The science of scares: How watching horror this Halloween could boost your wellbeing

For some of us, the thought of having to watch a horror movie fills us with... well, horror.

But if you're planning to sit out the slashers this Halloween, you might want to think again, because delving into a horror film or show might actually boost your wellbeing.

Mathias Clasen is a horror researcher and co-director of the Recreational Fear Lab, a centre dedicated to the scientific investigation of recreational fear, and the positive effects it can have on our psyche.

So what exactly is recreational fear? Clasen describes it as anything people might do to derive pleasure from a scary activity - including babies playing peekaboo, children riding their bikes downhill at speed, teenagers watching scary movies, and even middle-aged men driving cars too fast.

Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, he explains: "One of the most interesting, consistent findings to emerge over the last few years from our lab is that it seems that recreational fear has a bunch of positive effects."

As he points out, that completely goes against "the very long standing cultural tradition of viewing horror with deep suspicion, or as something that's morally questionable, psychologically harmful and aesthetically uninteresting – none of which is true".

For one, he found that people who watch horror are more likely to be able to cope with scary or even traumatic events in real life, as they've had more practice regulating their emotions when feeling fear.

"We did one study during the darkest days of the pandemic, looking at how horror fans coped with the pandemic, as opposed to non-horror fans. The idea was that when you watch scary movies, you're actively engaged in regulating your own fear," Clasen explains.

"People use these regulation strategies to up- or down-regulate fear, to chase the sweet spot, and by exercising those fear regulation strategies, you get better at them. It's just like lifting weights in a gym.

"It's practice, just like if you're nervous about presenting in public. Once you've done it many times, you will have developed coping strategies that will allow you to do it without your voice shaking.

"The strategies you can use to cope with stress and anxiety and fear in response to a horror movie are the exact same strategies you can use in the real world – if you have a job interview, or you find yourself in the middle of a pandemic.

"What we found in this study was that people who had watched a lot of scary movies were exhibiting fewer symptoms of psychological distress. They had less trouble sleeping. They had fewer stress symptoms, presumably because they were used to dealing with bodily and psychological states of uncertainty and anxiety, and they had ways of dealing with that."

More than that, though, Clasen has also found that the fear you feel from horror may positively affect the immune system, telling us: "We also did a study where we took blood samples from guests in a haunted attraction, and we found there was a healthy activation of the immune system, and people can actually treat inflammation with horror."

Going into what happens in the mind when we watch horror, Clasen explains it's a balance between your defensive mechanisms being triggered, but also recognising that what's happening in front of you isn't real.

"Certain circuits in the brain that are normally active when there is a real danger are active, so parts of the brain respond as if you're in danger, even though you're just sitting in a safe, comfortable movie theatre looking at a two-dimensional flickering of light and shadow," he says.

"But the way in which movies are constructed to sustain immersion and a feeling of presence in the virtual world, and the way they're edited to, for example, produce a jump scare by the sudden appearance of, usually, a combination of a visual and an auditory stimulus, all of that triggers defensive mechanisms in the brain at the same time, though people usually realise it's just fiction."

Clasen adds that, historically, there have been exceptions to that, including the infamous case of pseudo-documentary Ghostwatch in 1992, which was presented as live, and prompted thousands of complaints to the BBC.

Largely, however, there's that acknowledgement that what's happening is fictional, "so there's a perception of threat, but also a realisation of safety, a psychological distance".

He explains: "It's that combination that allows people to derive pleasure. There's no pleasure in fainting from fear, but there is pleasure in realising that you're safe, but still, your body is responding in a very powerful way to the things happening on the screen."

Our relationship with horror is more complex than you might think, though.

"What's the relationship between fear and enjoyment in this domain?" Clasen ponders.

"If you plot fear and enjoyment on a coordinate system with fear on the X axis and enjoyment on the Y axis, what you see is not a linear relationship. It's not the scarier the better. It's kind of a rainbow-shaped relationship, where at the top you have what we call the sweet spot of fear.

"So it's just scary enough, and that's where you get the maximum pleasure. And so when people engage with horror, they do all kinds of things to sort of move themselves on that rainbow so that it becomes maximally enjoyable.

"For example, if somebody's watching a film and it's beginning to feel a little bit too scary, they might remind themselves it's just a movie. They might start self-distracting, thinking about stuff they have to do tomorrow. They might hold their hands in front of their eyes – which is about the worst fear regulation strategy you can employ – or they might reach out to people sitting next to them.

"So there are cognitive and behavioural and social fear regulation strategies that people use to manipulate themselves on that rainbow-shaped curve."

So, if you're looking for recommendations this Halloween, what scared our horror expert?

Clasen points out there's a lot to choose from due to the recent horror renaissance, which he puts down to being a response to the real-life horrors of the last decade, including the outbreak of war, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the general instability in the world.

He recommends Silent House, the 2011 indie horror starring Elizabeth Olsen, admitting watching it was the last time he was at his "personal limit". He also describes Mike Flanagan's The Haunting of Hill House as a "masterpiece".

If you're keen for something new to watch, this Halloween will see plenty of new releases, including It: Welcome to Derry, Black Phone 2, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, Predator: Badlands and more.

Who knows? They might just do you some good.

If you’re looking for something else to watch in the meantime, check out our TV Guide and Streaming Guide, or visit our dedicated Fantasy hub. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.