research paper about horror genre

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

The Psychology Behind Why We Love (or Hate) Horror

• Haiyang Yang
• Kuangjie Zhang

Some people spend $$$ to experience the thrill of a scare.

Fear isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (or coffee). While some people would spend money for the love of a scare, many would run in the opposite direction. So why is it that some crave all kinds of frightening experiences?

• One reason we consume horror is to experience stimulation. Exposure to terrifying acts, or even the anticipation of those acts, can stimulate us — both mentally and physically — in opposing ways: negatively (in the form of fear or anxiety) or positively (in the form of excitement or joy).
• Another reason we seek horror is to gain novel experiences. Apocalypse horror films, for example, allow us to live out alternative realities — from zombie outbreaks to alien infestations.
• Lastly, horror entrainment may help us (safely) satisfy our curiosity about the dark side of human psyche. Observing storylines in which actors must confront the worst parts of themselves serves as a pseudo character study of the darkest parts of the human condition.  

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

Some people LOVE to consume horror. From popular shows like American Horror Story and The Walking Dead to haunted theme parks and scary Steven King novels, we crave all kinds of frightening experiences.

• Haiyang Yang is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on decision-making. His work has appeared in premier journals such as the J ournal of Marketing Research , Journal of Consumer Research , Journal of Consumer Psychology , and Psychological Science.
• Kuangjie Zhang is an assistant professor at Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research focuses on marketing. His work has appeared in premier journals such as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: General .

Partner Center

Breadcrumbs

Why do we enjoy horror science explains.

Why do we like to be scared? Associate Professor Haiyang Yang, a behavioral scientist, explores the factors that drive decision-making and how they relate to choosing scary content.

Halloween is the season for celebrating the frightening and macabre. From blockbuster movies to scary novels to haunted house attractions, horror is big business. In fact, the demand for what scientists call “counterhedonic consumption”—seeking out experiences or products designed to evoke negative emotions—has surged in recent decades to become one of the most prevalent and profitable forms of entertainment.

So why do some people love to be scared? Science may hold the answers.

Associate Professor Haiyang Yang , a behavioral scientist at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, explores the factors that drive decision-making. He and colleague Kuangjie Zhang of Nanyang Technological University Singapore have been looking into the reasons why some people can't wait to get scared. 

Going to extremes

According to these researchers, stimulation is one of the driving forces behind the consumption of horror. Exposure to terrifying acts like stories of demonic possession or alien infestation can be stimulating both mentally and physically. These experiences can give rise to both negative feelings, such as fear or anxiety, and positive feelings, such as excitement or joy. And we tend to feel the most positive emotions when something makes us feel the most negative ones.

Horror entertainment can also provide a novel experience, like a zombie apocalypse, that doesn't necessarily happen in the real world. At the same time, horror entertainment is a safe way to satisfy a curiosity about the dark side of humanity through storylines and characters facing the darkest parts of the human condition.

Tricks aren't always treats

The question remains as to why some people get a kick out of horror while others do not. Research suggests that those who enjoy horror have a psychological “protective frame” that falls into three categories.

First is a safety frame. Watching a horror film or show means we have to know for sure that we are safe, and that the evil entity is distant and cannot hurt us. The second category of protective frame involves a sense of detachment. We need to be reminded that horror we are seeing is not real—it's just great acting, special effects, and art direction. Finally, the protective frame involves our sense of control and the confidence in managing the dangers we encounter. We can still get a thrill from a good scare if we feel confident about controlling and overcoming the perceived danger.

In order to savor the spooky, we don't have to have all three of these frames. But having fewer than all three tends to turn us off to the idea.

What to Read Next

student experience

Not surprisingly, some research indicates that people with a higher sensation-seeking trait and those who are more open to new experiences tend to seek out and enjoy horror-related experiences more. Additionally, if you have more empathy, you tend to react more negatively to what happens in horror shows.

The wealth factor

Yang and Zhang analyzed movie box office data from 82 countries and discovered that individuals from countries with a higher GDP per capita watched more scary stuff. That wasn't true for genres like romance. Through additional studies, they found that people in countries with less wealth have fewer resources that help them feel they have control over their circumstances. That may degrade the sense of control required to enjoy horror.

“Our sense of control can serve as a form of psychological protective frame, a prerequisite to experiencing pleasure from horror consumption,” said Yang.

Sometimes understanding why we like the things that go bump in the night on Netflix is a little bit of a spoiler. But next time you reach for the remote, keep Yang's frames in mind. If you're not sure what you want to watch is fiction, or if you're feeling a little less than confident in your control, you might want to find a comedy show instead. 

For more on Yang's research, take a peek at “The Psychology Behind Why We Love (or Hate) Horror” at Harvard Business Review .

Media inquiry:

Discover related content.

• Seeing Others’ Big Triumphs, We May Feel More...
• The Private Equity Business is “Not All It’s...
• Mickey Mouse heads to the public domain, but...

Get the Reddit app

This is a place to discuss horror literature. Any book is up for discussion as long as that discussion is respectful. It doesn't matter if you're into Stephen King, Octavia Butler, Jack Ketchum or Shirley Jackson, this is the place to share that love and discuss to your heart's content.

What are some horror-related research topics?

I am currently in the process of brainstorming ideas for my master thesis/dissertation, and was wondering, what are some good horror-related or horror-lit research topics? So far I have horror as a form of a social commentary and horror as it relates to gender or race. If anyone wants to expand upon the topics stated above or have a new horror-related topic entirely, I would love to hear it.

Thanks in advanced.

By continuing, you agree to our User Agreement and acknowledge that you understand the Privacy Policy .

Enter the 6-digit code from your authenticator app

You’ve set up two-factor authentication for this account.

Enter a 6-digit backup code

Create your username and password.

Reddit is anonymous, so your username is what you’ll go by here. Choose wisely—because once you get a name, you can’t change it.

Reset your password

Enter your email address or username and we’ll send you a link to reset your password

Check your inbox

An email with a link to reset your password was sent to the email address associated with your account

Choose a Reddit account to continue

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

The Psychological Thriller: An Overview

2014, Critical Insights: The American Thriller

My chapter in Salem Press's recent entry to its Critical Insights series, _The American Thriller_ (2014). As the title indicates, it is a history of the development of the psychological thriller in American culture.

Related Papers

A Companion to Crime Fiction

Philip L Simpson

Horror Studies

Steven Bruhm

Paul Cobley

The following essay considers some of the consequences of Sebeok and Eco’s The Sign of Three (1983) for the broad history of the thriller, for the theory of genre, and in terms of an investigation of the relations between genre and subjectivity. It is not a fully worked-out history of the thriller and fictional detection in light of the scholarship concerned with abduction. Rather, it is a mere sketch of how such a history might look. It attempts to cast some light on the process of generic canon-building. It also poses a relation between the growth of ‘social paranoia’ in the history and cultural growth of the thriller and the general phenomenon of ‘anxiety’ which is pivotal to the biosemiotic foundations of what has been called by Sebeok (1979) and others (e.g. Wiley 1994) the ‘semiotic self’.

Pablo Echart , Pablo Castrillo Maortua

The Hollywood political thriller is a film genre of unique relevance in the United States, often acting as a reflection of the fears and anxieties of its historical times. At the same time, however, the definition of its identity and boundaries still leaves room for further specification, perhaps due to the frequent consideration of the political thriller as part of the broader categories of either thriller narratives or political films. By revising the available literature and filmography and analyzing the narrative features of the classical political thriller, this article proposes a deeper definition of the genre that takes into account the nature of the broader ‘thriller’ category of films springing from a specific mode of crime fiction that focuses on a victim or threatened individual as its protagonist, depicts and conveys intense emotional states, portrays an unbalanced and highly existentialist worldview, and travels into the extraordinary while at the same time holding on to very concrete expectations of verisimilitude. The political thriller specifies this broader form of narration and links it to dramatic conflicts of political nature, investigative plots, reactive characters, historically grounded antagonists, a proximity to the sociopolitical history of the United States, and a certain iconography relating to institutional power. By establishing the main narrative traits of the political thriller, this definition hopes to lay the foundations for a better understanding of the genre, its history, and its seeming renaissance at the onset of the 21st Century.

Bowdoin Journal of Cinema

Bowdoin Journal of Cinema , Christine Rosa

American Psycho (2000) is based on Bret Easton Ellis’s controversial 1991 novel of the same name, and details the exploits of investment banker/serial killer Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale). Upon its release, notable feminists such as Gloria Steinem opposed the depicted violence towards women, and the graphic content was so disturbing that several countries established restrictions for acquiring the book. Despite the heated response to Ellis’s work, a modestly successful film version was released within the decade. This paper investigates the factors contributing to the success of the film and its enduring popularity with viewers and scholars alike, despite tackling such provocative material. Undoubtedly, female director and co-screenwriter Mary Harron deserves much of the credit for bringing the story to life with a tasteful sensibility that is crucial to the film’s transcendence beyond a mere slasher film, an aspect which distinguishes the film from its contemporaries. Her use of the ‘female gaze’ in portraying the hypermasculine world of protagonist Patrick Bateman lends the material a restrained quality and subverts the established paradigm of power in gender dynamics. Bateman, the epitome of white male privilege who navigates his world looking to dominate people he comes across, is steadily dismantled and stripped of his façade until he registers as more pitiable than frightening. The film places society under the microscope as much as the deplorable murderer at the center of its storyline, revealing the abhorrent reality of a world in which the appearance of success is more important than the conveyance of something real. In this depiction of New York City during the late 1980s, consumerism, superficiality, and societal expectations reign supreme, and Harron displays this worship of artificiality in shot after shot illuminating the lifestyle of the uber-rich. This critique of American culture endures into modern- day, and the palpable truth surrounding our collective warped sense of prioritization ensures its relevance. Like all good satires, American Psycho has valuable lessons to impart. It goes beyond condemnation of the shortcomings of society through dark comedy, however, to a genuinely thoughtful exploration of a human mind cultivated within an ethos of insincerity. What the viewers are left with is a deeply personal character study which forces them to empathize with a murderous psychopath trapped within a state of alienation and anonymity and desperate for something real. Similar to recent box office triumph Joker (2019), mental illness permeates the narrative, and although Bateman’s outbursts are extreme and exploited for comedic effect, viewers are ultimately meant to identify with the struggles which cause them. At the heart of his character exists an insecure human being who grapples with the sobering fact that no matter what he does, his life is entirely ineffectual.

New Review of Film and Television Studies

frank krutnik

Nick Redfern

The mental flow model of the viewer’s experience of the cinema takes film genres to be forms constructed in order to evoke characteristic emotions that are intimately connected to generic themes and narrative structures. In this model, the horror film evokes the emotion ‘fear,’ producing autonomic responses of crying, shivering, and screaming in the viewer. Paranoia is frequently cited as a recurrent generic theme of the horror film, and, in some case, critics have identified a sub-genre of ‘paranoid horror’ films. However, the characteristic emotion of paranoia is not fear but ‘anxiety,’ and films that evoke such a state in the viewer demonstrate numerous differences from the horror genre. These differences are evident in the type of emotional responses experienced by the viewer and the level of their intensity, as well as in the generic themes and narrative structure of these films. Examples of these differences can be found in Hollywood-produced films such as The X-Files (1998) and Enemy of the State (1998). In light of these differences, the paranoid film can be regarded as a category distinct from the horror film.

Angelaki-journal of The Theoretical Humanities

Cecil Greek

The most gripping and recurrent visualizations of the “monstrous ” in the media and film lay bare the tensions that underlie the contemporary construction of the “monstrous, ” which ranges in the twilit realm where divisions separating fact, fiction, and myth are porous—a gothic mode. There appear to be two monstrous figures in contemporary popular culture whose constructions blur into each other, and who most powerfully evoke not only our deepest fears and taboos, but also our most repressed fantasies and desires: the serial killer and the vampire. The social construction of these figures, in feature films that invoke the genre traditions of the documentary, melodrama, horror-psychological thriller, and romance form a significant section of this article; it is the easy slippage between cinema-verité depictions and horror-psychological thriller narrative modes that renders the gothicization of the serial killer as vampire compelling. This social construction will not only cover the ...

Journal of Religion and Health

Donald R Ferrell

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Gregory Desilet

Mark Jancovich

Atlantis Journal

Virginia Luzon-Aguado

Yo'Av Dar

Quarterly Review of Film & Video

The Journal of Psychiatry & Law

Philip Witt

Film & History, 52.1

Khara D Lukancic

Luciano Cabral

Christina Meyer

Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies

rohaeni nurhasanah rohaeni

Sonia Baelo-Allué

Dr. Anindya Sundar Polley

Aalya Ahmad

Catherine Bruzdzinski

Ronald Schouten

Agnieszka Soltysik

European Journal of American Culture

Jurnal Kibas Cenderawasih

Sulistya Ningtyas

International Criminal Justice Review

Contemporary Psychoanalysis

sheldon itzkowitz

Ezikov Svyat volume 18 issue 3

Boyka Ilieva

Kristi Pierse

MA dissertation

Nur Ozgenalp

Peter Knight

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Jump to navigation

Gothic and Horror - Genre and Video Games

Genre and Video Games - Gothic and Horror

We are seeking short chapters of approximately 2500-2700 words for an edited collection on literary genres in video games. We invite submissions for the “Gothic and Horror Fiction” category of the collection. 

The collection fits into an ongoing genre studies series and will examine how literary genres function in video games, thereby bringing video games into the existing literary canon of genre studies. Each subsection will explore key themes in the existing canon while expanding on the interactive elements of video games that update and/or alter existing conversations about genre. The essays will be educational and accessible in nature with the aim of producing a comprehensive teaching companion for future courses in game studies, game development, or the digital humanities.

This section of the collection looks to explore a range of topics and games that engage with different areas of the Gothic and Horror genres.

• Topics that might be considered ( but are not limited to ):

○      Queer Horror and the Monstrous ‘Other’

○      Gothic Games and the Undead Past

○      Haunted Digital Landscapes

○      Consumption Horror: Parasites, Vampires, and Cannibals

○      Speculation and Apocalyptic Horror

• Games that might be considered ( but are not limited to ):

○       Season

○       Slender Man

○       Silent Hill

○       Last of Us

○       Atomic Heart

○       They Are Here

○       Still Wakes the Deep

Particular interest will be paid to pieces that engage with Indigenous and Non-Western perspectives in the chosen game or through the chapter’s proposed scholarship.

Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words alongside a brief (100 word) bio to [email protected] by the date below.

Abstract due by: August 31, 2024

Prospective draft due date: December 15, 2024