I’ve always been a big wuss when it comes to horror films, probably ever since I was about 7 years old and my brothers showed me Predator on VHS and I had nightmares for the next, um, 15 years. I’ve gotten braver over the years thanks to exposure therapy, but at the start, things were pretty rough. I remember swinging by the used DVD shop and seeing Sean of the Dead and thinking, “Oh, it’s a comedy! Not a horror movie. Like Young Frankenstein (RIP to the queen Teri Garr). Cool. Let’s go.” And I went home and I watched it and it was SO SCARY. Like, no spoilers for this 20-year old movie but no matter how unlikable a character is I had to watch through my fingers when the zombies tore open their abdomen and pulled out their entrails.
But it turns out that research suggests it probably WAS a good idea for me to start my exposure therapy with a horror comedy. That’s right, for the second year in a row, we’re gonna celebrate Halloween by seeing what those freaks over at the Recreational Fear Lab have been up to!
In case you missed it, last October I talked about research that categorized people based on how and why they enjoy spooky movies and experiences. That study was done by researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark, where psychologists established a lab–the Recreational Fear Lab–specifically focused on studying fear. Why do we experience fear? Why do many of us seek it out? Are there benefits to fear?
The Fear Lab study I’d like to talk about today is about the relationship between humor and fear: First They Scream, Then They Laugh: The Cognitive Intersections of Humor and Fear was published back in June in Evolutionary Psychology. And yeah, I know that usually when I talk about evolutionary psychology studies it’s to point out how terrible they are, but in this case the authors do not create any “just-so” stories about our ancestors with zero evidence. In fact, they explicitly point out that they are not claiming “that humor evolved specifically or exclusively to manage human fears, but only that it represents a widely employed and effective means of doing so.”
Instead, they discuss research that points to the essential relationship between fear and humor despite their opposite effects on our bodies and minds. Fear is an emotion that appears to help us out when we are confronted with threats. It comes with a set of physiological reactions that aid us in our fight or flight reaction, like an increase in adrenaline and focus.
Similarly, humor seems to be rooted in play. A lot of research suggests that human laughter evolved for a similar reason as why my dog sneezes in the middle of play-fighting: to signal that we’re just goofing around when we’re play-fighting. Play-fighting helps us, and dogs, and many other animals prepare for future threats in a safe environment. We learn how to wrestle and run and bite and kick, and it isn’t stressful because we’re having fun. Instead of the stress of dealing with a real threat, we’re getting a boost of pleasant hormones.
That type of play is called a “benign violation.” Normally a violation would provoke a fear reaction, but once we realize it’s benign, we get the humor reaction.
The researchers illustrate this by discussing various situations where humor and fear intersect, starting with the first funny/scary thing that most of us ever experienced: peek-a-boo. This is a game played all over the world across many cultures, and while there are slight variations every version always includes a parent making eye contact with their baby, then hiding or covering their face, then reappearing, and exclaiming a (usually) nonsensical word in a high-pitched, happy voice.
Apparently, the first time you do this to a baby they are genuinely freaked out. It’s a jump scare, which the authors point out is probably deeply embedded in our brains and the brains of many other animals as a pretty basic way to respond to something potentially dangerous. But when the parent laughs and smiles and coos, the baby quickly learns that this is not an actual scary situation. And as the game is replayed, the baby learns the violation is always benign, and they start to laugh along with the parent to return the signal that this is just play, and social bonding happens.
Next, the researchers move on to scare pranks, like when you jump out of a closet to scare your sibling. Funny enough, this kind of benign violation is ALSO done by animals other than humans, with cats being the most common prankster you may see lying in wait and jumping out at a littermate or even their pet human to scare them before running away. The researchers had a panel of judges evaluate 100 scare pranks on YouTube and found that 76 of them featured at least one victim who expressed enjoyment afterward, though a slight majority still featured at least one victim who was upset and hated it. This is because a large majority of YouTube prank videos suck and are also fake. That’s not the researchers’ opinion, it’s mine. The researchers found that only about a quarter of the videos were fake and they made no comment on the quality.
As an aside, despite my hatred of social media prank videos, I am VERY good at scare pranks. In my 20s I lived with a boyfriend who enjoyed such shenanigans, so one night I pretended to leave the apartment to meet up with friends but I secretly went back into the bedroom and hid under the covers of the bed and when he came to bed I jumped up and grabbed him, really freaking him out. The next night I did the same thing, but instead of hiding under the covers I shoved some clothes under the covers and then hid under the bed. I waited for him to come to bed, and when he did he assumed I was hiding there so he jumped on the covers to scare me. I waited for him to find the clothes, and then get confused, and then step off the bed at which point I grabbed his ankles and we both started screaming. It was great.
Anyway, next the researchers looked at jump scares, like in a movie when the monster suddenly appears or in haunted houses when, well, a monster suddenly appears. Past research shows that in the vast majority of cases, people who get scared at haunted houses laugh immediately afterward. The researchers here point out that some reactions may be genuine laughter stemming from the realization that the situation is benign, but others may be nervous laughter used as a signal to try to MAKE the situation benign, as a form of appeasement.
They also point out that jump scares in film and haunted houses purposely destroy whatever immersion was happening–you forget you’re watching a really good film and you’re getting those super creepy vibes, and then BAM, suddenly you remember you’re in a theater with a bunch of other people. It releases tension, and also makes the situation a social bonding experience.
And that leads to the fourth example of horror comedy, right where I started my own journey to embracing horror as a genre. In this case, the authors explore how distance–both physical and psychological–can determine whether something is scary scary or funny scary. They illustrate this by comparing Frankenstein from 1931 starring Boris Karloff to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein from 1944 starring Glenn Strange wearing the exact same costume and makeup as Karloff. Despite the similarity of the characters, the distance is completely different. From a psychological standpoint, the characters in Karloff’s film react to him realistically, as though he truly is a monster to fear. The film also spends a lot of time setting up Dr. Frankenstein as a real scientific genius who could really create this creature. These aspects draw the audience closer to the characters and immerse them more deeply in the story, which makes it scarier.
But there’s also a difference between the two films in spatial distance. The researchers broke down how many long shots, medium shots, and close-ups were used in each film and found that the comedy had significantly more long shots compared to the horror, which utilized close-ups and extreme close-ups to literally close the distance between the audience and the monster.
Finally, the researchers discuss the use of humor in allaying fears. For instance, some visitors to haunted houses prefer to minimize fear, and in surveys they say things like “We just laughed a little and made funny comments to each other while we walked through,” or “I just smiled the whole way through,” and even “I think I tried to keep an ironic distance… To see it as humorous.” Again, distance helps make things less scary.
The researchers also discuss the use of fear as a kind of therapy, and I talked a bit about that in that previous video so please check that out if you found this interesting!
I know this isn’t the most groundbreaking study I’ve talked about but I do enjoy learning more about why we enjoy creeping ourselves out. If you enjoyed that, too, drop your recommendation for the best horror film you’ve seen this year in the comments below!
