I am currently neck-deep into my thesis on the psychology of horror and getting ready to start my doctoral program in Fall, hence the lack of posts of late. I try to keep tabs on the latest stuff coming out about the psychology of horror, which is not a lot, but I find myself ever disappointed by it. There are several things that seem to miss the mark of what horror does. Now I don’t know how many of the researchers are avid horror fans, and I seriously doubt that most of them consume as much horror in a year as I do in a week. However there seems to be a lack of critical thought with most of the current research, so I thought I would take the time to outline what is missing, as I feel that most of the current horror fans, myself included , feel alienated and even offended by what is inferred by some of this research. I will foot note my citation at the end of this for those that are interested.
I know I have ridden this pony since day one of this blog, but it is an important question, What is Horror? I think it is one of the most important questions that needs to be answered. So important in fact my thesis, and very likely my dissertation are and will be spent answering this question. The reason this question is so important is that nearly all the research that is out there just assumes that there is a common understanding of what horror is and skip onto other things. Their reasoning is usually circular and goes something like “horror is what is depicted in horror film/stories/books/etc.” Slashers, thrillers, ghost stories, torture porn, demonic, and even occasionally sci-fi genre pieces are all lumped together as being the same things. Really? In none of the psychology of horror research that I have reviewed have researchers even bothered to define horror in their work.¹ Until this is defined we have a big problem. Most of the these studies are looking at why do people like horror films, and what makes horror fans tick, they don’t even bother to explore the emotion itself. They implicitly equate horror to various things such as, thrill/pleasure seeking, the ability to live out social roles (often called the cuddle theory of horror). Still other studies look at horror fans as lacking in empathy because of some particular physiological responses rate to violence or some other supposed mental or emotional deficit. These particular theories are often used to all but state that horror fans are closet sociopaths who get off on watching others pain, sex, (insert any other of human vice or suffering here), and while I am sure there are people out there, that does not describe me or any of the myriad of horror fans that I know. The research leaves an important question unasked: Why did you use horror and not some other genre. There are plenty of other genres that display wanton destruction, lust, and violence, why did you choose horror to investigate your questions of empathy, anxiety, psychopathy, etc? In the mountain of articles that I have read they never answer that. These authors do not seem to know what horror is or even have much experience with it, at least they given no written indication of it anyway. For example, take a look at this article, The Lure of Horror, the author talks about why Stephen King’s novel It is frightening. The author states “…Perhaps clowns (e.g. as in Stephen King’s 1986 novel It) have the capacity to provoke fear because their make-up conceals their true facial emotions, thus thwarting our instinctual desire to read other people’s minds through their faces(it’s notable that many other horror baddies conceal their faces with masks)”. GIVE ME A BREAK! Anyone who has read the novel knows it has nothing to do with children’s proclivity toward coulrophobia. It rarely even appears as the Clown in the novel. And this is not just a one off, it happens multiple times in this article alone. For another example you get explanations like the one provided by Marvin Zuckerman who is giving a discussion of stimuli habituation to media violence and thrill seeking, all under the banner of The Psychology of Horror Films, and yet not once has is it explained why horror is the target genre or address the kind of horror that I find the scariest, the quiet horror that never uses the violence and cheap thrills that is often stereotyped as horror. Let me be clear it is not that I have a problem with definitions of horror including any of the aspects found in the above research papers, rather it is the assumptions made about what horror is without defining it as so. Psych research 101 is to define your constructs and give justification for your construct.
So what is horror then? Well my definition is ever evolving but I still think Lovecraft said it best, Fear of the Unknown. However I am not just talking about fear of what you can not see in the dark, although that is a part. It is the unknown that occurs when your most basic premises are violated and your ontological footing is crumbling beneath you; what you have always used to make meaning is life doesn’t work anymore. I am not saying I have hit on the universal definition of horror, nor that my definition wont change over time, but at least it is a position. I hope to raise the standard of work in horror psychology so that horror fans can find the thoughtful emotional-contemplation on the human condition and the strangeness and horror that surround us everyday in my research, rather than being seen as aberration of society and leaving them left horror struck. As horror fans or non-horror fans how do you feel about the way people think about your feelings of the genre? What do you think needs to spoken up about horror to those outside of it? Any other thoughts?
¹Tamborini, R., Stiff, J., & Heidel, C. (1990). Reacting to graphic horror: A model of empathy and emotional behavior. Communication Research, 17(5), 616. Straube, T., Preissler, S., Lipka, J., Hewig, J., Mentzel, H.-J., & Miltner, W. H. R. (2010). Neural representation of anxiety and personality during exposure to anxiety-provoking and neutral scenes from scary movies. Human Brain Mapping, 31(1), 36–47. Houran, J., Kumar, V. K., Thalbourne, M. A., & Lavertue, N. E. (2002). Haunted by somatic tendencies: Spirit infestation as psychogenic illness. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 5(2), 119-133. Jarrett, C. (2011). The lure of horror. Psychologist, 24(11), 812–815. Clasen, M. (2012). Monsters evolve: A biocultural approach to horror stories. Review of General Psychology, 16(2), 222–229. Just to name a few.
Horror Struck 