarier than a virtual reality simulation thereof, and that, in turn, is likely more frightening than a grainy photograph,” Aboujaoude says.
We also know fear can vary among genders, too, Flaherty says. “Everybody says guys like scary movies more than women, but there’s some very good evidence they’re identifying with the predator and women are identifying with the victims,” she says.
Our pantheon of fear is why in a place like Scream-a-Geddon, a 60-acre horror park in Dade City, Florida, you’ll find a wide net of scare tactics, says chief marketing officer, Jon Pianki. At this park that includes clowns, witches, a prison scene, and a bio science experiment gone wrong, most people arrive as couples or part of a group of friends.
“I don’t think people are scared in the same way you’d be about an encounter in a dark alley,” Pianki says, adding that the experience at the park is designed to be “anxiety-building,” but with moments of relief, too. “People come in walking slow, huddled in groups–then as soon as the scare is done they come out screaming and laughing.”
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